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Why our 'amazing' science fiction future fizzled

cnn.com

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Re: Why our 'amazing' science fiction future fizzled

#21

Post by anigbrowl »

asciilifeform wrote: post #13

No, this is why: http://yarchive.net/physics/effete.html

Minus the political connotations, I'd agree. Clinton was indeed a lawyer, but then so was Nixon. Carter came from an engineering background; one could argue that Reagan's shift to personality politics was an elevation of style over substance. So my point is not that his politics are wrong, but that they were of the moment and plenty of competing or complementary interpretations exist.

We have painted ourselves into an unproductive corner with too much litigation and an over-emphasis on economic productivity where groundbreaking ideas which don't have meaningful analytics yet are considered too risky due to lack of quantifiability. One man's political effeteness is another's tyranny of the market.

Re: Why our 'amazing' science fiction future fizzled

#22

Post by anigbrowl »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #11

The one thing I've noticed about comparing sci-fi future to the actual thing is the degree that humanity is changing, not technology. It used to be you'd think of some future tech of a hundred years from now as being some normal guy, like you, except he'd have a jetpack, a phaser, or a cool flying car. But what really happened was that we didn't get all those cool external things, instead we got things that plugged i…

Perhaps, too, there's an awareness that we're running out of land and (most) resources have already been claimed/ allocated, so it's harder and harder to suspend disbelief in muscular external technology, at least for the near future. I noticed the most recent Bond movies focus on villains' ability to manipulate the commercial and legal environment rather than building improbably powerful hardware.

Re: Why our 'amazing' science fiction future fizzled

#23

Post by Boxer »

Even if flying cars were cheap and easy to make, would we want them? They're cool and amazing, but in real life they might be impractical.

So generally when talking about the future, maybe we predict inventions that make for cool easily understandable stories, instead useful or plausible inventions. That's why flying cars were predicted but the internet wasn't.

If you're not even going to be alive when the time of your prediction comes, why would you bother to think hard about it and make an odd, abstract, unfashionable prediction instead of a cool story about flying cars?

Re: Why our 'amazing' science fiction future fizzled

#24

Post by stavrianos »

Semiapies wrote: post #20
stavrianos wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I'd credit Heinlein with predicting the internet back in the fifties and sixties.

What works are you thinking of? When I think of Heinlein in that period, I remember a protagonist talking with a trucker about the truck's antigrav propulsion, then whipping out a slip-stick to figure out how far down it would be pushed under load. ( Citizen of the Galaxy , I think.)

Stranger in a Strange Land had some "news nets" or somesuch that seemed pretty close to me. That's sixty-one. I poked through though, and everything that I was thinking of specifically turned out to be much later.

Re: Why our 'amazing' science fiction future fizzled

#25

Post by Semiapies »

stavrianos wrote: post #24
Semiapies wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What works are you thinking of? When I think of Heinlein in that period, I remember a protagonist talking with a trucker about the truck's antigrav propulsion, then whipping out a slip-stick to figure out how far down it would be pushed under load. ( Citizen of the Galaxy , I think.)

Stranger in a Strange Land had some "news nets" or somesuch that seemed pretty close to me. That's sixty-one. I poked through though, and everything that I was thinking of specifically turned out to be much later.

Well, "network" had a different meaning back in 1961. :)

Stranger is one of the few (only?) Heinlein things I haven't read, mind. Need to get around to it.

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