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?"\
.
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.