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Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 783 Joined: 27 Aug 2008     | |
King of the Yetis  Posts: 2539 Joined: 15 Jul 2008    | I always worry that one day I might, thanks to the horrors of time travel, have to explain 4Chan to my great grandfather. I wouldn't even know how to fucking start. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2096 Joined: 15 Jun 2008    | You were wrong and technology evolved in a different direction is what the hell happened. EDIT: Sorry, that came across as much less pleasant than it sounded in my head. Apologies. But basically, the predictions were wrong, and technology took a different path. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 670 Joined: 8 Nov 2007    | The thing is, jet packs, flying cars are very much possible. A moon colony could be constructed with 60's tech in fact, it'd just cost a bundle. But seeing technology at the moment and the advances we're making on the internet makes me believe we're not heading for Blade Runner but for Ghost in the Shell. Biotech is making huge leaps at the moment, cyborg parts are not that far off, nor are sex robots by the way, they're just not all that agile. One of the things that is putting brakes on current advances is regulation. Ethical issues not present in totalitarian regimes during the 40's to 60's are currently omnipresent, preventing the kind of extreme experimentation required to make real breakthroughs in medical advancements as well as 'human engineering'. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 815 Joined: 20 Aug 2008   | I reckon some people here have the right idea; is the world we have really that bad? Sure, people die on a regular basis but that's how God made us/we evolved to be like. You can't help death as much as you can turn the Sun on and off with a light switch. War is a natural part of humanity, and it can't be stopped. As long as people have emotions, there will always be conflict, and unless thye modify the human brain to make us all sheep (see 'Cybermen') which in itself would deprive us of any real living at all, we'll just have to put up with the far-off battles that rage. And besides, what's wrong with a world where a package can arrive from thousands of miles away within a week? Not including, of course, the years of arduous work that translation apparently takes. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 429 Joined: 26 Sep 2008  | Slight off topic-Have you read "Blind Faith" by Ben Elton? Admittedly it is set in a slightly in the future flood devastated world but it shows how the human race constantly defeats itself. On topic- One thing about having a variety of opinions is that at least some of these opinions are bound to conflict and mankind is pre-programmed towards violence to resolve these conflicts. Humanity has come very far in the past few years with staggering advances in micro-technology, nanotechnology, quantum physics, medicine, microbiology, zoology, genetics, combustion, nuclear technology, laser technology, communications technology, plastics-I could go on but it would be quite a long list. Okay so we don't have personal jetpacks or a mars/lunar base but the ground work technology is there. In fact I would wager that if a corporation were to put their mind to it they could maybe not easily but quickly solve any outstanding issues (how to get to mars in under a year, how to supply fuel to jetpacks). The main problem are that no corporation would do it unless they judged it cost effective which is unlikely because currently it's still cost effective to churn out overpriced and over hyped crap. As well as this mankind is in a constant arms race with itself meaning any new technology is quick re-designed or re-engineered into warfare purposes (if it didn't start out as arms technology to begin with). |
Pulitzer Laureate Posts: 815 Joined: 20 Aug 2008 |
How, dare I ask, can one make advances in combustion? Unless you're referring to flamethrowers and lasers, then I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what you mean. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 741 Joined: 12 Apr 2008  |
But 80s fashion and hair styles have now been firmly eradicated from the main stream and preserved in isolated pockets as to remind us of the mistakes we will never repeat. |
Press Junketeer Posts: 429 Joined: 26 Sep 2008 |
Sorry to clarify that I meant combustion related technologies. I was mainly thinking of exhaust filters and things like that for cars. |
Red Guard  Posts: 4852 Joined: 14 Oct 2007    | I must admit that I'm feeling very smug at the moment. Watching the free market collapse like a house of cards in an earthquake zone. It does, however, fill me with anger that so many people who are, for the large part, victims of circumstance and their own consumerist nature will be fucked over, left stricken with poverty and everything else. This has been labelled as 'the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression' and 'a crisis of capitalism', both of which spell trouble for the little people, as it were. To continue my leftist soap-boxing, I'm going to say that the only real alternative to this is a grass-roots community democracy where services and industries such as power, health and education return to the public sector to be out of the reach of desperate and greedy multinational fuckers. Having the people directly involved in local politics and planning is also essential at this point in time. A return to primary industry is also in order. It's the only way I can see huge numbers of otherwise stable people keeping out of poverty. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1878 Joined: 22 Jul 2008   |
Wow, I did not realise how leftist you are until now. Shows how much I pay attention. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 381 Joined: 18 Jan 2008     | It's mainly because today being "smart" is a bad thing nad people are educated to be stupid (that's incredibly ironic). |
Red Guard Posts: 4852 Joined: 14 Oct 2007 |
I tend to climb out the window and head across the lawn should a class ever bring up the "Scale your political ideology" trick. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1878 Joined: 22 Jul 2008 |
Careful, go to far left and you end up conservative. I'm not sure if that happened to me, but somehow I've ended up favoring benevolent dictatorships. We are so far off topic now. |
Red Guard Posts: 4852 Joined: 14 Oct 2007 |
Not true. I can incorperate this into the rightward swing of politics since before the Cold War resulting in this fuck up. And for that, check here. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1878 Joined: 22 Jul 2008 |
Hmm, I ended up in the bottom right corner of authoritarian left. Back on topic: I'm gonna stick with my earlier response. Progress is slow, but it happens. |
Muckraker  Posts: 317 Joined: 4 Jul 2008   | Actually, we've made a lot of progress. The average human life span is far greater than it was 100 years ago, we can communicate nearly effortlessly (as long as you have some money). The development of Asia and Eastern Europe (in the past few decades) have pulled billions out of poverty, and that's a UN statistic you can check up. Science knows more than ever before. We've made great progress. Especially in medical technology and science, with newer ways of treating cancer. Why, just a few months ago, English doctors tested a (primitive) bionic eye. It's just that people got their hopes up. A flying car IS feasible. The economics and safety issues, are not. If people routinely kill themselves with ground cars (which move in 2 dimensions), giving them the ability to move in 3 dimensions (such as a flying car), would be at least 50% more difficult for them. Frankly, I'm GLAD we don't have flying cars. I would not appreciate a drunk driver crashing his car into my office on the 6th floor. Automated cars (self-driving cars) are also becoming a reality - the US DARPA institute, with the co-operation of some of America's finest universities, has developed a vehicle that can navigate a complex and tricky course perfectly. The people in the 80's and the 50's were too optimistic. Now, it's great to have optimism, but they should have tempered themselves a bit. The idea that in 50 years time, we'd all be having picnics on the moon was ludicrous. First of all, there was no interest - the moon is sterile and dead. We don't have the capacity to terraform it yet. And we still don't have the ability to build self-sustaining bases (although they are working on it). As for general education - people are more literate than at any other time in human history. With the internet, people have greater access to information (as well as disinformation), than at any point in history. Yes, people act stupid, but people have ALWAYS acted stupid. 200 years ago, it was believed that bleeding you dry would be good for health and that witches and demons existed. Some still believe such nonsense to this day. There'll always be such people. The problem is that human nature is determined by genes, which evolve and change on the scale of 1000s to 1,000,000s of years. Our technological evolution moves much faster. In other ways, our brains aren't catching up with our technology. Which is why, in an age of such technological achievement and knowledge, you'll still get racists, homophobes, sadists, and other such people. But there is hope - our brains haven't reached the limits of knowledge. We are still learning. As our science grows, our power grows - eventually, we might obtain the power to rival the mythical/literary gods of human culture. Whether we destroy ourselves or preserve ourselves will determine what kind of species we really are. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 869 Joined: 7 Nov 2007  |
Yeah. Greed happened a couple million years ago along with pride and they have nothing to do with the eighties and what has happened since then. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2849 Joined: 8 Jul 2008    | Religion continued, Paris Hilton was born... |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3285 Joined: 23 Oct 2007   |
Actually, seeing the Socialist Party posters around Dublin city centre as I travel to university, with "Capitalism in Crisis?" or "The end of capitalism?" is giving me many laughs as well. I used to be as leftist as you are now, and possibly even more so - it was something I debated constantly with people. I still retain a fair amount of my leftist political beliefs, particularly when it comes to nationalisation of key services and industries (most of education, healthcare and all of energy resources), but I've mellowed a bit since I entered university. |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 91 Joined: 19 Jun 2008   | Im an ultra capitalist supporter, I like the idea that you can get out of poverty, or any condition of life, you can change the world, you matter more than anyone else. Capitalism does some very important things, it creates the advancement of new technology... with a communist, or socialist society, those advancements never start or drop like a rock. Thier is nothing wrong with taking advantage of people in a fair system. If your boss is not paying overtime, then quit, even if you have to go to a job with lower pay. Income over 100,000 a year has been shown to NOT improve ones happiness anyway and the changes from 40,000-100,000 a year have almost no change in the happiness of the individual, though income does on average indicate the level of health of people. I want survival of the fittest, with some rules of decency tacked on so no one gets really fucked too hard. |
Red Guard Posts: 4852 Joined: 14 Oct 2007 |
I think calling it the 'end' of capitalism may be too optimistic, but hey. I remain a hopeful pessimist, severely tempered by huge amounts of cynicism. I've noticed that most people mellow out, which is part of why I'm being so active while I still have the inspiration. Balances out all the right-wing people around me.
I just have to take to these. The problem with Capitalism and poverty is that it restricts people to classes depending on their financial status. It's actually very hard to 'better' oneself class-wise in a system based around minimisation of costs. And as for the latter part, I'm calling bullshit right here. The advancement of technology is not something exclusive to a corporate world. With a larger public sector, universities would be better able to offer research and development opportunities to people, but in stead of these innovations being sold to the highest bidder then exploited for profit, the would be more likely to be widely available for the betterment of the society as a whole. In fact, I'd argue that a socialist basis would be more welcoming of innovation, as there would not be as much opposition from corporations who supply the previous inventions. For example if someone invented a washing machine that needed no detergent, it would be bought out by detergent companies because they don't want the product competition. |
On the Record  Posts: 5484 Joined: 13 Aug 2008  | If you look at research that's been going on recently, we are not far from this point. I read an article last year in Discover magazine about how we are trying to counteract the problem of moon dust in building colonies (the dust contains microparticles of glass that collect in joints and halt movement). Plus, look at how the time between technological advances has been decreasing exponentially as each new advance comes along. The time between PCs and the Internet, compared to the time between the Differential Engine and Punch-card machines, is barely a fraction of an instant. The depictions of the future may not be that far from reality in just a few short years. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3105 Joined: 28 May 2008    | I wanted a hover board by now! :( I don't think technology is doing too badly these days. I mean you only gotta look at the LHC and the ingenuity involved in that. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 449 Joined: 10 Jun 2008  |
Interesting thought you have there. So what happened? It's my opinion that at least our society in the last decade (*note: I said 'our' society before someone jumps on me as accusing all of humanity) has become more 'me-centric'. Meaning, we are of a mindset today of taking less and less responsibility for our collective actions. I think a trend of 'slacking' has been afoot lately as evident in our education system of just passing people to the next grade because we don't want to hold them back. Or hurt their feelings. Or give them poor self-esteem. Or any other wacky explanation that takes the blames of of our individual seld, and lay blame and responsibilty at the foot of everyone else. We want the government to take care of us. We want this hand out or that hand out. We don't integrate our own culture anymore and there's no real emphasis to have a natonal language. This one whole large 'melting pot' isn't rally working anymore, because sub-cultures within it don't want to work together or 'try' as a whole. Why should they when everything gets handed to them and someone else's taxes may foot the bill. Yes, that sounds over simplistic and a bit bizarre...but these are the Ozzy & Harriet days anymore where we had nationalistic pride and unity. There are so many political, social, humanistic factions anymore all fighting for trivial stuff and what they feel is 'entitled' to them, we forgot the big picture of moving forward together and developing the strides you speak of. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1374 Joined: 12 Sep 2007   |
Bullshit. My family started with nothing. My maternal grandfather's father died when my grandfather was twelve, the eldest of twelve children. He went to work with no education and no money, helping to support his family while his mother washed other people's clothes in the creek. He worked every job he could find, eventually trading for an old shotgun which he used to bring in food. The shotgun he traded for a Model T which had died, which he towed in with a borrowed mule and learned to repair. He then earned extra money carrying people to town. My mother was born and spent her early years in a three-room house with a home-made fire place and no running water - they hauled water from a spring a quarter mile away. As a teenager they moved to a four-room house with a wood stove and a well. My grandfather built both of those houses and paid for the materials by working farm jobs after his normal fifty-five hours changing truck tires. My paternal grandfather convinced a rich man to front the money to start an auto parts store; it took over fifty years to save enough to buy out his share, but my father finally did it. My father was raised much the same, but in the same five-room house, and with running water, until he moved out (city boy.) I spent my first years in a house with no indoor toilet, walking to the outhouse, bathing in a galvanized washtub, potbelly coal stove for heat, unscreened windows for air conditioning (with a tin roof no less.) Through my parents' hard work and frugal living, they were able to eventually buy some acreage and build a house - only 1,100 square feet, but an all-brick rancher with honest-to-goodness central heat and air and TWO bathrooms. My parents, grandfather, and uncles built the house, except for the brick laying. (Okay, 1-1/2.) They also saved enough to fund my first three years in college, which meant in turn that with hard work I could develop marketable skills, work hard, buy (not build) a modest 1,670 square foot frame house with 2-1/2 bathrooms (could buy a better house if I wanted to go back into debt), even buy part ownership in my engineering company. In two generations, my family has gone from dirt poor to median income without my wife having to work by hard work and sacrifice. Several of my cousins have done even better. This is what capitalism is. It's not greedy corporations, it's people working hard and sacrificing to achieve something. I have a fair amount of leisure time, good disposable income, no debt, because I was raised on the shoulders of my parents and grandparents AND THEN WORKED MY ASS OFF. I didn't take the easy classes like art, music, sociology - I took math and science. When I would rather have been out having fun with my friends, I was stringing fence or clearing brush or picking up rocks or baling hay or mucking out barnyards - the dirtier and harder the job, the more likely people are to pay you to do it for them. When I was establishing myself in the work world, I made to sure to take on - to ASK for - additional work and responsibility. I may not always be smarter than my competition, but I can damn sure out-work him; I only have to make the sacrifice. None of this would have happened under a Marxist system. If my grandfathers were subsistence farmers, so too I would be a subsistence farmer. Only by rising in the Party would that ever change. There's a reason you don't see innovations in Marxist countries - there's no profit in it. Why bother? Good jobs will always go to the party faithful in any one-party system, at least until you can figure out how to re-engineer mankind. And the people stuck in the shit jobs will always do as little as possible, because to do otherwise just makes you more tired. Until you can re-engineer mankind to care more about humanity as a whole than about his own family, Marxists will remain spoiled, selfish children demanding to be given what other people work and sacrifice to earn. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 826 Joined: 21 Feb 2008   | I think television happened. Look at us, we would rather sit and watch the World Series of Poker rather than actually play cards. Instead of taking trips to exotic places, we'd rather watch idiots on Survivor compete for money by doing stupid stunts that could easily be performed on a sound stage. Rather than have experiences, we'd rather watch them. Another mistake in our development, we've told entire generations of kids that they're special and the result was a bunch of spoiled 20-somethings who leech off of society and don't contribute anything. Furthermore, we now reward that kind of behavior with things like welfare. No one believes they have to work hard or better themselves to make it through life; and sadly, they're right. One last thing. Flying cars? Seriously? This is what always bugs me about science fiction, everyone seems to think we're going to have flying cars at some point. Humans can't even walk without running into each other. Look at the morning news; no matter where you live there will be at least three wrecks in your area. Do you really want flying vehicles crashing into each other and dropping out of the sky? |
Press Junketeer Posts: 449 Joined: 10 Jun 2008 |
BINGO! You hit the nail on the head better than I did. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1374 Joined: 12 Sep 2007 |
We've actually had flying cars. In the early eighties my then brother-in-law invested in a company that was developing flying cars. The first prototype used six lift engines, that second prototype used eight; a separate motor provided thrust. Both flew well and safely. Besides the obvious problem of keeping six plus one or eight plus one gasoline engines properly maintained and synchronized, your point was exactly why these things never caught on (and thank G-d for that!) With energy becoming ever more expensive, terrorism on the rise, and the war on individualism, I'd say we're heading for no cars, not flying cars. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 718 Joined: 19 Dec 2007 | I think the future (i.e Now) is quite alright technology wise. The big advancements over the past few decades have been more computer/communication based than living on the Moon. Human space exploration ran out of steam by the 70's because it's a lot easier to go to the Moon than Mars or Venus; also i think living on the Moon would be more trouble than it's worth (for average people living there not scientists etc)what with the lack of gravity, air, and things to do. That is not to say that the future(Now) is as it "should" be. There should be more general science knowledge in the population (especially in the US government), and more blimps/zeppelins (seriously...they rock). P.S. As for the side topic of Capitalism/Socialism etc. The way i see it (from my high school political philosophy course) Socialism/Communism seem the best idea in theory, but people seem to be naturaly selfish, and so when put into practice a few people cheat the system for their own gain which screws it up. At least with capitalism the stated goal is selfish gain and so everyone's cheating everyone else. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1416 Joined: 19 Jun 2008  | Hmmm, I wasn't really so much thinking of technological development (tho yes, the 80s had thought of the internet, portable computers, music players etc. Check a shadowrun 1st ed book.) more the dramatic shift in human development from the 80s "A rising tide lifts all boats" to the 90s "Greed is Good" to the 00s "Fuck everyone who isn't me" mantras. Thanks to all who've been posting though, I'm really enjoying the discussion. So many viewpoints are fascinating to read. |
Paperboy  Posts: 16 Joined: 17 Feb 2008 | The Human imagination far exceeds progression. We're actually getting there now. And no stupid ugly grey metal suits. x3 |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 645 Joined: 27 Mar 2008  | This is a theme that makes me scratch my head. Most of us can't imagine how miserable the average plebe was, even in 1808. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2805 Joined: 1 Feb 2008  | This is sort of at both Labyrinth and werepossum: The only alternative to our current variant of capitalism (in which I would argue that the transnational corporations are getting powerful enough to be effectively free of regulation and start lopping the fingers off the invisible hand of the marketplace) that I've seen is a combination of sustainability and self-sufficiency that is, I think, descended from the hippie "back to the land" movement, but better because the people doing it now aren't all dumb and stoned. Sometimes it's simple--someone decides that they can't afford organic food, so they learn to garden, start ripping up their front yards and planting vegetables. Since this is a big gardening town, it's not too difficult to find someone who will help you figure out why your lettuce keeps bolting or what is eating your tomatoes and what to do about it. They swap with neighbors that are growing whatever they aren't, trade seeds and plant starts. Really, what they remind me of is my Grandmother who, for most of her life, grew all her own produce. This is a trend that has been progressing in my city for at least 10 years and has really boomed now that food, and everything else, is getting so expensive. On a larger scale, there's a farm inside the city limits, 7 acres of land bought out from under a real estate developer that was going to build 23 McMansions it. About 20 people, if you include the little kids, live on the farm--they all have paying jobs and all pay rent, because they have to make payments on the 1.5 million dollar mortgage and that's the easiest way to work the payment situation. But the goal is self-sufficiency. Every year, they have a little more land under cultivation. (It was entirely consumed by blackberry brambles when they got it.) They didn't tear down the old farm buildings. Instead, they used them to demonstrate how it is possible to retrofit existing wood-frame buildings with strawbale and cob construction. In fact, one of the main functions of the farm is to serve as a proof-of-concept operation. "Sure, this green technology looks cool, but can you actually live with it?" "Well, lets try it out." The point is, it is a vision of the future that looks to the past, but instead of doing every possible thing yourself, reusing everything and never buying anything new if you can help it because you are poor, you do all these things because to become dependant on corporations for everything is to live at risk of...well, the kind of thing that's happening now. And you do it because we are killing the biosphere with our greed and our garbage. And they aren't a pack of self-indulgent hippies, they are where the far-left green-freaks on my wing of the political spectrum wrap back around to meet werepossum and his family. Another friend of mine works in a poverty-stricken neighborhood outside of San Francisco specifically on "food justice", getting healthful food to people in the inner-city where there simply are no grocery stores, only convenience stores and fast-food joints. They have a big community gardening education program that is getting some traction, especially in some of the immigrant neighborhoods. Again, we've got people who are using hard work and community to get what they couldn't buy otherwise. They run a food kitchen for the poor and homeless and do you know where they get most of their food? A more refined version of dumpster diving. Grocery stores and restaurants throw out utterly disgraceful amounts of perfectly edible food every day because of small bruises, dents, box crushes, and other minor dings. If my friend's organization can make use of that, then everybody wins. Reduced garbage bills on one side, reduced malnutrition on the other. And the interesting thing about this is, anti-corporate capitalism as it is, as a revolution it operates on a basic capitalist principle: If you want people to stop doing something, stop paying them to do it. The other thing is, one of the major factors that makes this possible is the internet. It's hard to become self-sufficient if you don't know how to do stuff and no one that you know does either. But with the internet, you can find out, or you can find someone who knows and can tell/show you. The main thing that the past never figured on was the fact that their future would not, in the end, be mechanical, it would be informational. The revolution, you are typing on it. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3700 Joined: 29 Dec 2007    | War happened. |
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...Feh? You don't think we've come far enough technologically? In the past fifty years we've advanced more than in any other period in human history... and most of it put together. We can go to space and back. We can contact anyone, anywhere, at any time, and see them through a video screen. The miniature tvs and super stereos that we carry around in out pockets everyday without giving them a second thought seem one hell of a lot more useful than flying cars to me.