Posted on 08/12/2010 3:05:50 PM PDT by B-Chan
Many of you will still be alive in 50 years. It’s interesting to think about what life will be like in 50 years technologically and otherwise. Predictions are risky, especially when they’re about the future, but I believe we can make some pretty good guesses. To predict a predictable future, you need to look at the past. What was technological life like 50 years ago? 50 years ago was 1959. The world of 1959 is pretty much the same world we live in today technologically speaking. This is a vaguely horrifying fact which is little appreciated. In 1959, we had computers, international telephony, advanced programming languages like Lisp, which remains the most advanced programming language, routine commercial jet flight, atomic power, internal combustion engines about the same as modern ones, supersonic fighter planes, television and the transistor.
I’d go so far as to say that the main technological innovation since 1959 has been space flight—a technology we’ve mostly abandoned, and it’s daughter technology—microelectronics. Computer networks came a year or two after 1959 and didn’t change very much, other than how we waste time in the office, and whom advertisers pay.
Other than that, man’s power over nature remains much the same. Most of the “advances” we have had since then are refinements and democratization of technologies. Nowadays, even the little people have access to computers and jet flight, and 1800s-style technology like telegraphy can be used to download pornography into their homes. Certainly more people are involved in “technological” jobs, and certainly computers have increased our abilities to process information, but ultimately very little has changed.
Now, if we’re sitting in unfashionable 1959 and doing this same comparison, things are a good deal different.
The rate of change between 1959 and 1909 is nothing short of spectacular. In that 50 years, humanity invented jet aircraft, supersonic flight, fuel-injected internal-combustion engines, the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb, space flight, gas warfare, nuclear power, the tank, antibiotics, the polio vaccine, radio; and these are just a few items off the top of my head. You might try to assert that this was a particularly good era for technological progress, but the era between 1859 and 1909 was a similar explosion in creativity and progress, as was the 50 years before that, at the dawn of the Industrial revolution. You can read all about it in Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, though I warn you, if you’re in a creative or technical profession Murray’s widely ignored book is even more depressing than this essay. Murray didn’t restrict his attentions to technological progress: across the entire panoply of human endeavor (art, science, literature, philosophy, Mathematics) the indications are grim. You may disagree with the statistical technique he used (I don’t), but you can’t escape the conclusion—things are slowing down.
Certainly, people can be forgiven for thinking we live in a time of great progress, since semiconductor lithography has improved over the years, giving us faster and more portable computers. But can we really do anything with computers now that we couldn’t have done 30 or even 50 years ago? I don’t think life is much different because of ubiquitous computers. Possibly more efficient and convenient, but not radically different, much like things got after the invention of computers in the ‘40s. Now we just waste time in the office in different ways.
Remember the kind of “artificial intelligence” which was supposed to give us artificial brains we could talk to by now? The only parts of which work look suspiciously like signal processing ideas from, well, the 1950s. The rest of it appears to have degenerated into a sort of secular religion for nerds.
Looking forward, I can’t think of a single technology in the works today which will revolutionize life in the 21st century...
Ever been to Seoul? I have. People live there pretty well.
It's crowded, yes. But the landmass of the earth is very very large. And most of it is empty for miles. Hundreds and thousands of miles.
I take it you don't like math.
The earth and all that was on it was given to us to husband and steward. If we do that well, terra could support over 100 times the population we have now.
Be fruitful. Multiply.
/johnny
Guy completely missed biotech ... hell look at food production 1950 to 2010 .... THAT will astound anyone if they think about it.
And the remaining land was left to farming, ranching, resource development and millions of acres of wildlife refuge.
If the Africans and the Indians are too damned poor to look after their lions and tigers and elephants, then why can't we?
And the liberals stupid enough to go into the refuge without the proper armaments would be duly recycled into the environment.
Win win.
I don't agree with your first sentence. To Watson, his prediction may have been logical, but he was totally wrong about the future of computing.
My point in telling this anecdote was that foretelling the future is fraught with folly, yet humans insist on littering half the news with speculation and predictions, most of which are utter garbage. (a) Why do we continue to do this? (b)Why do we believe these pundits and prophets? Probably the lure of fame, power or money....I can't see much else that would breed this behaviour or our willingness to listen.
Repeat after me....nobody knows what
Magazine died in the 80s.
That's only 40 people per acre. You could easily build small apartment buildings or condos to hold 40 on an acre with room to spare. Or put 80 per acre and leave an acre lot between, checkerboard style.
nobody knows what
Not much food, B-Chan. Sounds like an essay of a sophomore who got a B- for his work.
Taki needn't worry. If Obama gets his way (G-d forbid!) we'll all be living in caves soon enough.
"Conservative" and "Conservation" spring from the same Latin root: the Latin conservare, which means to actively preserve. I am not an environmentalist. I, like most of the conservatives of the past, believe that the natural environment is to be preserved and managed for the use of humans and for its own sake. This does not mean letting little kids die from malaria because DDT kills baby birds; it does mean using our reason and planning our cities and towns instead of just bulldozing the hell out of everything and paving it over.
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