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Old 05-18-2014, 11:44 PM
 
Location: Cushing OK
14,539 posts, read 21,191,266 times
Reputation: 16937

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Marcinkiewicz View Post
I remember watching the movie version of Fahrenheit 451 in middle school (so, just short of the turn of the millennium) and thinking then how outdated the "future" looked.
When you watch it today what really gets you is that chase to capture Montag, with all the zombies staring at their tv sets, as they stare in fascination. And of course, as the cops close in and the divergence of this one man is punished, so they are safe, we know it was all for show. And the real Montag is off the mountains. The most effective thing in the movie is how they read all the credits, since people don't read and thus couldn't read them. Spooky, very spooky.
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Old 05-19-2014, 12:08 AM
 
Location: Cushing OK
14,539 posts, read 21,191,266 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nolefan34 View Post
Most of the predictions from back in the 50's-80's HAVE come true, except for flying cars. In fact, there are flying cars, but they are too expensive for anyone to use and we do not have the infrastructure for them. But many of the other inventions commonly seen on sci fi movies have come true.

Cell phones for instance are similar in function to what Star Trek used in the 60's for their officers to communicate back and forth from anywhere. GPS and navigation devices are now in most cars and on cell phones. These were pipe dreams only seen on Star Trek 40 years ago. TV's where you could see and talk with someone was virtually inconceivable before the 1990's, yet now it is commonplace. Most couldn't have envisioned the internet though. I suppose because its not shaped like a robot. Many movies from the 70's-80's envisioned us having personal robots that do chores for us and act as servants so we can laze out on couches. They didn't think about how impracticle having a large robot in your house was. They also didn't see video games coming before the late 70's.
Ok, fess up. How many people felt like they'd been handed a communicator when they got their first cell phone? How many of them were flip phones, and just felt right. That was intentional. I kept mine long after it died. GPS seemed like a very futuristic idea, and the idea of a laptop in every kids room would be overkill if even one seemed in view. The first series they made all the panels so they'd look 'futuristic' and the cast noticed that people wrote when they used the wrong control. So they had all figured out which each thing on their panel did and would insist when directors said just push this. Then the next series some of it was controlled by wired system. The movies they bought laptops, stripped them down and programmed them so displays could be brought up from the operational panels.

Interstingly, the most fitting description of the internet is in a story called The Machine Stops, by E. M. Forrester. It was written in 1909. It is about a world where people have created a system which connects everyone to everyone else, which enables them to recieve everything they need at home, and fill all their needs without going out the door. But something is going wrong, and the machine is slowly breaking down....

Amazon.com: The Machine Stops (9781434442048): E.M. Forster: Books
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Old 05-19-2014, 12:14 AM
 
Location: Cushing OK
14,539 posts, read 21,191,266 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81 View Post
I'm ready to skip over that in favor of teleportation - although I'd probably go all Dr. McCoy and freak out about my molecules being scattered all over space.
I wonder, as suggested in a story by I think Asimov, if there would be the legal question of after you'd transported, which would lead to the death of your physical body, and it be recreated, would you still be you? Would a contract you signed still be legally binding? Would you still own the propety you'd purchased, since in reality you died and the you now is a copy?
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Old 05-19-2014, 07:19 AM
 
790 posts, read 1,261,568 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by STB93 View Post
As a avid reader of science fiction I have often looked at a lot of old predictions about what the future is going to be like. Most of these old predictions were from the 1950s about what the world of the 21st century would be like but many of them were way to optimistic about the 21st century. I would like to know why were people so optimistic back then about what the future was going to look like?
I think alot of the technology we have now is beyond the wildest dreams of some from that era, but sometimes imaginations run wild and physics makes some ideas hard to develop.

Like Jetsons cars and houses but we did implement the conveyor belts in the airports for humans.
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Old 05-19-2014, 08:16 AM
 
Location: Beautiful Rhode Island
9,245 posts, read 14,810,120 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by STB93 View Post
As a avid reader of science fiction I have often looked at a lot of old predictions about what the future is going to be like. Most of these old predictions were from the 1950s about what the world of the 21st century would be like but many of them were way to optimistic about the 21st century. I would like to know why were people so optimistic back then about what the future was going to look like?
People were optimistic because the history of human civilization shows that technology keeps advancing. And don't forget that the US had just put an end to WWII by the use of the nuclear bomb, so we were in a state of technological wonder about the "power of the atom".

Also mankind has seen tremendous advances since the mid nineteenth century- why would we not continue in this vein? One can predict what the advances will be, but there is no way of knowing exactly what discoveries there will be and which will be implemented (and that's where politics and big business often comes in as well as moral and ethical concerns).
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Old 05-19-2014, 08:29 AM
 
5,544 posts, read 8,282,592 times
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going from slide rules to electron microscopes probably helped.

the space race was inspiring. Sputnik in itself was inspiring much less men in space.

and Von Braun wanted to put a colony up there and thought it was doable.

we had it all in front of us so our expectations were high
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Old 05-19-2014, 08:35 AM
 
Location: Logan Township, Minnesota
15,501 posts, read 17,002,425 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by theoldnorthstate View Post
going from slide rules to electron microscopes probably helped.

the space race was inspiring. Sputnik in itself was inspiring much less men in space.

and Von Braun wanted to put a colony up there and thought it was doable.

we had it all in front of us so our expectations were high
In the 50s we were very optimistic and saw a very bright future especially by the magical year 2000. We had taken wing and were flying. We thought we could see the future and it looke bright.

Perhaps it was Korea and Vietnam that gave us a kick in the pants and we began falling back to Earth.
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Old 05-19-2014, 10:55 AM
 
Location: In the realm of possiblities
2,707 posts, read 2,828,236 times
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I, too have been immersed in science fiction since I can remember, and felt sure that in the 21st century there would be amazing advancements that paralleled my imagination. Possibly the optimism that prevailed in a lot of the early stories about how our future would be was based on conjecture that we had just come out of a world of war, and with peace prevailing it only seemed natural that we would all work together for the better good. I, too, was guilty of daydreams of star craft rocketing through space to uncharted worlds, and our own Earth becoming a better place in general. No war, and a burning desire of Mankind to reach into space, to further our knowledge of who we are only seemed natural then. What happened?

It is true we have devices we use daily that in the 50's would have been considered imaginary back then. But, still, though, they don't hold the same allure that for those of us who imagined exotic worlds in our youth. Where are the craft that we could climb in, and that would silently, effortlessly hurtle us through the atmosphere of our planet, or maybe take us to exotic worlds with creatures of unworldly imagination? Where are the undiscovered planets with civilizations that pre-date our own with knowledge of life we only dream of?

Maybe the answer to all this lies in the fact that we as a race have lost the imagination we once had, and have been jaded against believing we can improve our own state of being. All the fanciful stories, and wondrous creations that heralded the dawning of a new age have lost their luster, becoming simply utilitarian tools in our everyday existence. Maybe that's what happens when science fiction becomes science reality. The cell phones, and the microwave are no longer imaginary technology written about in a book, they are a mundane reality. Possibly there never will be a "wow" factor with any new invention that will last no more than a few years. Who knows, maybe one day in the future anti-gravity propulsion, warp drive, and interstellar communication will be as commonplace as checking e-mail while breakfast cooks in the microwave.
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Old 05-19-2014, 02:01 PM
 
Location: Cushing OK
14,539 posts, read 21,191,266 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 124c41 View Post
I, too have been immersed in science fiction since I can remember, and felt sure that in the 21st century there would be amazing advancements that paralleled my imagination. Possibly the optimism that prevailed in a lot of the early stories about how our future would be was based on conjecture that we had just come out of a world of war, and with peace prevailing it only seemed natural that we would all work together for the better good. I, too, was guilty of daydreams of star craft rocketing through space to uncharted worlds, and our own Earth becoming a better place in general. No war, and a burning desire of Mankind to reach into space, to further our knowledge of who we are only seemed natural then. What happened?

It is true we have devices we use daily that in the 50's would have been considered imaginary back then. But, still, though, they don't hold the same allure that for those of us who imagined exotic worlds in our youth. Where are the craft that we could climb in, and that would silently, effortlessly hurtle us through the atmosphere of our planet, or maybe take us to exotic worlds with creatures of unworldly imagination? Where are the undiscovered planets with civilizations that pre-date our own with knowledge of life we only dream of?

Maybe the answer to all this lies in the fact that we as a race have lost the imagination we once had, and have been jaded against believing we can improve our own state of being. All the fanciful stories, and wondrous creations that heralded the dawning of a new age have lost their luster, becoming simply utilitarian tools in our everyday existence. Maybe that's what happens when science fiction becomes science reality. The cell phones, and the microwave are no longer imaginary technology written about in a book, they are a mundane reality. Possibly there never will be a "wow" factor with any new invention that will last no more than a few years. Who knows, maybe one day in the future anti-gravity propulsion, warp drive, and interstellar communication will be as commonplace as checking e-mail while breakfast cooks in the microwave.
I think things move in waves. We advance but in tiny steps until some huge moment, usually applicable to many uses, which opens a new door. Then people expect the next door to open tomorrow. But it took a lot of time in invisible steps to get to that door, and we were so busy being dissapointed from the last one we didn't see half of them.

I remember when Dad brought home the first transistor raido. If I still had it in workable condition it would be worth a lot. But it was designed from the technology which eventually turned into computers and space travel. He understood it was a first step. Thanks to that raido and that mom listened to 'her music' it Sinatra and Big band, all day long, I got a wonderful appreciation of music in general and not just 'ours'. So the effect can go all sorts of directions.

But I think we'll have a new 'wow', but maybe not immediately. We are at the center of an explosion of new technology now, but while the lowly transistor raido was huge when it first was marketed, we're used to technology getting better and branching out. We're the generation who took the computer out of the scifi story and room full of tape drives (movies favorite version of the computer until 2001, since they made noise and stuff moved) to a sea of big and little ones and the computer being a part of our lives. Those of us who remember when it wasn't like that still feel something of that 'wow'. The kids that have an ipad in hand from early childhood will see the whole technology as just normal. I remember how my son knew you could microwave things and do it real fast, and never could understand why we had to boil corn and wait so many minutes. I told him we didn't have microwave ovens when he was a kid and he just couldn't concieve it.

If you watch a lot of pbs, especially shows like nova, you meet the people who do not see a wall when faced with the difficulty of interplanetary or beyond migration, but a challenge. And there are plenty of them. The whole theory of reorginizing matter has been explored, and the idea of say, a replicator may well exist sooner than later. Sure, it may sound like fantasy to us, but then most of what we call 'normal' was to the last few generations.

As for changing our basic nature, I don't believe it will ever be. Look at history and go back as far as you can and that human quotient, and the behavior of humans hasn't really changed. We are in many cases less brutal about getting our way, but the basic motivation lives on. And when you take all the 'stuff' away people still revert to survival basics. Maybe some future generation will have better toys, but under the skin they will still be us. And I'm sure that the deep basics like family and grouping and fighting others to keep what you have will just get different toys to protect them with.

I don't think we should think of ourselves as enlightened beings or animals, but something inbetween, and we show the behavior of what the time demands.
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Old 05-19-2014, 02:51 PM
 
9,673 posts, read 9,956,546 times
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I remember hearing about people from the 1890s who proclaimed that everything was already discovered and there was no need for any more discoveries . Nothing more to do
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