roseembolism (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
roseembolism) wrote2009-01-13 05:06 pm
roseembolism) wrote2009-01-13 05:06 pm
Entry tags:
Another rant on technological progress.
The question was, "If I have a setting set 50 years from now, how do I slow the advance of technology so that its recognizable and not some post-Singularity state?"\
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There's really no need to artificially retard technology: just bear in mind that we are living in 2009, the freeeeaking [B]21st century[/B], and then look back 50 years and see what was being predicted for life right now.
The quick conclusion is that yes, the predictions were often wrong. However, except in the limited field of computers (and not robotics, and not AI), the writers were far too optomistic. Reality in other words, has been far more conservative than science fiction, or even science magazines.
Consider:
Where's my atomic car? Where's my jet pack? Where's my orbital, Moon, Mars and Ganymede colonies? Where's the atomic rockets zipping around the solar system in months, not years? Where's my mile-high skyscrapers? Where's my slidewalks? Where's my 200 mph expressways? Where's my food pills? Where's my holographic TV? where's my robot servant with the positronic brain? Where's my fusion power? Where's my immortality pills? Where's my personal clone? where's my arcology? Where's my college course in an RNA pill?
All of the above are things that were predicted not just by SF writers, but serious futurists to arrive some time well before the year 2000. If you listen to what people were predicting only 50 years ago, I should be taking my vacations on the moon. But the truth is, I came to work in a car whose fundamental principles haven't changed in over a century. I'm typing at a computer using an interface developed over a quarter century ago, using programs that are nearly as old. Sure there's been bells and whistles added, but the fundamentals have changed.
There's a pretty good argument to be made that except in certain temporary areas for technological development we are on the upper part of an S curve, and not in an an exponential curve. In other words, technological progress overall has been slowing over the last few decades, not speeding up. And if it wasn't for the boom growth in electronics, we might be progressing even more slowly. The really, really big changes: flight, the automobile, the telephone and telegraph took place in the beginning of the last century. After that, satellite communication and observation, orbital rocketry, atomics and the green revolution took place in the middle. And for the last part...limited medical advances, and a computer revolution that to my cynical mind is heavier on promises and flashy gewgaws than results.
Note that this is completely independent of political and cultural change, where the writers were limited by their cultural and plotical blinders. Even the 60s writers who predicted cultural change, saw it as occuring along the same continuum as current events; more drugs, more women giving men free sex, etc.. The actual developments in society in response to feminism wern't foreseen (partially because many of the male writers had a hard time thinking of women as anything but some sort of sex and domestic chores robots).
So there's the answer to your question: I answer it with another: why haven't we changed faster? And what's to keep the pace of technological pace from slowing down even more? And while we're at it, don't even try to guess the political or social future.
.
There's really no need to artificially retard technology: just bear in mind that we are living in 2009, the freeeeaking [B]21st century[/B], and then look back 50 years and see what was being predicted for life right now.
The quick conclusion is that yes, the predictions were often wrong. However, except in the limited field of computers (and not robotics, and not AI), the writers were far too optomistic. Reality in other words, has been far more conservative than science fiction, or even science magazines.
Consider:
Where's my atomic car? Where's my jet pack? Where's my orbital, Moon, Mars and Ganymede colonies? Where's the atomic rockets zipping around the solar system in months, not years? Where's my mile-high skyscrapers? Where's my slidewalks? Where's my 200 mph expressways? Where's my food pills? Where's my holographic TV? where's my robot servant with the positronic brain? Where's my fusion power? Where's my immortality pills? Where's my personal clone? where's my arcology? Where's my college course in an RNA pill?
All of the above are things that were predicted not just by SF writers, but serious futurists to arrive some time well before the year 2000. If you listen to what people were predicting only 50 years ago, I should be taking my vacations on the moon. But the truth is, I came to work in a car whose fundamental principles haven't changed in over a century. I'm typing at a computer using an interface developed over a quarter century ago, using programs that are nearly as old. Sure there's been bells and whistles added, but the fundamentals have changed.
There's a pretty good argument to be made that except in certain temporary areas for technological development we are on the upper part of an S curve, and not in an an exponential curve. In other words, technological progress overall has been slowing over the last few decades, not speeding up. And if it wasn't for the boom growth in electronics, we might be progressing even more slowly. The really, really big changes: flight, the automobile, the telephone and telegraph took place in the beginning of the last century. After that, satellite communication and observation, orbital rocketry, atomics and the green revolution took place in the middle. And for the last part...limited medical advances, and a computer revolution that to my cynical mind is heavier on promises and flashy gewgaws than results.
Note that this is completely independent of political and cultural change, where the writers were limited by their cultural and plotical blinders. Even the 60s writers who predicted cultural change, saw it as occuring along the same continuum as current events; more drugs, more women giving men free sex, etc.. The actual developments in society in response to feminism wern't foreseen (partially because many of the male writers had a hard time thinking of women as anything but some sort of sex and domestic chores robots).
So there's the answer to your question: I answer it with another: why haven't we changed faster? And what's to keep the pace of technological pace from slowing down even more? And while we're at it, don't even try to guess the political or social future.
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I can easily see AI as being the next fusion. "We'll have it thirty years from now". I remember a usenet poster confidently proclaiming based on development in computer science that the Singularity was merely six months away. That was about five years ago.
I also see a number of dodgy assumptions in exactly what AI would be capable of, along the lines of "We program an AI, it immediately programs and creates a smarter AI, which programs and creates an even smarter AI, so that in minutes we get a Singularity." Can you count the unwarranted assumptions there?
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There are still limits to information processing speed; an AI might be able to produce a smarter AI, but it might also have to figure out how to engineer the hardware on which that smarter AI would run. That’s a lot harder than just fiddling with software.
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What's it going to be like when most members of the first world middle class can fact-check (within the limits of easily accessible on-line data, which in itself presents some fascinating issues) any bit of data they see or hear in 10-15 seconds (I just timed a quick wikipedia search of a term).
no subject
As far as fact checking goes, I don't see that as all that big a deal, except to people who are really concerned with having facts immediately checked. Oh it will be useful, and people will find a lot of applications for it, but life changing? Even if it is a big change, that's still one limited area of life.
My contention is pretty simple: change will happen, but for the most part it will be gradual change, with occasional limited areas of more rapid change.
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I give you the BANE of adventure/thriller/mystery writers everywhere, the Cell Phone. How many of our favorite movies, books, etc., would have been totally torpedoed by the availability of a cell phone? Do you realize how DIFFICULT it is to get your protagonists boxed in with no way to call for help these days? And it's only going to get worse. At least right now you can still find SOME places with "no bars" and your protagonist can forget to charge his or her phone, but those opportunities are dwindling fast.
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I would think though, the obvious response would be to put the protagonist in a situation where calling for help really won't help. It's much the same justification for why the protagonist doesn't get on the phone and ask for help before they get into a situation where they are boxed in. "Oh, it's that crank calling again. Remember the last time he called about the Mad Slasher?"
Also, I could use cell phones to put a time limit on both sides. Yes, 911 has been called...but in this neighborhood, it takes about half an hour before the cops respond. Can our hero survive that long?
Fiction adapts, and so do people.
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That's why I'm putting my "Under the Green Moon" setting 30,000 years out. It's safer that way.