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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27519 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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It's 50s Golden Age SF techno-optimism still in play. We got the future, but not the flying cars and space colonies they imagined.

We got something better, something even the grand masters could not imagine - all knowledge of the world at our fingertips, at any place and any time. No comparison to some shitty spaceships operated by slide rules.

Anyway, if you remember shiny happy sciencefictional future, you are really ancient or fan of yoghurt commercials.

I was promised nothing than total enslavement by big governments and big corporations or total death by nuclear war, famine, plague, pollution, robots, aliens or mutants.

https://archive.is/qqlAs

I'm not a forecaster. I have no idea what the 26th century will be like. But I'm pretty sure in the short term, by 2050 we will not all be living Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism lifestyles. Back in the 70s, forecasting the future was a very popular notion for the media, experts, and amateurs alike.

Not always unsuccesful.

See famous predictions about year 2000 by thermonuclear man Herman Kahn from 1967 and their evaluation from 2002.

https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/s0040-1625(02)00186-5

Ten best forecasts

  1. Inexpensive high-capacity, worldwide, regional, and local (home and business) communication (perhaps using satellites, lasers, and light pipes)

  2. Pervasive business use of computers

  3. Direct broadcasts from satellites to home receivers

  4. Multiple applications for lasers and masers for sensing, measuring, communication, cutting, welding, power transmission, illumination, and destructive (defensive)

  5. Extensive use of high-altitude cameras for mapping, prospecting, census, and geological investigations)

  6. Extensive and intensive centralization (or automatic interconnection) of current and past personal and business information in high-speed data processors

  7. Other widespread use of computers for intellectual and professional assistance (translation, traffic control, literature search, design, and analysis)

  8. Personal ‘‘pagers’’ (perhaps even two-way pocket phones)

  9. Simple inexpensive home video recording and playing

  10. Practical home and business use of ‘‘wired’’ video communication for both telephone and TV (possibly including retrieval of taped material from libraries) and rapid transmission and reception of facsimile

Ten worst forecasts

  1. Individual flying platforms
  2. Widespread use of improved fluid amplifiers
  3. Inexpensive road-free (and facility-free) transportation
  4. Physically nonharmful methods of overindulging
  5. Stimulated, planned, and perhaps programmed dreams
  6. Artificial moons and other methods for illuminating large areas at night
  7. Human hibernation for short periods (hours or days)
  8. Inexpensive and reasonably effective ground-based BMD (ballistic missile defense)
  9. The use of nuclear explosives for excavation and mining, generation of power, creation of high-temperature – pressure environments, or as a source of neutrons or other radiation
  10. Human hibernation for relatively extensive periods (months to years)

edit: links unscrambled

Anyway, if you remember shiny happy sciencefictional future, you are really ancient

Yes, plus I've read a lot of older SF from before I was born, because when I was a kid reading skiffy, that was what there was.

So I'm old enough to be very sceptical about shiny dreams of the future, since they never work out like that.

What a great list, thanks.

Individual flying platforms

This is technically achievable within the budget of a middle class American, if you consider ultralights and some ghetto quadcopters. The biggest hurdle, as is the case for many things we're technologically capable of doing, is regulation.

Artificial moons and other methods for illuminating large areas at night

More that this is both unnecessary given how cheap electric lighting is, and because it's unnecessarily disruptive.

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