Really interesting, thanks. The last point is thought provoking:
> Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
> Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!
I think this could have already happened, except the definition of "work" is so nebulous, and there is so much wiggle room between the things that actually need to be done and the things we might as well do. Or maybe it has happened in parts of the world, but we are all in denial about it.
Yeah, it was to me the most interesting part of the piece; and I tend to agree with it.
When I was younger I may have been amused by the technological speculation — perhaps giving him a score (sorry, no hovercraft for everyday cars, and my Makita is in fact not powered by radioisotopes, but we'll grant you the experimental fusion power plants). We've seen that there are just so many unforeseeables that it is little more than just guessing ... multiplied by how keyed in you are on the what the current state of research is.
To have predicted Maps on the phone you would have had to predict the ubiquity of GPS or some other means of location, predicted small portable displays in order to show a map, predicted a global data network, miniaturization of electronics, the computer revolution.... It's no wonder even William Gibson missed it writing two decades after Asimov.
Was there some odd sort of car with a "moving map" depicted in the 1960's? Or was I victim to some sort of viral image fakery? What did Bond have in Goldfinger — some kind of printed, scrolling map with a moving light (cursor) behind it? Or am I misremembering. Hilarious though to try to do something with 60's tech — perhaps using dead reckoning rather than GPS to guess the car's location (steering plus speed).
I think some WWII era bombers had scrolling paper maps? Or maybe I saw such maps at a museum recently. All these innovations have been on the military's wish list for a while
I think it’s funny nobody I am aware of from this period predicted the attention economy, and even funnier that Asimov predicted boredom would be a genuine societal issue. Just goes to show Asimov was quite full of himself, I think
A little off topic but I just finished Asimov’s “Foundation and Earth”. I’m so mad at him for tying it back to his Robots series. It completely diminishes the entire Foundation series.
He didn’t want to write them. Gnome Press owned the original series and he didn’t get any royalties for them. In 1961, his current publisher Doubleday acquired them and for 20 years he told them no to writing more Foundation books. In 1981 Doubleday said they would pay him 10 times his normal rate and that is when he wrote Foundation’s Edge.
This was all printed in the front of my copy of Foundation and Earth. Titled as “The Story Behind the Foundation”.
Really interesting, thanks. The last point is thought provoking:
> Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
> Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the vocabulary will have become work!
I think this could have already happened, except the definition of "work" is so nebulous, and there is so much wiggle room between the things that actually need to be done and the things we might as well do. Or maybe it has happened in parts of the world, but we are all in denial about it.
Yeah, it was to me the most interesting part of the piece; and I tend to agree with it.
When I was younger I may have been amused by the technological speculation — perhaps giving him a score (sorry, no hovercraft for everyday cars, and my Makita is in fact not powered by radioisotopes, but we'll grant you the experimental fusion power plants). We've seen that there are just so many unforeseeables that it is little more than just guessing ... multiplied by how keyed in you are on the what the current state of research is.
To have predicted Maps on the phone you would have had to predict the ubiquity of GPS or some other means of location, predicted small portable displays in order to show a map, predicted a global data network, miniaturization of electronics, the computer revolution.... It's no wonder even William Gibson missed it writing two decades after Asimov.
Was there some odd sort of car with a "moving map" depicted in the 1960's? Or was I victim to some sort of viral image fakery? What did Bond have in Goldfinger — some kind of printed, scrolling map with a moving light (cursor) behind it? Or am I misremembering. Hilarious though to try to do something with 60's tech — perhaps using dead reckoning rather than GPS to guess the car's location (steering plus speed).
There have been a few. Maybe this one? https://youtu.be/Z3We5h8pt0Q?si=btvxgZhPqDkTqNEc
The UK trialed a cassette version here https://youtu.be/4qqnHtH1RAs?si=Y9dKvKtwPVXheLWU
No there was a dead reckoning maps system, or at least a prototype. Dead reckoning can be surprisingly accurate.
https://hackaday.com/2018/06/17/retrotechtacular-car-navigat...
I’m betting we’ll all turn into part-time philosophers, staring at the old questions: Who are we? Why are we here? Where do we go next?
Finding meaning becomes the core human task.
Our best tool might be the oldest one: basic ethics. Plato, Aristotle, the $5 paperbacks gathering dust.
I think some WWII era bombers had scrolling paper maps? Or maybe I saw such maps at a museum recently. All these innovations have been on the military's wish list for a while
I think it’s funny nobody I am aware of from this period predicted the attention economy, and even funnier that Asimov predicted boredom would be a genuine societal issue. Just goes to show Asimov was quite full of himself, I think
A little off topic but I just finished Asimov’s “Foundation and Earth”. I’m so mad at him for tying it back to his Robots series. It completely diminishes the entire Foundation series.
Yeah, unfortunately I felt that the last few novels in the series were uninspired, maybe even lazy.
He didn’t want to write them. Gnome Press owned the original series and he didn’t get any royalties for them. In 1961, his current publisher Doubleday acquired them and for 20 years he told them no to writing more Foundation books. In 1981 Doubleday said they would pay him 10 times his normal rate and that is when he wrote Foundation’s Edge.
This was all printed in the front of my copy of Foundation and Earth. Titled as “The Story Behind the Foundation”.
I plan on reading the Robot series next.
This makes so much sense in retrospect. I think the review I wrote of the last novel was that I felt it was a cash grab.
Title: Visit to the World's Fair of 2014 (1964)
Past discussions: (56 points, 2019, 17 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20072073
(272 points, 2013, 172 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6287340