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...
Disagree. The practical application and miniaturization of computers has changed the world, especially with the power of distributed knowledge sharing. It’s a different world because of it.
Didn’t crime really take the dramatic jump in the early 70’s? And hasn’t it generally been on a decline since the mid 90’s?
We traded communism threat for islamic, so that’s a wash imo sadly.
Sure. But a lot of people will tell you that things are better now than they were in 1970 or 1980, and that is something.
Suffice it to say, I don't like America as much today as I did in 1960, even though I was a very small child at the time. The United States was a much better country in 1960.
In those days, you could buy up the farmland outside any big city, build homes on them, and the people who bought them were happy, especially in comparison to what they went through in the Depression and WWII.
Now all that land has been built on and we have at least 130 million more people.
More people chasing things that may not have increased as much + higher expectations and less confidence in achieving them = more unhappiness.
I think that computing power has become so commonplace that it is simply taken for granted.
Don’t you?
I mean, in 1959 I sincerely doubt anyone would have considered it even possible to be driving down the road in a computer controlled vehicle, using a computer based GPS system to give you directions all the while looking up where you want to eat that evening on your handheld smartphone computer.
Heck, science fiction of that time had not even imagined such wonders.
I completely disagree with the premise of this piece.
Cheers,
knewshound
I told my daughter, who is an adult, that when I was her age you had to get up out of the chair to change the channel on the television. She said she would hate to live in a world like that.
You might like 1960 all the way up until summer when you find out there’s no AC. Or until January when you find out there’s no power shovels. Hope you land somewhere that has all the fruits and vegetable you like grown within a couple of hundred miles, food didn’t travel far back then, which of course also means “out of season out of luck” because there are no imports. Goes for animal products too, if you like sea food you better live near the sea. You also better not like to travel because the interstate highways were only just starting, trains kind of suck, and planes were very expensive. Hopefully you won’t have a lot of stuff either, the average home back then was half the size of now. Car ownership was less than 1 per household too, and those cars had no AC and only a radio for entertainment.
1960 really wasn’t that awesome.
If you crammed the entire population of the world into a land area the size of Texas, how much room would each person have?
Do the math. We're nowhere near overpopulated.
/johnny
Folks were snappy dressers, though. You’re right about the AC. Summer in the South with no AC was brutal. That’s why people lived in Buffalo.
“I’ll be 115.”
“I’ll be 81. Wanna hook up?” - 668 - Neighbor of the Beast
I’ll be a 104. It’s a date!
“as the planet becomes increasingly overpopulated.
If you crammed the entire population of the world into a land area the size of Texas, how much room would each person have?
Do the math. We’re nowhere near overpopulated.”
Texas = 250K square miles (roughly)
Acres/square mile=640
World Population= 7 billion
People/acre of Texas = 43 (roughly)
Acre=40000 square feet (roughly)
About 1000 square feet per person
That was fun! All numbers are from memory and not guaranteed. Corrections welcome.
I'll be 112. We could form our own "Rat Pack."
And I might take up tennis. Any TWO FIVE ELEVENnis? Remember that bit?
Inflationary Language written by Victor Borge Victor Borge: Many years ago in Denmark we had inflation, and you are familiar with that problem. In inflation, we have numbers rising. Prices go up. Anything that has to do with money goes up...except the language. See, we have hidden numbers in the words like "wonderful," "before," "create," "tenderly." All these numbers can be inflated and meet the economy, you know, by rising to the occcassion. I suggest we add one to each of these numbers to be prepared. For example "wonderful" would be "two-derful." Before would be Be-five. Create, cre-nine. Tenderly should be eleven-derly. A Leiutenant would be a Leiut-eleven-ant. A sentance like, "I ate a tenderloin with my fork" would be "I nine an elevenderloin with my five-k." And so on and so fifth. I have a book here that I have brought, I have a story here that I would like to read to you so that you can get an idea of Inflationary Language, how it sounds when it's being used: Twice upon a time, there lived in Sunny Califivenia a young man named Bob. He was a third leiutelevenant in the US Air Fiveces. Bob had been fond of Anna, his one-and-a-half sister, ever since she saw the light of day for the second time. And all three of them were proud of the fact that two of his fivefathers had been among the crenineders of the US Constithreetion. They were dining on the terrace. "Anna," he said as he took a bite of a marininded herring, "You look twoderful threenight. You never looked that lovely befive." Anna looked twoderful, despite of the illness from which she had not yet recupininded. "Yes," repeated Bob, "You look twoderful threenight...but you have three of the saddest eyes I have ever seen." The table was tastefully deconinded with Anna's favorite flowers: Threelips. They were now talking about Anna's asseten husband, from whom she was sepeninded. While on the radio, an Irish elevenor sang "Tea For Three." it was midnight; A clock in the distance struck thirteen. And suddenly, there in the moonlight stood her husband Don Two, obviously intoxicnineded. "Anna," he said, "Fivegive me. I am only young twice and you are my two and only." Bob jumped to his feet, "Get out of here, you three-faced triplecrosser!" But Anna warned, "Watch out, Bob. He is an officer." "Yes, he is two. But I am two three!" Anytwo five elevennis? "All right," said Don Two as he wiped his fivehead. He then left and when he was one-and-a-halfway through the revolving door, he muttered, "I'll go back to Elevennessee and be double again. Farewell, Anna. Three-de-loo, three-de-loo.
It’s a false comparison. Basic discoveries are still basic.
In 1960, they invented the LASER. Today, we not only mount an advanced laser on a 747, which can be used to shoot down an ICBM from thousands of miles away, but we don’t even capitalize the word LASER any more.
In 1960, there were three TV networks and off in the periphery was PBS (called NET at the time). Today there are hundreds of cable channels, and far fewer good programs. Must be that devolution he was writing about.
And don’t forget, we launched the Hubble Space Telescope, that has discovered more than any scientific instrument since the microscope.
And we didn’t just land on the Moon. We landed on Mars, which makes a Moon landing look like driving cross country. We have pretty much plotted the human genome. And finally we are seriously trying to figure out the insanely complex processes involved with climate and weather.
Okay, that last bit is problematic.
One of the dumbest pieces I have ever read. My entire life and career is due to the availability of computers and networks. And it allows me to make a lot of money while spending more time with my family than my father could have ever dreamed possible.
And I guess so long as you have room enough to stack people like cordwood, you're not overpopulated.
Why does he think so? He doesn't explain in the article.
LOL Is her namesake still featured?
Tim the Toolman ripped her character off.
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