Asking the wrong questions

I am going to choose to believe that the wrap-up paragraph, asking "who will have the right kind of driving data for autonomy?" is a subtle wink, because the current conventional wisdom about autonomous cars -- that they are coming soon, and that machine learning on massive datasets is the key to their success -- is very likely going to end up being one of those things we talk about jokingly in 50 years. Ha! Remember when they thought we'd have a colony on the moon in 1990, that machines would have genius IQs by 2000, and that cars could drive themselves by 2025? Oh, the people of the past were so cute.

> Why the hell is there a postal service in every country

Because delivery of packages to rural areas is terribly unprofitable.

Certain things need to be socialized in order to keep a country connected and enable development.

Without things like the post office, rural electrification, and the Eisenhower Interstate system, vast swatches of the US would have zero economic output.

>In comparison, hard sci-fi takes into account and weaves a story about the human effects of technology...

I find two problems with the above analysis.

Oftentimes soft sci-fi (PK Dick for example or even someone like Frederic Brown) identifies the "human effects of technology" far better than someone from the "hard" camp, such as Clark or Asimov.

Second, the article specifically covers bad predictions made by hard sci-fi and concerning use and impact of technology itself.

>The other problem is in the "The authors polled a range of experts". Asking my plumber about theology or my lawyer about physics is obviously dumb

Not that obvious to me. That's a great way to overcome systematic bias and domain blindness and get some outsider insight. You talk about being silly to talk to a "plumber about theology", but I've heard that a carpenter is supposed to have made some great contributions to the field, as did some fishermen.

Applied AI will be the next "nobody knew how fundamentally things would change."

I don't believe in the singularity (at least as currently envisioned) but I do believe we need to figure out what a society must look like when most human beings are, almost literally, not useful for commercial employment.

Like, the whole tenets of a market economy and capitalist ownership will smash into the tenets of human worth and the function of society, with violence and consequences much greater than we've seen until now.

We can see it coming. It's obviously clear. And nobody in charge is taking about it, much less doing anything about it. A totally avoidable tragedy, walked into on purpose.

Those are his more psychedelic works sure. But take something from Dick like "The Second Variation". Or "The Electric Ant". Or "We can remember it for you wholeseale".

Or here's his version of the future of IoT, home automation and subscription payments, which as someone in an increasingly number of "forced on my throat" subscription schemes (Adobe, etc) I find surprisingly prescient:

The hero in Ubik tries to get out of his own house:

"The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt." ...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. "You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug."

>The problem with the carpenter you mention is out of millions of pro and maybe a billion amateur/ancient carpenters only that one had much insight. Its a bad odds game.

I find the opposite. All the important contributions to theology and fields such as philosophy have been made by outsiders. Once degrees and tenures started rolling in, the substance starts rolling out. At best those tenured bores can do meta-analyses.