From: Elizabeth Childs (echilds@linex.com)
Date: Fri Aug 20 1999 - 12:24:53 MDT
http://www.boston.com/technology/tr/august/column.shtml
The author is the director of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. I was
really struck with how absolutely feeble the arguments were.
I post it solely as a cultural bellwether.
Another cultural bellwether:
Showtime has been running a one-hour documentary about historical visions of
the future. Most of the people interviewed were actors and other
entertainers, so I think it's safe to assume that their opinions are
probably fairly typical of people at large. The two things that really
struck me:
1) They were all rather disappointed and even annoyed that there wasn't
more technological progress by now. They wanted grand, visible signs of
progress, and were clearly in favor of it. I didn't watch the whole thing,
but in the part I did watch, no one commented on all the amazing things that
have happened that were never predicted.
2) They had no idea what was a potentially realistic prediction and what
was an absolutely fanciful one. For example, there was a little segment on
flying cars, and another segment on jetpacks that would allow you to fly.
It appeared that everyone interviewed saw these as equally achievable
technologies.
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