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The lesson here is "don't ask sci-fi writers to predict the future." Seriously, these guys are doing what we all do: making some kind of linear estimate based

The lesson here is "don't ask sci-fi writers to predict the future." Seriously, these guys are doing what we all do: making some kind of linear estimate based on past data. Usually these estimates end in some sort of crisis. No, we are not out of oil. It's debatable whether we've even reached peak oil, which I doubt. The U.S. has a shot at becoming a major oil exporter if we don't screw it up. No, hunger and disease are no more widespread and rampant than they were then. If anything, things have probably gotten a little better. No, we are not colonizing the moon or Mars. Our space program is still barely getting started. No, everybody isn't an illiterate slob watching CGI dramas, but that day still seems to be fast approaching, at least for the western world. The internet really took the species on a hard turn from where we all thought we were going. Even idea of a hive mind where billions vegetate using computer stimulus wasn't considered. Everybody thought that the individual would stay the same and technology would evolve around them. What's happened is much more interesting: the idea of the unique individual is changing as more of the things that make us unique are being recorded and shared. Technology is not transforming the world; technology is transforming us. ADD: An interesting title to this article might be "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

drostie 14y ago
Well, I had the opposite conclusion. Lots of the linear estimates were more or less right, and the ones that were wildly wrong were not linear enough. Like, here's a wildly wrong one: "Probate and copyright law will be entirely restructured by 2012 because people will be frozen at death, and there will be electronic means of consulting them. Many attorneys will specialize in advocacy for the dead." What is this guy anticipating? He's anticipating that biocomputing will explode up from approximately 0 to the level where we blur the line between life and death. What about "now in 1987, we would beg you to forgive us. We have burdened you with impossible debts, wasted and polluted the planet that should have been your rich heritage, left you instead a dreadful legacy of ignorance, want, and war"? The author has totally neglected the idea that perhaps future presidents would create debts, pollution, ignorance, and war at scales which just blow those original scales out of the water, so as to seem irrelevant by comparison. Instead he predicts a total reversal of human nature, expressed in a "faith that you have saved yourselves". If they've shown sci-fi bias towards computers, that has actually to some extent held up; if they've shown sci-fi bias towards space, that has not. The slow-and-incremental predictions are not so bad.
- sjwright 14y ago
  The intriuging thing about the JACK WILLIAMSON quote is that his apology from 1987 sounds like something one might write today for an audience in 2047. He didn't predict the future; he (quite accidentally) predicted that which continues to plague the contemporary psyche.
- smsm42 14y ago
  Actually, the situation with pollution became much better, though situation with debts became much worse, while the situation with ignorance and wars is about the same, minus the possibility of global nuclear war due to Cold War being won by the West. BTW, in 1987 the collapse of USSR or at least great diminishing of its global power was already predictable - the reforms which eventually led to it started in 1985 - but I don't think any of the authors saw it, otherwise they'd probably mentioned it, it's a huge event that influenced a real lot of things, economically, politically and technologically.

drostie 14y ago

Well, I had the opposite conclusion. Lots of the linear estimates were more or less right, and the ones that were wildly wrong were not linear enough. Like, here's a wildly wrong one: "Probate and copyright law will be entirely restructured by 2012 because people will be frozen at death, and there will be electronic means of consulting them. Many attorneys will specialize in advocacy for the dead." What is this guy anticipating? He's anticipating that biocomputing will explode up from approximately 0 to the level where we blur the line between life and death. What about "now in 1987, we would beg you to forgive us. We have burdened you with impossible debts, wasted and polluted the planet that should have been your rich heritage, left you instead a dreadful legacy of ignorance, want, and war"? The author has totally neglected the idea that perhaps future presidents would create debts, pollution, ignorance, and war at scales which just blow those original scales out of the water, so as to seem irrelevant by comparison. Instead he predicts a total reversal of human nature, expressed in a "faith that you have saved yourselves". If they've shown sci-fi bias towards computers, that has actually to some extent held up; if they've shown sci-fi bias towards space, that has not. The slow-and-incremental predictions are not so bad.

sjwright 14y ago
The intriuging thing about the JACK WILLIAMSON quote is that his apology from 1987 sounds like something one might write today for an audience in 2047. He didn't predict the future; he (quite accidentally) predicted that which continues to plague the contemporary psyche.
smsm42 14y ago
Actually, the situation with pollution became much better, though situation with debts became much worse, while the situation with ignorance and wars is about the same, minus the possibility of global nuclear war due to Cold War being won by the West. BTW, in 1987 the collapse of USSR or at least great diminishing of its global power was already predictable - the reforms which eventually led to it started in 1985 - but I don't think any of the authors saw it, otherwise they'd probably mentioned it, it's a huge event that influenced a real lot of things, economically, politically and technologically.