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Although, it is obvious, you cannot be close to the reality if you trying to predict more than 10 years upfront, to be more or less realistic, you have to go ba

Although, it is obvious, you cannot be close to the reality if you trying to predict more than 10 years upfront, to be more or less realistic, you have to go back from the present back as many years as you want to go into future and observe what did not change. Then extrapolate to the future that has changed and what has not. Say in 10 years we'll still have AMD64 computers on our desks, albeit 50% faster, we'll still be running Windows and Linux, we;ll probably have more than 10% cars running on electricity, we'll still be wearing jeans and t-shirts, yet there will be subtle change in the social order, perhaps a bad pandemic, change in social networking platforms etc.

close04 6y ago
We can't really imagine the distant future because we are very biased about the past and present. And we also can't account for developments that are entirely new. People always imagined the future full of flying cars because cars and planes were the big thing so the combination must also be big. But nobody really imagined "social networks" 100 years ago, which are way bigger now than flying cars. They had no indication that this could possibly be a thing, at least not in their current form. We imagined/had forums and all sorts of communities but not really close to the current idea of social media.
- goto11 6y ago
  Science-fiction tend to underestimate social changes compared to technological changes. The classic example is Asimov where we have an intergalactic empire thousands of years in the future but with gender roles stuck in the 1950's. Videophones are everywhere in SF, but who predicted people would prefer text messaging with emojis? Smartphones and climate change crisis was predicted many times, but who predicted transsexual rights would become a divisive political issue in the US?
  - close04 6y ago
    SciFi creators are also bound by the fact that their creations must be commercial successes. Touching on sensitive social topics can get in the way of that and it's the best way to get a lynch mob at their door. So even if one could have predicted in the '30s anything related to race and gender-related emancipation they would have been buried along with their work. Fancy futuristic tech? Yes, please! Radical social reform ideas? Solid nope.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  That what I said. But at least, by not giving you fantasies a free reign, you can be a bit closer to the reality.

close04 6y ago

We can't really imagine the distant future because we are very biased about the past and present. And we also can't account for developments that are entirely new. People always imagined the future full of flying cars because cars and planes were the big thing so the combination must also be big. But nobody really imagined "social networks" 100 years ago, which are way bigger now than flying cars. They had no indication that this could possibly be a thing, at least not in their current form. We imagined/had forums and all sorts of communities but not really close to the current idea of social media.

goto11 6y ago
Science-fiction tend to underestimate social changes compared to technological changes. The classic example is Asimov where we have an intergalactic empire thousands of years in the future but with gender roles stuck in the 1950's. Videophones are everywhere in SF, but who predicted people would prefer text messaging with emojis? Smartphones and climate change crisis was predicted many times, but who predicted transsexual rights would become a divisive political issue in the US?
- close04 6y ago
  SciFi creators are also bound by the fact that their creations must be commercial successes. Touching on sensitive social topics can get in the way of that and it's the best way to get a lynch mob at their door. So even if one could have predicted in the '30s anything related to race and gender-related emancipation they would have been buried along with their work. Fancy futuristic tech? Yes, please! Radical social reform ideas? Solid nope.
SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
That what I said. But at least, by not giving you fantasies a free reign, you can be a bit closer to the reality.