4 ms·
Some of these are very salient (Pohl), and some not so. Brilliant points (Orson Scott Card): > We must count ourselves lucky if anyone has leisure enough in 2
by chewxy 14y ago
Some of these are very salient (Pohl), and some not so.
Brilliant points (Orson Scott Card):
> We must count ourselves lucky if anyone has leisure enough in 2012 to open this time capsule and care what is inside. In 2012 Americans will see the collapse of Imperial America, the Pax Americana, as having ended with our loss of national will and national selflessness in the 1970s. Worldwide economic collapse will have cost America its dominant world role; but it will not result in Russian hegemony; their economy is too dependent on the world economy to maintain an irresistible military force. ...
And this one by Roger Zelazny, pretty spot on until...
> It is good to see that a cashless, checkless society has just about come to pass, that automation has transformed offices and robotics manufacturing in mainly beneficial ways, including telecommuting, that defense spending has finally slowed for a few of the right reasons,
I stopped reading at "defense spending has finally slowed"... no one could have predicted George W. Bush I guess
This one is almost completely opposite:
>Multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease will be effectively cured. However, AIDS will not yet have been controlled. It will have become the leading cause of death worldwide with millions of new cases each year.
- caf 14y agoZelazny did get ebooks right though.
- NoPiece 14y agoEven including the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the defense spending is a much lower percentage of GDP than it was in 1987. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/more-on-defense/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/more-on-defense/
- cema 14y agoNot predicted Bush? Not predicted 9/11, more like. Which is strange too: one of my first impressions of the US was how vulnerable the country was. (Resilient too, but that was not surprising.)
- Vivtek 14y ago9/11 was a bee sting. Bush is the one that instituted the subsequent anaphylactic shock.
- sbmassey 14y agoI doubt any other President would have done much different.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- smsm42 14y agoThis has nothing to do with Bush specifically - virtually no policies linked to 9/11 were reversed since the end of Bush presidency, and some actually became worse (e.g. TSA). 9/11 raised the level of public concern with terrorist threats (real or imagined) so pretty much anybody would follow the pass of the least resistance and do roughly the same. Doing otherwise would require extraordinary vision and extraordinary power of persuasion to sell it, which none of the current politicians possesses.