4 ms·

In one of Asimov's books, The Caves of Steel, he talked about how Androids run all of the farming equipment on Earth to feed everyone. I don't remember the exac

by glasss 5y ago

In one of Asimov's books, The Caves of Steel, he talked about how Androids run all of the farming equipment on Earth to feed everyone. I don't remember the exact line, but the reasoning for Androids running regular farm equipment was that, in his universe, it was just way easier and cheaper to build Androids that can use all the same tools humans can, instead of building automated versions of all the tools. The other interesting tidbit was that the vast majority of the world was farm land. Humans lived in huge cities with tons of verticality. This was because there were too many humans on Earth - a whopping 9 Billion.

arcturus17 5y ago
How could he be so imaginative and even prescient for some things, and yet think that at 9B the world would be overpopulated? I mean, if you’re playing with that concept why not crank it up to 20 or 30?
- kinjba11 5y ago
  Caves of Steel was published in 1953. Back in those times, population dynamics weren't as widely known. The world had just passed 2.5 billion and naive rates would put it at 9 billion over a hundred years later. It seems like old science fiction authors regularly set the time of their worlds much closer to now than reasonable for some reason. To be more relatable perhaps? Blade Runner was set in 2019 for example: fully synthetic humans, flying cars, wars in space. None of that happened. Then there's 1984 by Orwell, and I'm sure dozens of other examples if you looked. Still waiting for that hoverboard (Back to the Future 2 was set in 2015).
  - 41b696ef1113 5y ago
    Farming is massively more productive than it used to be owing to changes in both plant varieties, fertilizers, pest control, and mechanization. This link[1] suggests that historical yields of corn were ~2 tonnes/hectare in the 1940s vs ~10 tonnes/hectare today. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields
- deleted 5y ago
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by glasss 5y ago

arcturus17 5y ago

How could he be so imaginative and even prescient for some things, and yet think that at 9B the world would be overpopulated? I mean, if you’re playing with that concept why not crank it up to 20 or 30?

kinjba11 5y ago
Caves of Steel was published in 1953. Back in those times, population dynamics weren't as widely known. The world had just passed 2.5 billion and naive rates would put it at 9 billion over a hundred years later. It seems like old science fiction authors regularly set the time of their worlds much closer to now than reasonable for some reason. To be more relatable perhaps? Blade Runner was set in 2019 for example: fully synthetic humans, flying cars, wars in space. None of that happened. Then there's 1984 by Orwell, and I'm sure dozens of other examples if you looked. Still waiting for that hoverboard (Back to the Future 2 was set in 2015).
- 41b696ef1113 5y ago
  Farming is massively more productive than it used to be owing to changes in both plant varieties, fertilizers, pest control, and mechanization. This link[1] suggests that historical yields of corn were ~2 tonnes/hectare in the 1940s vs ~10 tonnes/hectare today. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]