Re:Isaac Asimov's predictions 50 years on
by ctdonath on Tuesday April 22, 2014 @09:34AM
(#7627517)
predicting what people will actually want to use
Bingo.
When reviewing assorted long-term predictions, I've notice the primary issue with failed predictions isn't so much that we can't do X, but that we don't want to.
50-100 years ago, the big favorite was variations of living in space/Moon/Mars/etc. Yes, we could certainly do that. What the pundits failed to take into account was that for all the hard work involved in settling there, it's...boring. Yeah, the trip there is exciting ('cuz it's fast, violent, and failure would be spectacular), and being "the first" (or among such) would be a social thrill, but once there mere survival would be paramount & dominating with little time to explore stagnant rocks.
Likewise other predictions. Yeah, we can do them, but given a matter of diminishing returns on high costs we'd rather stare at pocket supercomputers with instant worldwide high-bandwidth communications.
Bingo.
When reviewing assorted long-term predictions, I've notice the primary issue with failed predictions isn't so much that we can't do X, but that we don't want to.
50-100 years ago, the big favorite was variations of living in space/Moon/Mars/etc. Yes, we could certainly do that. What the pundits failed to take into account was that for all the hard work involved in settling there, it's...boring. Yeah, the trip there is exciting ('cuz it's fast, violent, and failure would be spectacular), and being "the first" (or among such) would be a social thrill, but once there mere survival would be paramount & dominating with little time to explore stagnant rocks.
Likewise other predictions. Yeah, we can do them, but given a matter of diminishing returns on high costs we'd rather stare at pocket supercomputers with instant worldwide high-bandwidth communications.