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

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

#41

"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…

This Freakonomics podcast on forecasting may be interesting:

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-be-less-terrible-at-p...

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

#42

"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…

Well you pointed out one biggie: the known laws of physics. Anti-gravity may be possible, but there is no theory to explain it, and so it’s hard to predict in a positive way. By contrast advances in materials science, miniaturization, novel sources of energy, are more fruitful.

It can also help to look at the state of current laboratory research. Look at where transistors were a ~100 years ago, and then now. Look at materials with great promise on the lab, but which may take similar timescales to become commonplace. It’s not the new discoveries, but the new means of bringing old discoveries to mass market which often defines tech.

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

#43
post #22
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?

I'd like to back this up and I am going to use a really bad example - the movie "Back to the Future". When they went from the present back to 1955, the world looked a little different. When the went back to 1885 in "Back to the Future 3", it was a different world. People were running around in dirt streets shooting each other. Granted these dates are a little different. I would consider the 100 years more from 1900 t…

>In the earlier half century the got the widespread use to electricity, radio, TV, automobiles, airplanes, and in the healthcare we got antibiotics and vaccines.

Plus General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Those were huge advances in human understanding, and are still fundamental to physics.

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

#44

"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…

Tangentially related: I read a book on Project Gutenberg titled A.D. 2000, clearly written by an army engineer from the 19th century. There's no plot to speak of, but it's about a guy who desires to travel into the future. The process for traveling in the future basically involved filling a room full of ozone and encasing one in a sort of coffin to place one in a persistent state of unaging sleep. Funnily, part of the process involved shoving asbestos rags in one's nose and mouth.

The style of dress was just minor differences from what one wore in the late 1800's (e.g. black knee-high stockings instead of white). Some long-distance travel involved zeppelins. Newspapers were nationalized, with print being transmitted through a massive array of typewriters connected by the telegraph system (i.e. pressing a key on a connected typewriter in, say, Boston would send a signal to automatically press a key on a typewriter in, say, Los Angeles).

Of course, global peace was secured, social welfare programs were widely expanded, environmentalism was strong. There was also a description of a massive underground vacuum-tube system of transportation which reminded me of hyperloop.

Ultimately, I wouldn't recommend the text for any sort of story; there are two very lengthy chapters devoted to describing the technical specs of a submarine. But it's an interesting curiosity.

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

#45
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I get your point, but space exploration and robots everywhere aren't the only types of "wildly different" futures. People just have latched onto those two things as facile benchmarks.

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

#46

"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…

I would not be surprised if the technological predictions come about from a solid understanding and application of physics. It makes sense that the Bell Labs director would have had a clear sight of what was possible in networking off into the realm of the internet. Similarly, somebody applying physics knowledge would not make the mistake of supposing gravity belts or suppressed lightning or man-made hurricanes. Meanwhile, some calculations about the amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere by fuel combustion could tell you something concrete about how its chemistry will change.

Socially, it's less clear. It will probably work well to assume that culture is highly mutable, but human nature isn't.

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

#47

"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…

I think a lot of what people get wrong in these predictions is the social element. Dad's telecommuting to work in the study and smoking Lucky Strikes while Mom - aproned and barefoot - cooks in the kitchen, that sort of thing.

What this misses - aside from the basic incorrectness itself - is that shifts in social perception and overall conscientiousness are major drivers of innovation. So, look at the intersection of what's feasible (with improvements in materials, design, miniaturization, understanding of the human body, etc) and what's wanted (convenience in daily life, improvement of self-image, etc) and you can get things like e-cigarettes, self-driving cars, boner pills, hair loss treatment, yadda yadda.

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

#48
post #7
post #6

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

Copyright 2009 The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767923057/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_e-6u...

"2020: China Fragments"?

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

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 primiti…

Sure and the planning at A Basin depends on the situation. If everyone is leaving from the same car, its easy. But if you have 3-4 car loads of people leaving and arriving at different times, you want to make sure a plan is in place before people have started arriving.

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

#50
post #42

"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…

Well you pointed out one biggie: the known laws of physics. Anti-gravity may be possible, but there is no theory to explain it, and so it’s hard to predict in a positive way. By contrast advances in materials science, miniaturization, novel sources of energy, are more fruitful. It can also help to look at the state of current laboratory research. Look at where transistors were a ~100 years ago, and then now. Look at…

But then the question becomes 'literally anti-gravity', or more likely, 'personal flying devices'. Certainly not the same thing but, for the most part, the same effect.
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