“Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968 • Hacker News Board

Re: “Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968

#31

Post by philipkglass » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

Nav_Panel wrote: post #3

melling wrote: post #2

In 1968 you looked back 50 years to 1918 and realized how much incredible change took place. Extrapolate out 50 years and the future probably looked close to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968 Any chance we can get that future?

Many future predictions from the 1950s were based on the promise of unlimited electricity. Once this comes to pass, we can have hovercars and whatnot. Instead, we got "unlimited" information. Although this doesn't translate as well into physical products, the world still looks/feels wildly futuristic if you orient your perspective correctly.

You don't get hovercars just from too-cheap-to-meter electricity. If energy cost were the main obstacle, upper-income people would already have hovercars, because spending 4x more on fuel than people driving wheeled vehicles would be fine for them.

Some 1968 futurology predictions seem like they might have come to pass had energy remained as relatively cheap as it was in 1968. Others of them were frankly ridiculous regardless of the price of energy. According to the Amazon review, disintegrator rays and anti-gravity belts were a couple of the predicted developments from "Toward the Year 2018." There was no scientific phenomenon known in 1968 by which either of these could be implemented. It's like the predictors reasoned "science fiction was prescient in predicting artificial satellites and travel to the moon, therefore its other popular tropes will eventually come to pass too."

There's a lot still to explain about the universe: dark matter, baryon asymmetry, dark energy... But I'm not convinced that new insights into these problems, if/when they arrive, will unlock significant new technological capabilities, any more than the discovery of neutron stars led to new superhard/superdense materials for human use. I think it's quite likely that humans never tame a more energetic primary energy source than nuclear fusion[1], nor send messages or vessels faster than light, nor manipulate gravity with the facility that we manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum. The engineering permitted by classical and quantum mechanics, modulo additional limits imposed by relativity, is vast. But it can't deliver everything that science fiction imagines. Inertial compensators, gravity manipulation, tractor beams, teleporters, disintegration rays, time travel, FTL: nope, probably not.

[1] Storage and use of antimatter for compact power sources seems like it may be eventually plausible, but it would function more as a super-energetic "battery" charged by other primary energy sources.

Re: “Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968

#32

Post by chromaton » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:16 PM UTC

"Life X years in the future" has been a popular topic for books and other media for some time now.

The predictors are usually quite wrong. However, in a few cases, they seem to hit the nail right on the head (cell phones). What I'd like to do is reverse engineer the insights or mindset the people who made accurate predictions so that they could be emulated.

At the same time, I want to identify the prejudices or logic errors of the people who are wrong (anti-gravity belts) to help avoid making the same mistakes.

Does anyone have any insight as to why some predictions turn out right? Is it just luck, or is there some greater principle that can help us find out what's ahead?

Re: “Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968

#33

Post by goatlover » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:17 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #31

Nav_Panel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many future predictions from the 1950s were based on the promise of unlimited electricity. Once this comes to pass, we can have hovercars and whatnot. Instead, we got "unlimited" information. Although this doesn't translate as well into physical products, the world still looks/feels wildly futuristic if you orient your perspective correctly.

You don't get hovercars just from too-cheap-to-meter electricity. If energy cost were the main obstacle, upper-income people would already have hovercars, because spending 4x more on fuel than people driving wheeled vehicles would be fine for them. Some 1968 futurology predictions seem like they might have come to pass had energy remained as relatively cheap as it was in 1968. Others of them were frankly ridiculous r…

That's one answer to the Fermi paradox.

Re: “Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968

#34

Post by Retric » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:17 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #17

Once intentionally designed organisms become commonplace, the subsequent future becomes hard to predict. What comes after human germline modification?

That's unlikely to be a fast change. We don't hand much power to 25 year olds and we are unlikely to alter anything close to 100% of babies in year zero, or even be making significant positive changes. So, it's really going to be a very slow transition all things considered.

Re: “Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968

#35

Post by brockwhittaker » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

planteen wrote: post #20

aidenn0 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time you used a paper map? When was the last time you used the yellow pages? How much money have you spent buying encyclopedias in the last 20 years? How much time searching for someone who has a mediocre copy-of-a-copy of bootleg tapes of that one amazing concert by the band you liked? How many hours have you spent on the phone with a company because you lost the user's manual to their product? How…

"When was the last time you used a paper map?" "When was the last time you had to spend 15 minutes planning out where and when you would meet when because your group is splitting up when on a trip?" I do these things all the time as many of my hobbies are outdoor activities. For example, at Arapahoe Basin, a ski area in Colorado near Denver, cell reception is non-existent. So you need to have a plan for people to mee…

There's some planning when skiing (for reference, I ski at A Basin yearly too; great place), but I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. Usually it's pretty easy to plan, esp. at A Basin to say, "meet at the midway restaurant".

And from a technological standpoint, all the maps that you can have printed are all online as well, so in the same way that Yellow Book entries are now database rows, maps are either primitive PNGs or interactive terrain maps.

Re: “Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968

#36

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #4

Nav_Panel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many future predictions from the 1950s were based on the promise of unlimited electricity. Once this comes to pass, we can have hovercars and whatnot. Instead, we got "unlimited" information. Although this doesn't translate as well into physical products, the world still looks/feels wildly futuristic if you orient your perspective correctly.

The world feels wildly futuristic? Can you explain? I was born in 1966. Computer games and the special effects in movies look better, but to claim the world looks wildly futuristic is an exaggeration.

[deleted]

Re: “Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968

#37

Post by anthony_romeo » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

fumonko wrote: post #6

Does anyone know of a recently written book that tries to predict the world fifty years from now?

Well if you believe Kurzweil, we'll have achieved a technological singularity by that point.

Re: “Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968

#38

Post by brendan_a_b » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

fumonko wrote: post #6

Does anyone know of a recently written book that tries to predict the world fifty years from now?

I know it's a bit further out than 50 years, but I remember enjoying this book/series of essays that discusses what humanity could look like in 1,000,000 C.E.

Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge https://www.amazon.com/Year-Million-Science-Edge-Knowledge/d...

Re: “Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968

#39

Post by goatlover » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

ako wrote: post #24

goatlover wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incredible, and most people didn't see it coming, but compared to the scifi stuff I read and watched as a kid, the future doesn't feel all that mind-blowing, at least so far. Part of it is living through it and adjusting to the changes, but I was also born into a world that had TVs, telephones, microwaves, VCRs, satellites, space programs, and personal computers. Computer networks and games existed back then. M…

That's the problem: living through it and adjusting to changes. How do you feel about the chance of living twice as long as your current life expectancy? Sounds great right? Does it also feel just as great that you already have twice the life expectancy of 140 years ago? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/die-ano...

Does that double life expectancy take into account infant mortality rates? It's not like people living into their 70s was that unheard of back then, it's just that it was easier to die younger.

And yeah, I'm living through it, but it still feels largely like the world I was born into with some additional advances in computing. A huge part of the world is based on incremental improvements on stuff that has existed since the earlier 20th century.

Re: “Toward the Year 2018”, a speculative book from 1968

#40

Post by goatlover » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

dtech wrote: post #21

melling wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is that progress hasn’t been made. We expect progress. Moore’s Law. What is being said is that the world is not wildly futuristic.

But now you're just placing an arbitrary bar on how much progress can be made without it being futuristic.

But it's not _wildley_ futuristic. I'm not taking a flying car to a space elevator to visit my relatives on Mars while my house and pets are left in the care of my android maid.

Wasn't it Buzz Aldrin who said he was promised Mars colonies but got Facebook instead? For some of us, that tradeoff doesn't seem terribly futuristic.