Re:Isaac Asimov's predictions 50 years on
by dalke on Tuesday April 22, 2014 @06:37PM
(#7630938)
The difficulty in judging any prediction is to the extent that it was true at the time it was made. For example, someone in the 1990s who predicts that there would be self-driving vehicles by 2015 would be correct, because there were self-driving vehicles already in the 1980s.
It's very hard for me to judge the 1960s, but that was the era of the TV-dinners and Swanson frozen food delivery trucks. Certainly my grandmother had single-purpose kitchen devices, like a pressure cooker, sausage maker, and gelatin molds that I haven't seen in most modern kitchens, along with a mechanical knife grinder/can opener and grapefruit spoons, which I only rarely see these days. Also, my parents received two fondue sets for their wedding - apparently fondue dinners were the in-thing then. My rough sense is that there's no increasing trend towards gadgets, but only a change in the details.
Which is why I conclude that Asimov meant something more than a bunch of kitchen gadgets and a more diverse selection of TV dinners.
FWIW, I do think that the life expectancy in Japan definitely counts. I just don't think that pacemakers and dialysis machines contribute enough to be notable.
What's amazing about satellite phones is actually how wrong the prediction was, despite being 100% correct. While it's completely correct that sat phones can reach everywhere on earth, the economics behind Iridium failed because it turns out to be easier to set up cell phone towers and lay down transoceanic fiber connections. People generally don't want to direct dial "any place on earth" but rather "any place on the earth where other people live". It's also possible to provide cell service underground, like subway stations, where satellites can't reach.
I think your "lucky few" interpretation is valid. Really I'm complaining more about the vagueness of the prediction. It could equally well have been made 100 years previous.
It's very hard for me to judge the 1960s, but that was the era of the TV-dinners and Swanson frozen food delivery trucks. Certainly my grandmother had single-purpose kitchen devices, like a pressure cooker, sausage maker, and gelatin molds that I haven't seen in most modern kitchens, along with a mechanical knife grinder/can opener and grapefruit spoons, which I only rarely see these days. Also, my parents received two fondue sets for their wedding - apparently fondue dinners were the in-thing then. My rough sense is that there's no increasing trend towards gadgets, but only a change in the details.
Which is why I conclude that Asimov meant something more than a bunch of kitchen gadgets and a more diverse selection of TV dinners.
FWIW, I do think that the life expectancy in Japan definitely counts. I just don't think that pacemakers and dialysis machines contribute enough to be notable.
What's amazing about satellite phones is actually how wrong the prediction was, despite being 100% correct. While it's completely correct that sat phones can reach everywhere on earth, the economics behind Iridium failed because it turns out to be easier to set up cell phone towers and lay down transoceanic fiber connections. People generally don't want to direct dial "any place on earth" but rather "any place on the earth where other people live". It's also possible to provide cell service underground, like subway stations, where satellites can't reach.
I think your "lucky few" interpretation is valid. Really I'm complaining more about the vagueness of the prediction. It could equally well have been made 100 years previous.