Gonna be the future soon...
CNN, in a fit of myopia, wants to know Why our science fiction future fizzledThis makes me wonder who the hell is supposed to be writing for CNN these days. I'm too cheap to buy an iPhone, so I have to settle for having the sum of human knowledge accessible on my laptop, rather than actually in my pants. My cellphone admittedly doesn't talk to
( Read more... )
Comments 18
And, as you pointed out, we've got loads more stuff and loads of social problems. The entire concept of "social engineering" is about as fiction as it gets. Though, to be fair, there have been significant social changes, many of them for the better. Who would have thought in 1964 that in 2008 the US would elect an African-American president? That the presidents of both Harvard and MIT would be women? (That women would even be going to Yale and Styuvesant?)
There is social progress--it's just so much slower than either our technological progress or the change we would like to see.
Though a year or two ago a student asked me if there really was any real social progress, and I have to answer yes. Which doesn't mean we should be pleased, by any means, but we are far closer than in 1964, or 1851! *sigh* Society is like geology...
Reply
If you'd told me, in, say, 1989, that within 20 years my government would be engaging in clumsy sophistry worthy of the Brezhnev regime circa 1981, and that you'd have pundits making a case for torture (even the Churchill worshipers, who ought to be quite familiar with what he said about torture in the beginning of The World Crisis), I would have scoffed at you. If you'd told me that the same East Germans who had just disposed of the tyranny they'd lived under would be nostalgic for it within a scant two decades, I would have thought you were nuts.
I don't think it's too hard to understand why someone who thought they'd live to see people zipping around the cosmos at speeds faster than light might be a little less than thrilled by iPods, laptops, and a world that seems to have abandoned the idea of human beings going out into the cosmos (except in showy, wasteful Potemkin village projects created by Presidents looking to dole ( ... )
Reply
On the grand scale, progress appears to be inescapable. I'll take 2009 over 1909, 1809, and surely 1409 for pretty much any measure of quality of life. There are certainly periods of backsliding and barbarity - the dark ages and the two world wars, as well as the Maoists attempts to ruin and starve all of China all come to mind - but the trend line still appears to be up, unless we manage to get hit by an asteroid or invent an unstoppable plague for ourselves.
Reply
Point. It's only in the 20th century or so that large masses of the population have been able to live long enough to see so much progress. On the other hand, I suppose longer lifespans and entrenched attitudes might be slowing some sorts of progress down, even as others pick up.
Reply
Reply
Mmm. Of course, being promised a harmonious society with no work required should make anyone with two brain cells to rub together a bit nervous...
Reply
This is why I'm a Star Wars fan instead. Give humanity a hyperdrive, let it spread out through a galaxy interacting with various alien species ... and see human nature operate just as it always has.
Reply
...even when I leave my iPhone at home.
(Sorry. Couldn't resist.)
Reply
Reply
Reply
I hope so, although I am unconvinced that even that level of technology is all of the answer, particularly given how people tend to compete with each other about who posesses the most/best luxury goods long after the basic necessities are taken care of - and often to the detriment of their long-term financial health.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment