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I think the major thing Asimov misses in some of his writing is are the 2nd and 3rd order effects of technology. Not always - Solaria from The Naked Sun comes t

I think the major thing Asimov misses in some of his writing is are the 2nd and 3rd order effects of technology. Not always - Solaria from The Naked Sun comes to mind as a society heavily distorted by their tech - but often. And this led him to not anticipate tech such as the Internet. For example, early on he mentioned having predicted pocket-sized computers in the early 1950s - which is true (I don't remember whether it was an Empire, Foundation or Robots story). But the other stuff, and society around the pocket-sized computers remained unchanged. Pocket-sized computing didn't apparently make an impression on people other than scientists and engineers. The freer availability of information didn't change society's behavior in any way. It's something that you often see in sci-fi - the authors don't foresee all the follow-on effects or possibilities of the things they introduce. I loved Star Wars as a kid, but now I can't help but wonder why they didn't have a Galactic Internet to transmit the stolen Death Star plans in Episode 4.

skookumchuck 8y ago
Star Wars is full of strange anachronisms like using manually targeted heavy weapons (so that they cannot hit a moving target). Even WW2 ack-ack used radar to double their effectiveness. (The US did, the Japanese and German radar did not, which left them with a disastrous disadvantage.)
- captain_perl 8y ago
  FYI: Ships have always had accurate azimuth targeting, but not range (distance.) Stationary radar (ships, submarines, planes) in WW2 greatly helped the USA and Britain, but there's some twists most people don't know about. The ship-borne radar range of about 70 miles usually did not give enough time to scramble fighters to altitude to be effective in the Midway-era, for example. US submarines were actually able to sink Japanese ships using radar exclusively, without ever visually seeing the target. The USA had "VT code-word" shells with radar proximity fuses that were 5x more effective than other shells. They were used as a last resort to keep them Top Secret. So they were used in tough battles like Sicily and Okinawa, and over ocean (the Marianas turkey shoot and the kamikaze era.)
laumars 8y ago
In fairness what you're asking is virtually impossible to predict with any degree of precision since you have all sorts of unpredictable variables like the culture of what is deemed "cool" and the issue that the tech that wins the market is often not the best tech but rather the one backed by the most ruthlessness businesses instead. Plus it was an order of magnitude harder to predict what technology would be like back in the pre-Micro PC era because digital technology was still a very young concept so there was less experience to draw upon when making such predictions
tzs 8y ago
He did have a short story where pocked-sized computers did greatly change society. See "The Feeling of Power" [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power
antisthenes 8y ago
> I loved Star Wars as a kid, but now I can't help but wonder why they didn't have a Galactic Internet to transmit the stolen Death Star plans in Episode 4. Bandwidth issues. Same reason Amazon offers the Snowball service (physical transfer of petabyte-scale data) rather than just keep everything as a Glacier egress.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  Haha! How about a hyperspace-capable drone then? Or literally thousands or millions (ya I get the Rebellion is skint but drones can't cost that much) of them, one to every single star system, and then broadcast the plans to every Galactic citizen? It would make for devastating propaganda.

skookumchuck 8y ago

Star Wars is full of strange anachronisms like using manually targeted heavy weapons (so that they cannot hit a moving target). Even WW2 ack-ack used radar to double their effectiveness. (The US did, the Japanese and German radar did not, which left them with a disastrous disadvantage.)

captain_perl 8y ago
FYI: Ships have always had accurate azimuth targeting, but not range (distance.) Stationary radar (ships, submarines, planes) in WW2 greatly helped the USA and Britain, but there's some twists most people don't know about. The ship-borne radar range of about 70 miles usually did not give enough time to scramble fighters to altitude to be effective in the Midway-era, for example. US submarines were actually able to sink Japanese ships using radar exclusively, without ever visually seeing the target. The USA had "VT code-word" shells with radar proximity fuses that were 5x more effective than other shells. They were used as a last resort to keep them Top Secret. So they were used in tough battles like Sicily and Okinawa, and over ocean (the Marianas turkey shoot and the kamikaze era.)

laumars 8y ago

In fairness what you're asking is virtually impossible to predict with any degree of precision since you have all sorts of unpredictable variables like the culture of what is deemed "cool" and the issue that the tech that wins the market is often not the best tech but rather the one backed by the most ruthlessness businesses instead. Plus it was an order of magnitude harder to predict what technology would be like back in the pre-Micro PC era because digital technology was still a very young concept so there was less experience to draw upon when making such predictions

tzs 8y ago

He did have a short story where pocked-sized computers did greatly change society. See "The Feeling of Power" [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power

antisthenes 8y ago

> I loved Star Wars as a kid, but now I can't help but wonder why they didn't have a Galactic Internet to transmit the stolen Death Star plans in Episode 4. Bandwidth issues. Same reason Amazon offers the Snowball service (physical transfer of petabyte-scale data) rather than just keep everything as a Glacier egress.

jogjayr 8y ago
Haha! How about a hyperspace-capable drone then? Or literally thousands or millions (ya I get the Rebellion is skint but drones can't cost that much) of them, one to every single star system, and then broadcast the plans to every Galactic citizen? It would make for devastating propaganda.