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Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

Moderately entertaining. It's interesting how many things they got "right" but missed the point entirely. For example, somehow the kid has a hand-held computer but the authors fail to grok the implications. Also, I find it amusing that the authors imagined live-in robots and yet can think of little better use to put them to than pouring a bowl of cereal in the morning. I can fairly confidently say that if there is one chore that doesn't need automating it is pouring cereal.

It's also interesting how pessimistic the authors were about things like pollution (smog, ozone layer), traffic, and water supply.

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It's also interesting the things we take for granted now that were missed completely. One I noticed everywhere was wireless communication. (Plugging your key card in to the wall and the car rather than near field communication, plugging the iphone into the desk rather than just using bluetooth (or forget about the desk comp entirely and connect to the cloud), etc.)

Edit: Actually, at the end he uses a remote control to turn off the lights and lock the doors... so I guess that's another example of failing to grok the implications! Still, interesting in general. Some of the things we don't have yet - like the high-tech schools - look like pretty clear areas for improvement.

Re: high-tech schools. I read that and was disappointed. Learning isn't about flash and glamour. I don't think our schools are any worse off because they lack immersive visual displays. The more interesting applications of technology for learning are availability of knowledge (encyclopedias and libraries at your fingertips) and personalized interactive education (like the Primer from Diamond Age). Right now most educational software is primitive but the potential is huge, but nobody's invested much in it yet.

I thought the smart classroom description was pretty spot-on. The elementary school classrooms that I am familiar with do have large computer displays with interactive capabilities, where students can participate individually from their seat.

People don't even understand the implications after the tech arrives.

I have a fond memory of walking around San Francisco at a conference with a bunch of friends, perhaps a year after the original iPhone was released, and most of them had one. We all decided to go to a particular restaurant or bar, and there was a long discussion about where it was. Finally I pointed out that at least half the people trying to figure out where it was had a device in their pocket that could simply tell them in a few seconds. They just hadn't thought of it.

I still see people today, techies too, doing the same basic thing. It's getting less common, but it's still pretty common.

The iPhone * was the device to end all pub arguments. Important Things (i.e. pointless trivia) were suddenly all available in your pocket, whenever you wanted

Incidentally, this has also led to much much harder pub quiz questions - previously "who won the world cup in 1956" or whatever became University Challenge-style "Which team, whose mascot's species rhymes with the month of their founding, became embroiled in scandal in 1967 when their manager at the time was caught with a prostitute on Dartmoor..." -- i.e. questions designed to be ungoogleable (a verb people would never have predicted in 1988.)

* now all smartphones, I guess.

That query is interesting. I wonder if IBM's Watson would outperform google on those types of detailed questions, without human intervention. Just take the top-ranked google response against Watson.

Fun fact: Settling pub arguments was why the Guinness Book of Records was written. The idea being that publicans can buy a copy of this book to keep in the bar. When patrons are getting into an argument, the publican can look it up in the book and settle it.

Reminds me of Connie Willis' line in Bellwether: Just because people are experiencing things doesn't mean they have any insight into them.

> It's also interesting how pessimistic the authors were about things like pollution (smog, ozone layer), traffic, and water supply.

I'm always amused at how many people in the 1970s were predicting global famine to hit the far-future world of a decade ago. Food lines and meat rationing and everything else in NYC, 2001.

Instead, we got an epidemic of Type II diabetes. So it goes.

If it wasn't for the Green Revolution in the 70's, then global famine would have been a very real possibility. Shows to tell you that one can't use past trends to predict the future.

more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

"The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself." - Club of Rome, premier environmental think-tank, consultants to the United Nations, (a statement from the 1970s, if I'm not mistaken)

In a sense, the past can be used to predict the future, via movements and policies (usually backed by the same entities, IMO). If someone's fist, for example, is coming at you, the best thing is not to let it hit you (and therefore stop the motion) but to use its momentum to guide it where you want it to go. Meaning movements and policies may often start out small but when they grow they often become guided.

It's a great thing to take care of the planet we live on but one must be weary of the initiatives piggybacking on such an idea. Incremental change is pretty much a perfect weapon.

http://www.green-agenda.com/

> In a sense, the past can be used to predict the future, via movements and policies

Asimov coined it Psychohistory[0]. Reminds me that I never finished the Foundation series. (In my defense, it is quite a long series.)

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)

The Green Revolution consisted of getting the best known farming techniques into wide use, and massive adoption of irrigation and artificial fertilizer. We don't have huge reserves of fresh water or petroleum or untested ag science that will let us further increase any of those reliably. I don't see us avoiding famine other than a rapid buildup in nuclear energy which we haven't started.

One problem with predicting the future is that some assume no new technology can or will be created. This comment is a case-in-point.

Massive adoption and wide use of contraceptives would do the trick.

If we manage to get a better supply of energy we can desalinate sea water. Fusion is always 30 years in the future, but I think solar+wind+storage(hydrogen?) could do it. This is being worked on. Also, a great part of the current production is wasted, which could give us some more time.

There is also the option of building farm skyscrapers [1]; I've seen an acticle about a test run recently. However, these also need a lot of energy.

I think it can be done. The greatest problem I see is the upcoming climate change which will force us to change a lot of the traditional agricultural patterns and which could be very unforgiving.

The problem is not the increase of temperature or the rise in sea level (except for Asia), but the change in precipitation patterns. What we need is more information and the ability to share and get the information from/to everyone involved, especially the small farmers in remote communities.

[1] like so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming

Academics were looking at the global population growth curve and extrapolating. They rightly predicted that exponential growth couldn't go on forever, so they predicted disaster. But they weren't willing or able to predict the degree to which the 1st world would be able to insulate itself from the population and food dynamics of the 3rd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb

People have been claiming this exponential population growth would wreck us for 200 years, since Malthus.

Yeah, that was my point. At the time this article was written the most recent resurgence of this philosophy was epitomized by the book I cited.

Something to consider when reading all the doom'n'gloom climate change stuff today.

Things change, including change.

Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU_DaIZE

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Not relevant to the video, did you bother watching it?

Except AGW is massively well-supported by the evidence.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-globa...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

The extent of the consequences 50 years from now and our ability to deal with said consequences are rather unknown.

No one said it wasn't.

It's always worth reminding everyone of this:

Haber process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

>>>Fertilizer generated from ammonia produced by the Haber process is estimated to be responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population

I think I first read about that here at HN and it still sticks in my mind.

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