12 ms·

Isaac Asimov's predictions 50 years on

88 points by tagawa 13y ago

ama729 13y ago
There is something a bit funny when a science-fiction writer like Asimov can get the future pretty right 50 years ago, when a futurist like Kurzweil can't predict it for ten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzweil#Early_2000s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzwe... Though in itself, it probably show more that technology is a lot slower moving than you would think, after all, as the article point out, some of the future technologies were already present in some form.
- rejschaap 13y ago
  Asimov didn't really have an agenda. Kurzweil is trying to push the envelope. He has to, the chance that singularity or cryogenics will be available within his lifetime is pretty small.
  - danieltillett 13y ago
    I don't think agenda is the right term - more like wishful thinking.
    - mattlutze 13y ago
      Agenda here is appropriate -- Kurzweil is unabashed in his desire to push health & tech to the point where he can live forever.
      - epaladin 13y ago
        At the very least he had, as of a few years ago when I met him at a speaking event, very few wrinkles for someone his age. I don't think he's got magical life extension kool aid yet, but it seems like he's doing something that at least reduces the appearance of aging a little bit. Although all the meta-analyses recently reporting the potential negative effects of supplementation are in disagreement with his approach.
  - witty_username 13y ago
    Actually, doing such futuristic predictions may make people not work on them; they expect the technology will occur.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  Some of those were obviously never going to happen in those timescales though. Automated cars by 2000? As an undergraduate doing a work with image recognition in the early 90s I could have told you that that required component alone wouldn't be up to the required standard in 10 years and probably not 20. Similarly automatic translation. These are just tough problems that will take time to solve and even in the heady anything-is-possible-90s that was obvious to anyone who had the remotest understanding of what they were dealing with.
  - bostonpete 13y ago
    > As an undergraduate doing a work with image recognition The "vision" for automated cars at the time didn't involve image recognition -- it involved sensors in the road and on each car. The technology for this was certainly available by 2000, but the justification for such a massive investment in infrastructure was not.
    - Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
      How would that work for avoiding pedestrians, animals or any of the other things not conveniently tagged?
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    I recently read about a self-driving car that was built using only machine vision by a neural network, in the 1990s. I was very surprised such a thing existed at all back then.
- acqq 13y ago
  Asimov is not a simple "science-fiction writer," he was a real genius with fantastically broad and clear knowledge. Try to read his non-fiction books, you'd be surprised how good grasp he has whatever subject he takes. I firmly believe he was right to say: "Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov
  - madaxe_again 13y ago
    For a brilliant intro into his non-fiction essays, I can't recommend The Left Hand of the Electron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_the_Electron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_the_Electron) enough. Snagged my copy from the peace corps library in Liberia. Ahem.
    - acqq 13y ago
      Thanks for the book tip, I've just found the pdf! For others interested, here's the list with all his works: http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_catalogue.html http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_catalogue.html I'm just reading http://www.asimovreviews.net/Books/Book225.html http://www.asimovreviews.net/Books/Book225.html It's available in iBooks.
  - ama729 13y ago
    I wasn't saying anything negative about Asimov, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the man, it was more about the contrast between someone supposed to write fiction and the other supposed to predict the future and how one got thing righter than the other. The irony seemed rich.
    - the_watcher 13y ago
      Asimov and Kurzweil seem (to me) to be making similar predictions in terms of the gap between their predictions and the status quo. 50 years is probably a lot easier for that kind of progress to be made than 10. Did Asimov make any 10 year predictions? Not knocking either, but it would be interesting to see if Asimov had trouble with a shorter horizon.
- netcan 13y ago
  One gotcha of predicting is thinking of advancements as an invention followed by an almost inevitable progression towards better, cheeper and ubiquitous. Flying cars, household nuclear plants & lunar holidays have been possible with money-is-no-object technology but have stayed there while computers went from on Paper Turing machines to smartphones in your pocket thanks to Moore's law. Engines became ubiquitous in an economic process started by their invention. But, the economic process can independent to the discovery. They multiply each other so one can be worthless without the other. For space fairing, nuclear power, and lots of other things we never got a Moore's Law. An interesting anecdote from the article is the first video call in 1964. That "invention" of the video call wasn't even an important event on the way to ubiquitous video calling. Modern video calls are a practically an inevitable outcome of a process driven by Moore's law and the internet. The idea of invention followed by iteration leading to ubiquity just doesn't apply here. I think this is the strength and weakness of Ray Kurzweil (I like Ray Kurzweil warts, misfires and all). You might say that he gets caught by this gotcha. He expects an initial invention followed by improvements and refinements to launch a self propelled economic cycle like engines and computers did. Those things are rare and truly paradigm shifting. Also hard to predict. OTOH, you might say he's on the right track because he's looking for the paradigm shifts. AI, Immortality. Etc. I personally read Kurzweil similarly to the way I read Asimov. It's a form of art. I like Kurzweil's ideas aesthetically.
- VLM 13y ago
  "a science-fiction writer" And in his spare time, a PHD in biochem, and a university professor of biochemistry, and author of a couple dozen popular science non-fiction books. Not exactly the kind of guy who merely wrote Jar Jar Bink's movie lines all day, or decided which red shirt gets it on Trek.
- the_watcher 13y ago
  Seems like Asimov's main genius was just looking at what the trends of his time were - long distance communication, television/media, cheaper/nuclear energy, automation (robots are the ultimate automation, right?), and increasing inequality and just forecasted that those trends would get cheaper and more widely accessible. Futurists like Kurzweil seem to forecast much more drastic changes in human behavior (although the link to predictions made by RK is actually a lot more accurate than I would have guessed. Still out there, but none of them seem "impossible" to me. He seems to mainly just be too aggressive in his "when."
petercooper 13y ago
It's interesting how social and human issues overrule technology in most cases though. Predicting what technology will be possible seems to be a lot easier than predicting what people will actually want to use. With regards to "communications will become sight-sound", this has been theoretically possible for nearly all communications for a while now, yet broadly speaking people choose not to be on video despite it being possible. The same goes for 3D TV, as noted in the article, or the renaissance of proper cooking as opposed to chucking semi-artificial muck into the microwave for 5 minutes as was considered 'the future' in the late 70s.
- Udo 13y ago
  > It's interesting how social and human issues overrule technology in most cases though. Exactly, the same is painfully true for our presence in space. He could have easily been right about the moon base, we just chose to not "do" space. The big takeaway from this for me is that it's possible for a tech-minded person to make good predictions about the speed of technological advancement in general, it just gets thwarted by the uncertainty of society's interest in these things.
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago
    I think this is why sci-fi authors seem to predict future better than futurists - to write good science fiction you need not only to have imagination and know the science well, but you also need to grok people and society, if you want your book to be believable for audience.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  As far as I can tell grand children are the killer app for video calling...
  - rainedin 13y ago
    The killer app for video calling, would be one in which you don't have to hold the camera. We'd rather place the phone to our ear. And the current alternative is probably nostril cam. We each need a Lakitu.
ZoFreX 13y ago
Which modern-day authors do you think are painting a vision of the future that will be looked back on as accurate?
- danieltillett 13y ago
  Iain Banks with his Culture novels - I love the saying from this series "Money is a sign of poverty" - the sooner we reach this state the better.
- JackFr 13y ago
  The The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.
- kh_hk 13y ago
  First that I can think of, Neal Stephenson's early works pretty much nail a lot of things: - Snowcrash: VR + social network. - Diamond's Age: 3D printing, nano technology, communities, future cults. - Cryptonomicon: not exactly bitcoin, but somewhat related.
truantbuick 13y ago
There's a lot of difficulty in evaluating stuff like this, and I feel like we inevitably trip over biases that go in both directions. On one hand, it's very easy in hindsight to ridicule what didn't come true or what seems like an outdated 1960s infatuation. However, it's also easy to pick through his predictions and pick through the modern day and apparently find a match. Ultimately, I give some credit that he wasn't completely wrong (which I suspect is a lot harder than it seems!), but I don't think these predictions were particularly visionary -- just intelligently made given the information of his own time, which is all we can really expect. He reasonably charts the technology of his own time to today. Some of it turns out alright, some of it not, and some in between.
hkmurakami 13y ago
I think it's worth noting that in many ways, the future predicted by these writers are being realized because the kids who grew up loving these books and their premises are building the future that they saw in these texts and dreamed of as a child.
sambeau 13y ago
Although Asimov was actually trying to predict the future here, SF writers generally aren't in the prediction business—they are in the speculation business[1] (many modern SF writers claim the 'S' in SF would be for 'Speculation' rather than 'Science'). I find it unfair when SF writers are held to account for their more fanciful speculations—they should be free to ask "What if?" without later ridicule. [1] In reality, they are in the entertainment business and should therefore be allowed to entertain without later ridicule, too.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Related: Ursula Le Guin's Introduction in The Left Hand of Darkness: http://theliterarylink.com/leguinintro.html http://theliterarylink.com/leguinintro.html This said, I think Asimov was actually trying to guess about the future; it's an essay, not an SF work.
deleted 13y ago
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S_A_P 13y ago
So he states that most people would be worse off in 50 years than they were then. This contradicts what Bill Gates said that people are generally better off and extreme poverty is lower now than a generation ago. (Paraphrasing) this article seems to imply that people are worse off and we need equal access in agreement with Asimov, but doesn't outright say this. While I certainly agree we should strive for equal access it seems as though progress has been made in the opposite direction than predicted.
- moron4hire 13y ago
  No, that's not at all what he said. He basically said the same thing Bill Gates did, that the poor today are better off than the poor yesterday, but he also said that the gap between the rich and the poor would grow. Which is indisputable and probably his wildest claim, given that up to that point in US history, growing upper-class wealth saw a proportional lower- and middle-class growth as well.
signa11 13y ago
>To give him his due, flat-screen televisions have replaced traditional sets, and 3D television technologies, while not in cube form, have long been a highlight of the electronics trade show circuit. my guess is that he meant 3d television sans the glasses...
dalke 13y ago
This cherry-picked the predictions which seem to have come true, and omits many of the duds. It doesn't mention "The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes" Nor does it mention "Jets of compressed air will also lift land vehicles off the highways, which, among other things, will minimize paving problems". Nor "2014 will see a good beginning made in the colonization of the continental shelves." Or, when it talks about automatic coffee makers, it omits the full context "... next heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on." So in this sense Asimov correctly predicted the electric drip coffee maker of the 1970s, but the others are failures. It's also a stretch to classify ITER as an "experimental fusion-power plant". ITER is a fusion reactor, yes, but it's not a power plant. ITER sets the groundwork for such a plant, currently called DEMO, but with only a vague idea that it might start operations in 2033.
- BugBrother 13y ago
  Sigh, mainstream atomic batteries would be so cool... :-( But: >>"experimental fusion-power plant" Last I read, General Fusion talks about a quite serious prototype for their steam driven power plant in 2014. They seem to have many of the possible show stoppers already solved. Of course, if the GF approach works they are a few years away from a working system. But before ITER goes online for testing... (The readiness of the other contenders in alternative fusion -- Polywell, Tri Alpha, etc -- are harder to evaluate.) Edit: GF aims to start building a full size prototype in 2014. I'd call that a win for Asimov :-) http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/04/general-fusion-will-start-building-full.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/04/general-fusion-will-start-b...
  - aetherson 13y ago
    Nobody has come within several orders of magnitude of net-energy-positive (by which I mean for the whole process, not narrowly "more energy than was actually absorbed by the fusing particles") fusion so far. The idea that General Fusion is going to this year is fantasy. And even your article suggests that they hope to start building a full size prototype in 2014, but they don't expect to finish until 2017.
acqq 13y ago
The real article by Asimov (1964) http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.h... already thoroughly commented here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6287340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6287340 good to observe his predictions which didn't come true and that already exist in the article.
shalmanese 13y ago
I count 22 hits, 17 misses (2 other): men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better - Hit By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button - Close Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it. - Miss if its windows are not polarized, they can nevertheless alter the "scenery" by changes in lighting - Miss Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be fairly common - Miss Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare "automeals," heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. - Hit reakfasts will be "ordered" the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning. - Miss Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. - Hit I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming. - Hit Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence. - Hit It will be such computers, much miniaturized, that will serve as the "brains" of robots. - Hit In fact, the I.B.M. building at the 2014 World's Fair may have, as one of its prime exhibits, a robot housemaidlarge, clumsy, slow- moving but capable of general picking-up, arranging, cleaning and manipulation of various appliances. - Honda, not IBM but Hit The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. - Miss And experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014.- Hit Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas - Hit An exhibit at the 2014 fair will show models of power stations in space, collecting sunlight by means of huge parabolic focusing devices and radiating the energy thus collected down to earth. - Miss There is every likelihood that highways at least in the more advanced sections of the worldwill have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. - Miss There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the aira foot or two off the ground. - Miss Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with "Robot-brains"vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver. - Hit For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections. - Miss Traffic will continue (on several levels in some places) only because all parking will be off-street and because at least 80 per cent of truck deliveries will be to certain fixed centers at the city's rim. - Miss Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials over local stretches, and the switching devices that will place specific shipments in specific destinations will be one of the city's marvels. - Miss Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. - Hit The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. - Hit Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth - Hit For that matter, you will be able to reach someone at the moon colonies - Miss As for television, wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set - Hit but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible. - Miss In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000 - Hit Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000. - Miss Most surprising and, in some ways, heartening, 2014 will see a good beginning made in the colonization of the continental shelves. - Miss Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be "farms" turning to the more efficient micro-organisms - Mixed Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which "mock-turkey" and "pseudosteak" will be served. - Hit It won't be bad at all (if you can dig up those premium prices), but there will be considerable psychological resistance to such an innovation. - Hit A larger portion than today will be deprived and although they may be better off, materially, than today, they will be further behind when compared with the advanced portions of the world. They will have moved backward, relatively. - Hit There are only two general ways of preventing this: (1) raise the death rate; (2) lower the birth rate. Undoubtedly, the world of A>D. 2014 will have agreed on the latter method. - Hit Indeed, the increasing use of mechanical devices to replace failing hearts and kidneys, and repair stiffening arteries and breaking nerves will have cut the death rate still further and have lifted the life expectancy in some parts of the world to age 85. - Hit There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect. The rate of increase of population will have slackened*but, I suspect, not sufficiently. - Hit One of the more serious exhibits at the 2014 World's Fair, accordingly, will be a series of lectures, movies and documentary material at the World Population Control Center (adults only; special showings for teen-agers). - Miss The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. - Hit All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary "Fortran" (from "formula translation"). - Miss Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. - Hit The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine. - Hit Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work! - Miss

88 points by tagawa 13y ago

There is something a bit funny when a science-fiction writer like Asimov can get the future pretty right 50 years ago, when a futurist like Kurzweil can't predict it for ten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzweil#Early_2000s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzwe... Though in itself, it probably show more that technology is a lot slower moving than you would think, after all, as the article point out, some of the future technologies were already present in some form.

rejschaap 13y ago
Asimov didn't really have an agenda. Kurzweil is trying to push the envelope. He has to, the chance that singularity or cryogenics will be available within his lifetime is pretty small.
- danieltillett 13y ago
  I don't think agenda is the right term - more like wishful thinking.
  - mattlutze 13y ago
    Agenda here is appropriate -- Kurzweil is unabashed in his desire to push health & tech to the point where he can live forever.
    - epaladin 13y ago
      At the very least he had, as of a few years ago when I met him at a speaking event, very few wrinkles for someone his age. I don't think he's got magical life extension kool aid yet, but it seems like he's doing something that at least reduces the appearance of aging a little bit. Although all the meta-analyses recently reporting the potential negative effects of supplementation are in disagreement with his approach.
- witty_username 13y ago
  Actually, doing such futuristic predictions may make people not work on them; they expect the technology will occur.
Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
Some of those were obviously never going to happen in those timescales though. Automated cars by 2000? As an undergraduate doing a work with image recognition in the early 90s I could have told you that that required component alone wouldn't be up to the required standard in 10 years and probably not 20. Similarly automatic translation. These are just tough problems that will take time to solve and even in the heady anything-is-possible-90s that was obvious to anyone who had the remotest understanding of what they were dealing with.
- bostonpete 13y ago
  > As an undergraduate doing a work with image recognition The "vision" for automated cars at the time didn't involve image recognition -- it involved sensors in the road and on each car. The technology for this was certainly available by 2000, but the justification for such a massive investment in infrastructure was not.
  - Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
    How would that work for avoiding pedestrians, animals or any of the other things not conveniently tagged?
- Houshalter 13y ago
  I recently read about a self-driving car that was built using only machine vision by a neural network, in the 1990s. I was very surprised such a thing existed at all back then.
acqq 13y ago
Asimov is not a simple "science-fiction writer," he was a real genius with fantastically broad and clear knowledge. Try to read his non-fiction books, you'd be surprised how good grasp he has whatever subject he takes. I firmly believe he was right to say: "Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov
- madaxe_again 13y ago
  For a brilliant intro into his non-fiction essays, I can't recommend The Left Hand of the Electron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_the_Electron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Hand_of_the_Electron) enough. Snagged my copy from the peace corps library in Liberia. Ahem.
  - acqq 13y ago
    Thanks for the book tip, I've just found the pdf! For others interested, here's the list with all his works: http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_catalogue.html http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_catalogue.html I'm just reading http://www.asimovreviews.net/Books/Book225.html http://www.asimovreviews.net/Books/Book225.html It's available in iBooks.
- ama729 13y ago
  I wasn't saying anything negative about Asimov, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the man, it was more about the contrast between someone supposed to write fiction and the other supposed to predict the future and how one got thing righter than the other. The irony seemed rich.
  - the_watcher 13y ago
    Asimov and Kurzweil seem (to me) to be making similar predictions in terms of the gap between their predictions and the status quo. 50 years is probably a lot easier for that kind of progress to be made than 10. Did Asimov make any 10 year predictions? Not knocking either, but it would be interesting to see if Asimov had trouble with a shorter horizon.
netcan 13y ago
One gotcha of predicting is thinking of advancements as an invention followed by an almost inevitable progression towards better, cheeper and ubiquitous. Flying cars, household nuclear plants & lunar holidays have been possible with money-is-no-object technology but have stayed there while computers went from on Paper Turing machines to smartphones in your pocket thanks to Moore's law. Engines became ubiquitous in an economic process started by their invention. But, the economic process can independent to the discovery. They multiply each other so one can be worthless without the other. For space fairing, nuclear power, and lots of other things we never got a Moore's Law. An interesting anecdote from the article is the first video call in 1964. That "invention" of the video call wasn't even an important event on the way to ubiquitous video calling. Modern video calls are a practically an inevitable outcome of a process driven by Moore's law and the internet. The idea of invention followed by iteration leading to ubiquity just doesn't apply here. I think this is the strength and weakness of Ray Kurzweil (I like Ray Kurzweil warts, misfires and all). You might say that he gets caught by this gotcha. He expects an initial invention followed by improvements and refinements to launch a self propelled economic cycle like engines and computers did. Those things are rare and truly paradigm shifting. Also hard to predict. OTOH, you might say he's on the right track because he's looking for the paradigm shifts. AI, Immortality. Etc. I personally read Kurzweil similarly to the way I read Asimov. It's a form of art. I like Kurzweil's ideas aesthetically.
VLM 13y ago
"a science-fiction writer" And in his spare time, a PHD in biochem, and a university professor of biochemistry, and author of a couple dozen popular science non-fiction books. Not exactly the kind of guy who merely wrote Jar Jar Bink's movie lines all day, or decided which red shirt gets it on Trek.
the_watcher 13y ago
Seems like Asimov's main genius was just looking at what the trends of his time were - long distance communication, television/media, cheaper/nuclear energy, automation (robots are the ultimate automation, right?), and increasing inequality and just forecasted that those trends would get cheaper and more widely accessible. Futurists like Kurzweil seem to forecast much more drastic changes in human behavior (although the link to predictions made by RK is actually a lot more accurate than I would have guessed. Still out there, but none of them seem "impossible" to me. He seems to mainly just be too aggressive in his "when."

petercooper 13y ago

It's interesting how social and human issues overrule technology in most cases though. Predicting what technology will be possible seems to be a lot easier than predicting what people will actually want to use. With regards to "communications will become sight-sound", this has been theoretically possible for nearly all communications for a while now, yet broadly speaking people choose not to be on video despite it being possible. The same goes for 3D TV, as noted in the article, or the renaissance of proper cooking as opposed to chucking semi-artificial muck into the microwave for 5 minutes as was considered 'the future' in the late 70s.

Udo 13y ago
> It's interesting how social and human issues overrule technology in most cases though. Exactly, the same is painfully true for our presence in space. He could have easily been right about the moon base, we just chose to not "do" space. The big takeaway from this for me is that it's possible for a tech-minded person to make good predictions about the speed of technological advancement in general, it just gets thwarted by the uncertainty of society's interest in these things.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  I think this is why sci-fi authors seem to predict future better than futurists - to write good science fiction you need not only to have imagination and know the science well, but you also need to grok people and society, if you want your book to be believable for audience.
Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
As far as I can tell grand children are the killer app for video calling...
- rainedin 13y ago
  The killer app for video calling, would be one in which you don't have to hold the camera. We'd rather place the phone to our ear. And the current alternative is probably nostril cam. We each need a Lakitu.

ZoFreX 13y ago

Which modern-day authors do you think are painting a vision of the future that will be looked back on as accurate?

danieltillett 13y ago
Iain Banks with his Culture novels - I love the saying from this series "Money is a sign of poverty" - the sooner we reach this state the better.
JackFr 13y ago
The The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.
kh_hk 13y ago
First that I can think of, Neal Stephenson's early works pretty much nail a lot of things: - Snowcrash: VR + social network. - Diamond's Age: 3D printing, nano technology, communities, future cults. - Cryptonomicon: not exactly bitcoin, but somewhat related.

truantbuick 13y ago

There's a lot of difficulty in evaluating stuff like this, and I feel like we inevitably trip over biases that go in both directions. On one hand, it's very easy in hindsight to ridicule what didn't come true or what seems like an outdated 1960s infatuation. However, it's also easy to pick through his predictions and pick through the modern day and apparently find a match. Ultimately, I give some credit that he wasn't completely wrong (which I suspect is a lot harder than it seems!), but I don't think these predictions were particularly visionary -- just intelligently made given the information of his own time, which is all we can really expect. He reasonably charts the technology of his own time to today. Some of it turns out alright, some of it not, and some in between.

hkmurakami 13y ago

I think it's worth noting that in many ways, the future predicted by these writers are being realized because the kids who grew up loving these books and their premises are building the future that they saw in these texts and dreamed of as a child.

sambeau 13y ago

Although Asimov was actually trying to predict the future here, SF writers generally aren't in the prediction business—they are in the speculation business[1] (many modern SF writers claim the 'S' in SF would be for 'Speculation' rather than 'Science'). I find it unfair when SF writers are held to account for their more fanciful speculations—they should be free to ask "What if?" without later ridicule. [1] In reality, they are in the entertainment business and should therefore be allowed to entertain without later ridicule, too.

icebraining 13y ago
Related: Ursula Le Guin's Introduction in The Left Hand of Darkness: http://theliterarylink.com/leguinintro.html http://theliterarylink.com/leguinintro.html This said, I think Asimov was actually trying to guess about the future; it's an essay, not an SF work.

deleted 13y ago

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S_A_P 13y ago

So he states that most people would be worse off in 50 years than they were then. This contradicts what Bill Gates said that people are generally better off and extreme poverty is lower now than a generation ago. (Paraphrasing) this article seems to imply that people are worse off and we need equal access in agreement with Asimov, but doesn't outright say this. While I certainly agree we should strive for equal access it seems as though progress has been made in the opposite direction than predicted.

moron4hire 13y ago
No, that's not at all what he said. He basically said the same thing Bill Gates did, that the poor today are better off than the poor yesterday, but he also said that the gap between the rich and the poor would grow. Which is indisputable and probably his wildest claim, given that up to that point in US history, growing upper-class wealth saw a proportional lower- and middle-class growth as well.

signa11 13y ago

>To give him his due, flat-screen televisions have replaced traditional sets, and 3D television technologies, while not in cube form, have long been a highlight of the electronics trade show circuit. my guess is that he meant 3d television sans the glasses...

dalke 13y ago

This cherry-picked the predictions which seem to have come true, and omits many of the duds. It doesn't mention "The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes" Nor does it mention "Jets of compressed air will also lift land vehicles off the highways, which, among other things, will minimize paving problems". Nor "2014 will see a good beginning made in the colonization of the continental shelves." Or, when it talks about automatic coffee makers, it omits the full context "... next heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on." So in this sense Asimov correctly predicted the electric drip coffee maker of the 1970s, but the others are failures. It's also a stretch to classify ITER as an "experimental fusion-power plant". ITER is a fusion reactor, yes, but it's not a power plant. ITER sets the groundwork for such a plant, currently called DEMO, but with only a vague idea that it might start operations in 2033.

BugBrother 13y ago
Sigh, mainstream atomic batteries would be so cool... :-( But: >>"experimental fusion-power plant" Last I read, General Fusion talks about a quite serious prototype for their steam driven power plant in 2014. They seem to have many of the possible show stoppers already solved. Of course, if the GF approach works they are a few years away from a working system. But before ITER goes online for testing... (The readiness of the other contenders in alternative fusion -- Polywell, Tri Alpha, etc -- are harder to evaluate.) Edit: GF aims to start building a full size prototype in 2014. I'd call that a win for Asimov :-) http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/04/general-fusion-will-start-building-full.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/04/general-fusion-will-start-b...
- aetherson 13y ago
  Nobody has come within several orders of magnitude of net-energy-positive (by which I mean for the whole process, not narrowly "more energy than was actually absorbed by the fusing particles") fusion so far. The idea that General Fusion is going to this year is fantasy. And even your article suggests that they hope to start building a full size prototype in 2014, but they don't expect to finish until 2017.

acqq 13y ago

The real article by Asimov (1964) http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.h... already thoroughly commented here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6287340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6287340 good to observe his predictions which didn't come true and that already exist in the article.

shalmanese 13y ago

I count 22 hits, 17 misses (2 other): men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better - Hit By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button - Close Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it. - Miss if its windows are not polarized, they can nevertheless alter the "scenery" by changes in lighting - Miss Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be fairly common - Miss Kitchen units will be devised that will prepare "automeals," heating water and converting it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling bacon, and so on. - Hit reakfasts will be "ordered" the night before to be ready by a specified hour the next morning. - Miss Complete lunches and dinners, with the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for processing. - Hit I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming. - Hit Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence. - Hit It will be such computers, much miniaturized, that will serve as the "brains" of robots. - Hit In fact, the I.B.M. building at the 2014 World's Fair may have, as one of its prime exhibits, a robot housemaidlarge, clumsy, slow- moving but capable of general picking-up, arranging, cleaning and manipulation of various appliances. - Honda, not IBM but Hit The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. - Miss And experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014.- Hit Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas - Hit An exhibit at the 2014 fair will show models of power stations in space, collecting sunlight by means of huge parabolic focusing devices and radiating the energy thus collected down to earth. - Miss There is every likelihood that highways at least in the more advanced sections of the worldwill have passed their peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. - Miss There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the aira foot or two off the ground. - Miss Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with "Robot-brains"vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a human driver. - Hit For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side, standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown sections. - Miss Traffic will continue (on several levels in some places) only because all parking will be off-street and because at least 80 per cent of truck deliveries will be to certain fixed centers at the city's rim. - Miss Compressed air tubes will carry goods and materials over local stretches, and the switching devices that will place specific shipments in specific destinations will be one of the city's marvels. - Miss Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. - Hit The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. - Hit Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth - Hit For that matter, you will be able to reach someone at the moon colonies - Miss As for television, wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set - Hit but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible. - Miss In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000 - Hit Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000. - Miss Most surprising and, in some ways, heartening, 2014 will see a good beginning made in the colonization of the continental shelves. - Miss Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be "farms" turning to the more efficient micro-organisms - Mixed Processed yeast and algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The 2014 fair will feature an Algae Bar at which "mock-turkey" and "pseudosteak" will be served. - Hit It won't be bad at all (if you can dig up those premium prices), but there will be considerable psychological resistance to such an innovation. - Hit A larger portion than today will be deprived and although they may be better off, materially, than today, they will be further behind when compared with the advanced portions of the world. They will have moved backward, relatively. - Hit There are only two general ways of preventing this: (1) raise the death rate; (2) lower the birth rate. Undoubtedly, the world of A>D. 2014 will have agreed on the latter method. - Hit Indeed, the increasing use of mechanical devices to replace failing hearts and kidneys, and repair stiffening arteries and breaking nerves will have cut the death rate still further and have lifted the life expectancy in some parts of the world to age 85. - Hit There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly have taken serious effect. The rate of increase of population will have slackened*but, I suspect, not sufficiently. - Hit One of the more serious exhibits at the 2014 World's Fair, accordingly, will be a series of lectures, movies and documentary material at the World Population Control Center (adults only; special showings for teen-agers). - Miss The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. - Hit All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary "Fortran" (from "formula translation"). - Miss Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. - Hit The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine. - Hit Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work! - Miss