5 ms·

This has the feel of having been written by an impressionable 20-something. In 1988, predicting "One essential thing would be a screen on which you could displa

This has the feel of having been written by an impressionable 20-something. In 1988, predicting "One essential thing would be a screen on which you could display things, and another essential part would be a printing mechanism on which things could be printed for you. And you’ll have to have a keyboard on which you ask your questions’ although ideally I would like to see one that could be activated by voice," was if anything badly retro. Everything he mentions there except voice control was already a standard consumer product in 1988! And voice control was how the computers in Star Trek worked 20 years earlier. From 1964: "Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming." Frozen TV dinners were a decade old when he wrote that. And they don't even vaguely dominate the food market today in the way he suggests they will. (If anything the big differences between 1964 and today are much greater availability of fresh foods and eating out being much more common.) EVERYONE predicted video-phones back in the 60s -- hell, the Jetsons cartoon beat him to the punch there by a couple of years! Generally, people predicted they would be common much earlier than they actually were, and no one predicted you'd carry them around in your pocket -- or be more likely to just text a message than to use them. For my money the most interesting predictions here are the ones where he predicts things will go more slowly than most people at the time thought -- for instance, predicting man will have not walked on Mars in 2014 was surprisingly conservative for an SF writer in 1964, but it was also dead right.

petters 9y ago
The movie Modern Times (1936) had a video phone in the factory, if I recall correctly.
- acqq 9y ago
  You‘re right, just watched the factory scenes! Very big screens.
jacquesm 9y ago
> although ideally I would like to see one that could be activated by voice Dragon Systems was founded in the early 1980's.
ghaff 9y ago
With respect to accessing information, the big "fail" in a lot of science fiction of that general era is this assumption that the information source would be this curated centralized repository--Encyclopedia Galactica in Asimov's case but also see Niven/Pournelle Oath of Fealty, etc. Instead we have Wikipedia, the web more broadly, etc. You see this assumption of centralization, world government, etc. in a lot of other SF contexts as well.
- Noos 9y ago
  That's the influence of modernism, which was big at that time. Very much into rule by experts who applied precise, rational judgments to help or manage society. SF is still the last bastion of modernism especially in hard SF, but I think the Vietnam war was the death knell for the idea of it in culture, and the New Wave in SF for it in SF.
- opinali 9y ago
  Virtually all big science/tech projects from early 20th century were state sponsored, so it was difficult for SF writers to imagine a future where important innovation might come from the private sector or emerge from large scale decentralized contributions. Frankly, this is still large true today if you consider that lots of modern stuff comes from tech companies that are becoming as rich and powerful as small nation states, so they can spare a few billions in basic research with long-term or uncertain ROI. And to be fair with Asimov, he saw some of that for example with "U.S.Robotics", a fictitious private company that invented the positronic brain and had a monopoly on that business. Also, his Encyclopedia Galactica is the creation of a large group of "encyclopedists" who are basically academic elites, something we could see as a Wikipedia-like except that it wasn't produced by millions of joe schmoes but rather by a kind of priesthood of professional intellectuals. (Foundation makes these people work in a centralized organization, but that happens in a late period of the galactic empire, it's my impression that the origins of the Encyclopedia are way more descentralized.)
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Oh. I'm not faulting him. When he wrote his books, organizational models were dominated by strict hierarchies whether government or assembly line-type manufacturing companies. Even more collaborative academic research tended to be dominated by big corporate labs and elite research universities. The average person never interacted with mainframe computers directly and information flow was largely mass market broadcast. Absent any existing examples, the effects brought about by the modern Internet, smartphones, collaborative open source software development, generally less rigid organizational hierarchies, etc. would have been very difficult to visualize. Indeed it would have seemed almost alien.
jaclaz 9y ago
>In 1988, predicting "One essential thing would be a screen on which you could display things, and another essential part would be a printing mechanism on which things could be printed for you. And you’ll have to have a keyboard on which you ask your questions’ although ideally I would like to see one that could be activated by voice," was if anything badly retro. But to be fair, the idea/concept of the Multivac and of the "home" terminal" (at least for accredited scientists) was present in Asimov's stories long before 1988, this is 1959: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anniversary_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anniversary_(short_story) Now, to be a little conspirationist, it could be possible that he foresaw that the Internet (as we know it today) may become a very large government controlled computer ... ...accessible only by a selected minority ...
- eesmith 9y ago
  Murray Leinster's 1946 short story "A Logic Named Joe" (quoting Wikipedia) "is particularly noteworthy as a prediction of massively networked personal computers and their drawbacks, written at a time when computing was in its infancy. The story's narrator is a "logic repairman" nicknamed Ducky. A "logic" is a computer-like device described as looking "like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get"." Available from http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200506/0743499107___2.htm http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200506/0743499107___2.htm . Also mentioned in one of the comments at the linked-to article.
baldfat 9y ago
I have read almost all of Asimov's Sci-Fi and I think this is article also is a little grandiose. We right now have better computer technology than most of what we find in Asimov's Foundations Series. Example, he thought books wouldn't be read as much because with computers you only could read words as they scroll across to the right. He thought displays would stay at one line of LCD display. The Kindle is much better than the books from a million years in the future.
- JoeDaDude 9y ago
  Asimov also wrote the satire "The Holmes-Ginsbook Device" [1] about reading on screens in the future. I give that short story to all my friends that buy a kindle. [1]. http://sfwritersworkshop.org/node/1232 http://sfwritersworkshop.org/node/1232
aje403 9y ago
It doesn't sound like the article is claiming he's Nostradamus, just paying some homage. Half of the people on this site, including myself, have likely been influenced by his writings. His ideas and claims weren't all "original", but, yes, he probably has helped shape technology given the number of people he's influenced and inspired.
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
> impressionable 20-something I agree with your comments but please avoid the ageism.
BrandonMarc 9y ago
> For my money the most interesting predictions here are the ones where he predicts things will go more slowly than most people at the time thought -- for instance, predicting man will have not walked on Mars in 2014 was surprisingly conservative for an SF writer in 1964, but it was also dead right. Too right. Hell, it's been nearly 50 years since the last Moon landing, and it's looking very unlikely we'll see that happen within the next few years.

petters 9y ago

The movie Modern Times (1936) had a video phone in the factory, if I recall correctly.

acqq 9y ago
You‘re right, just watched the factory scenes! Very big screens.

jacquesm 9y ago

> although ideally I would like to see one that could be activated by voice Dragon Systems was founded in the early 1980's.

ghaff 9y ago

With respect to accessing information, the big "fail" in a lot of science fiction of that general era is this assumption that the information source would be this curated centralized repository--Encyclopedia Galactica in Asimov's case but also see Niven/Pournelle Oath of Fealty, etc. Instead we have Wikipedia, the web more broadly, etc. You see this assumption of centralization, world government, etc. in a lot of other SF contexts as well.

Noos 9y ago
That's the influence of modernism, which was big at that time. Very much into rule by experts who applied precise, rational judgments to help or manage society. SF is still the last bastion of modernism especially in hard SF, but I think the Vietnam war was the death knell for the idea of it in culture, and the New Wave in SF for it in SF.
opinali 9y ago
Virtually all big science/tech projects from early 20th century were state sponsored, so it was difficult for SF writers to imagine a future where important innovation might come from the private sector or emerge from large scale decentralized contributions. Frankly, this is still large true today if you consider that lots of modern stuff comes from tech companies that are becoming as rich and powerful as small nation states, so they can spare a few billions in basic research with long-term or uncertain ROI. And to be fair with Asimov, he saw some of that for example with "U.S.Robotics", a fictitious private company that invented the positronic brain and had a monopoly on that business. Also, his Encyclopedia Galactica is the creation of a large group of "encyclopedists" who are basically academic elites, something we could see as a Wikipedia-like except that it wasn't produced by millions of joe schmoes but rather by a kind of priesthood of professional intellectuals. (Foundation makes these people work in a centralized organization, but that happens in a late period of the galactic empire, it's my impression that the origins of the Encyclopedia are way more descentralized.)
- ghaff 9y ago
  Oh. I'm not faulting him. When he wrote his books, organizational models were dominated by strict hierarchies whether government or assembly line-type manufacturing companies. Even more collaborative academic research tended to be dominated by big corporate labs and elite research universities. The average person never interacted with mainframe computers directly and information flow was largely mass market broadcast. Absent any existing examples, the effects brought about by the modern Internet, smartphones, collaborative open source software development, generally less rigid organizational hierarchies, etc. would have been very difficult to visualize. Indeed it would have seemed almost alien.

jaclaz 9y ago

>In 1988, predicting "One essential thing would be a screen on which you could display things, and another essential part would be a printing mechanism on which things could be printed for you. And you’ll have to have a keyboard on which you ask your questions’ although ideally I would like to see one that could be activated by voice," was if anything badly retro. But to be fair, the idea/concept of the Multivac and of the "home" terminal" (at least for accredited scientists) was present in Asimov's stories long before 1988, this is 1959: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anniversary_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anniversary_(short_story) Now, to be a little conspirationist, it could be possible that he foresaw that the Internet (as we know it today) may become a very large government controlled computer ... ...accessible only by a selected minority ...

eesmith 9y ago
Murray Leinster's 1946 short story "A Logic Named Joe" (quoting Wikipedia) "is particularly noteworthy as a prediction of massively networked personal computers and their drawbacks, written at a time when computing was in its infancy. The story's narrator is a "logic repairman" nicknamed Ducky. A "logic" is a computer-like device described as looking "like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get"." Available from http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200506/0743499107___2.htm http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200506/0743499107___2.htm . Also mentioned in one of the comments at the linked-to article.

baldfat 9y ago

I have read almost all of Asimov's Sci-Fi and I think this is article also is a little grandiose. We right now have better computer technology than most of what we find in Asimov's Foundations Series. Example, he thought books wouldn't be read as much because with computers you only could read words as they scroll across to the right. He thought displays would stay at one line of LCD display. The Kindle is much better than the books from a million years in the future.

JoeDaDude 9y ago
Asimov also wrote the satire "The Holmes-Ginsbook Device" [1] about reading on screens in the future. I give that short story to all my friends that buy a kindle. [1]. http://sfwritersworkshop.org/node/1232 http://sfwritersworkshop.org/node/1232

aje403 9y ago

It doesn't sound like the article is claiming he's Nostradamus, just paying some homage. Half of the people on this site, including myself, have likely been influenced by his writings. His ideas and claims weren't all "original", but, yes, he probably has helped shape technology given the number of people he's influenced and inspired.

eeZah7Ux 9y ago

> impressionable 20-something I agree with your comments but please avoid the ageism.

BrandonMarc 9y ago

> For my money the most interesting predictions here are the ones where he predicts things will go more slowly than most people at the time thought -- for instance, predicting man will have not walked on Mars in 2014 was surprisingly conservative for an SF writer in 1964, but it was also dead right. Too right. Hell, it's been nearly 50 years since the last Moon landing, and it's looking very unlikely we'll see that happen within the next few years.