“XXI-century people carry in their pockets a machine that lets then see what’s happenning on the other side of the planet as it happens, check the biggest encyclopedia there is without having the go to a library, talk live to people anywhere in the World and which can calculate the most complex mathematical problems in a fraction of a second”.
It’s not technological change that would be unimaginable but rather what ended up being done with it as, at least judging by SciFi films over the years, people tend to look at what they have and more or less lineraly project forward.
I mean, look what what Metropolis expected the future would be or even the 1970s film and TV-series idea of the kind of materials, design and human machine interfaces the future would have (it’s kinda funny to look at the CRT-display-based “future” tech of 70s TV series).
Mind you, socially mankind doesn’t seem to have evolved much in these 100 years, but in terms of Tech and the possibilities openned by it, it has.
It’s a pattern that emerges over and over again. Technology is reasonably easy to predict (we’re still using 1920s physics) but the way people will react to and interact with technology is completely impossible to see coming. Like, our guesses are about as good as random chance; that’s why nobody saw PCs and smartphones coming and then turned around and poured a lot of money into 3D TVs and wearables.
I don’t think it would be impossible to model somehow, but I’ve yet to see any convincing work in that direction.
“XXI-century people carry in their pockets a machine that lets then see what’s happenning on the other side of the planet as it happens, check the biggest encyclopedia there is without having the go to a library, talk live to people anywhere in the World and which can calculate the most complex mathematical problems in a fraction of a second”.
It’s not technological change that would be unimaginable but rather what ended up being done with it as, at least judging by SciFi films over the years, people tend to look at what they have and more or less lineraly project forward.
I mean, look what what Metropolis expected the future would be or even the 1970s film and TV-series idea of the kind of materials, design and human machine interfaces the future would have (it’s kinda funny to look at the CRT-display-based “future” tech of 70s TV series).
Mind you, socially mankind doesn’t seem to have evolved much in these 100 years, but in terms of Tech and the possibilities openned by it, it has.
It’s a pattern that emerges over and over again. Technology is reasonably easy to predict (we’re still using 1920s physics) but the way people will react to and interact with technology is completely impossible to see coming. Like, our guesses are about as good as random chance; that’s why nobody saw PCs and smartphones coming and then turned around and poured a lot of money into 3D TVs and wearables.
I don’t think it would be impossible to model somehow, but I’ve yet to see any convincing work in that direction.