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The first movie I ever saw in a theater was 2001: A Space Odyssey. My sister Carol took me to it when I was six years old. She wasn’t sure I’d like it, but I really loved it—except for a bit of primitive violence in the opening scene that was too intense for my young eyes (and stomach). In particular, the future technology depicted in the film fired my imagination. People in 2001 casually used video telephone calling and iPad-like tablet computers. And who could forget the talking, intelligent—but ultimately sinister—computer named HAL 9000? In 1968, when the movie came out, these were indeed just technological fantasies. Spurred on by that movie, throughout my childhood and adolescence I had a keen interest in reading science fiction and predictions about future technology. As a pre-teen, I was fascinated with my father’s copy of the best-selling book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler, which was published in 1970.
Over fifty years have passed since those early childhood days. For better or worse, our world is filled with the stuff of yesteryear’s science fiction. If time travel to today from 1968 were possible (spoiler alert: not quite yet), a cinematic camera crew simply filming day-to-day life in an advanced country like the U.S. or Japan would have the elements for an epic sci-fi blockbuster. In my lifetime, technology has advanced at a staggering pace. The period from 1969-2000 is sometimes called the Third Industrial Revolution, encompassing the use of ever-more sophisticated electronics and computers to automate processes, as well as the rise of the internet. We are currently in the mind-boggling Fourth Industrial Revolution, where a mature internet has evolved to include “the internet of things” and artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly advancing.
Sophisticated technology used to be quite expensive and out of the reach of many people. Today, due to technological advances, just about everyone can afford a compact smartphone that contains many amazing capabilities—including video calls—that could not be obtained at any price in 1968. Personal computers have come way down in price, and the internet, providing access to almost unlimited stores of information, is free for all to use. Our friends living 50 or 60 years ago would be in complete awe of what we take for granted.
Interestingly, in 1970 Alvin Toffler foreshadowed the rise of the internet and AI. Here’s a bit of what Toffler said about a computer concept called OLIVER (On-line Interactive Vicarious Expediter and Responder): “As computerized information systems ramify, (OLIVER) would tap into a worldwide pool of data stored in libraries, corporate files, hospitals, retail stores, banks, government agencies, and universities. OLIVER would thus become a kind of universal question-answerer…. It is theoretically possible to construct an OLIVER that would analyze the content of its owner’s words, scrutinize his choices, deduce his value system, update its own program to reflect changes in his values and ultimately handle larger and larger decisions for him…. Meetings could take place among groups of OLIVERs representing their respective owners, without the owners themselves being present.”
I would have been flabbergasted if, as a youngster, I’d been clued in about the technological advances I would witness in my lifetime. I’ve truly lived a science fiction kind of life. But all the technology hasn’t resulted in a utopia. Advances in AI make deepfakes more believable all the time. My Facebook feed is increasingly cluttered with AI generated videos and pictures, making it harder to distinguish between fact and fiction—especially judging by the comments people leave. The connected nature of the internet adds to the seeming cloudiness of truth. Cybercrime is a constant threat. Sometimes I wonder if it will all come crashing down, as in the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
How about you? Are you optimistic that our technological advances eventually will be self-correcting and propel society to greater heights? Or do you have an uneasy feeling that technology has raced ahead of what mankind is capable of handling? Is the best yet to come? Or have we peaked?
I want to trade in the 21st century and get my money back! 🙂 Where are the space colonies?!?
That would be so much cooler than tech we have now. I would love to play in zero G or low G – such as 3D soccer, dives into water with
low impact, dogfights in pedal aircraft shooting water guns, etc.
It would be great to watch space Olympics with new sports.
Instead we got tech that makes people mega Zombies playing on their phones. Sigh.
I was optimistic. And I was an early adopter of the Internet. In college I wrote my dad email at his Compuserve account from the computer lab at school. I bought my first plane ticket online in 1989. I wrote my first web pages in1995. It’s very likely my microscopy lab was the first one worldwide to advertise its services on a website.
But then I saw the amount of garbage online. I watched my kids do or see terrible things online and thwart our every attempt to keep them offline. I dreamt of -omics, basically what you describe as a database that could associate anything, but bad people could connect so fast and become garbage cults that I saw more downside. AI doesn’t address omics well becausse it is too probablity based and not enough rules based. I’ve lost my optimism. We’d be better off if we could turn it off.
Overall, I am very optimistic. Here why, my parents in the 1950’s worried pretty much about the same things we worry about today. How will our children navigate all this new tech. Overall, pretty well, my take. The more things change the more they stay the same!
“The connected nature of the internet adds to the seeming cloudiness of truth.” Very well said, Ken. I think now, and going forward, the ability to think critically about all the information we are flooded with may become some sort of survival skill. My kids, ages 35-27 have little to do with social media anymore. I think they realize so much of it is fake, or worthless information, or deceitful. We see so many assaults on objective truth these days that I wonder if we are transitioning to a post-truth society in which the weak may be vulnerable. Put another way, it’s caveat emptor everywhere.
I’ve been reading a number of articles on AI that were recommended on my post earlier today. It made me think about your reference to the HAL 9000. That fit in a relatively small spaceship. The AI facilities of today require massive data centers that use huge amounts of energy. The scale difference truck me. It never cease to amaze me how much data is stored in our brains. I guess I shouldn’t worry if I occasionally can’t remember the name of a neighbor.
Have you ever noticed how few people there tend to be in the future in SciFi?
I am a mass abundance guy.
More of everything for everyone.
The problem, to my thinking, are the “status seekers” who feel they have to own something or be special to allow themselves to feel superior to the rest of us.
The Jetsons was quite unsophisticated, because it didn’t show any social impacts from all this advanced technology – they were still a 50s suburban family with a lot of gadgets.
But more advanced science fiction writers did predict dramatic social changes as a result of advanced technology. But even they could not possibly have dreamed up where we are now!
Somehow I watched an episode of the Jetson’s recently. I had to laugh at the fact that nearly all of that technology is either here or coming in the near future.
I’ve been a Science Fiction nerd since I discovered Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke et al back in the ’70s. I must say I look forward to every scientific advance, despite the drawbacks that may come with them.
2001 has always been one of my favorite movies, and, if you also liked the book, Amaranthine Press has a nice edition coming out right now (may be all sold out), and Centipede Press is doing what should be a fantastic edition later this year:
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. We have actually had this in the works for a while. Our edition promises to be something more than your standard reprint. For one, we have all of the Arthur C. Clarke introductions written for the book, plus new illustrations by Michal Karcz. This is a two-volume set, with volume 1 being the original novel, and volume 2 being the classic Lost Worlds of 2001, as well as two more 2001-related essays by Arthur C. Clarke, and the 1968 and 1986 Playboy interviews with Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, respectively. There are also about a score of photographs of Clarke, Kubrick, and others that are 2001-related.
I recently reread William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and a lot of his predictions have come true.
Another author whose books are pretty cutting edge is Neal Stephenson. He wrote The Diamond Age, which is a book about an AI designed to raise a child – fascinating stuff.
He also wrote Snow Crash, which apparently inspired many Silicon Valley software engineers to delve into metaverse coding.
Besides those two, my other favorite by him is Cryptonomicon, a blend of the WWII codebreaking efforts and modern day encryption. Fascinating stuff!
It’s amazing how far and fast we’ve come. My mother didn’t even have electricity in her home until 1953, when she was 11. She remembers cleaning and filling oil lamps as a child.
We didn’t have a color TV until 1980, and now I can buy an 85″ TV for way less than we paid for that 21″ Hitachi back in the day.
Interesting article, Ken. I started writing a comment about my thoughts of technology, but it sounded too self-righteous. I’ll just say all informational tech is a tool that we can use to enhance our lives, or abuse to the detriment of ourselves and others. And that started with the first print media.
An anecdote: When I returned to college in my late-20s, one of my first night courses was a simple intro to computers, taught by an adjunct whose day job was accountant in the business office. I asked his advice on purchasing my first computer. Should I get one of the new “Windows” type, or the standard DOS? He checked with IT, who sent word they didn’t think the windows-thing would catch on, so I bought the old style.
Another one; I walked into the computer lab one evening to see a young woman at a keyboard in front of a screen on the monster computer, not a PC. When I asked, she said she was messaging with a friend at university in another state. I know many tech folks here probably used the pre-internet messaging system, but that was my introduction to the idea.
I find myself unnerved sometimes by the advance of technology and our increasing dependence upon it. What concerns me is not so much the advance of technology but the morals and ethics of those with the capability to manipulate technology for good or for evil, or solely for their own benefit rather than the common good. Perhaps some of these individuals or entities believe that the common good is irrelevant and that only personal or corporate benefits matter. But then I regularly read here at HD about the small, large and simple things that we each can do to make our world a better place. And technology isn’t always necessary – cash tips still seem to be welcome, for example.
I have 2 immediate thoughts reading your post:
To think how far technology has come in my lifetime, is mind boggling. I have no doubt that the advancements and the pace of future technological advances for my grandchildren will be nothing short of mind blowing (to our generation).
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I worked at AOL and CompuServe before that.
I remember my first experience of modems in the math room at high school. I still have my cherished crossover RS232 connector.
My grandfather went from the world of horse and buggy to electric lights, the airplane, the telephone and the moon landing. My career spanned “America Offline” to the Internet to AI with “future shock” looking like it’s the new normal (part of what drove me to retire)
But what doesn’t change is the issues we face as humans. I’m facing the same basic questions my grandfather faced: how should I live? what’s “right? How should I relate to others?
To go a little further back in time there was a rich man who wrote “vanity, vanity, all is vanity” and “there is nothing new under the sun”. Was he right?
In the 70s when I was attending high school in Hanover NH we were one of the first public schools to access to (Dartmouth’s) main frame computer. I still remember the login was H15009. BASIC was developed at Dartmouth in the 60s. The professor’s sons were in the same Boy Scout troop as me.
My wife’s great aunt was born in 1888, and died in 1993. She was 8 years old when cars were first commercially available in the US. We landed a man on the moon when she was 81 years old, and still had more than 20 years to live.
People have always been wowed by new gadgets or apps that change how we live. Over time, we often forget why we decided to use them in the first place – it’s always something we figured out together as groups, with the group who made them and the group who used them. Like other boomers, I might wish for an e-bike today, yet I laugh when I remember that back in 2001, we as a group turned our nose up at something even better and safer – the Segway.
Technologies exist only if the herd accepts them – and herds are, of course, gullible and fickle.
What future tech will catch on? Who knows! People chase whatever their in-group deems hot, and that changes with every generation. For Gen Z, anything Boomers embrace is practically a death sentence for new tech. The tech itself doesn’t worry me – it’s the influencers and industry leaders we need to watch, so they don’t exploit the young for profit.
In the end, tech will be just a tool. People live for experience, not for tools.
The problem is never the technology, it’s what people do with it. My confidence in the people controlling today’s tech is non-existent. Just finished “More Everything Forever”. Didn’t make me any happier about the tech bros and billionaires.
I just posted a comment and realized how much I borrowed from your sentiments, Kathy, having read your comment earlier. Hope you’re flattered rather than offended. And, as we used to say in my family, “Keep hope alive.” 😊
Not a problem, Linda. Glad we’re in agreement. Recommend the book I mentioned.
👍
Linda and Kathy, I’m with both of you. The wonders of technology are immense, but the potential for misuse is likewise immense, and my faith in the commitment of the tech titans to appropriate use continues to ebb. A report on CBS Sunday Morning about Steve Wozniak’s futile attempt to get Google to take down a YouTube video that uses his image to promote a massive fraud scheme is instructive. If even the co-founder of Apple can’t get a tech monster to do the right thing, the rest of us have zero chance.
Interesting post Ken. I’ve had discussions with people about what our grandparents experienced – electricity, automobiles, radio, recorded music, phones, TV, airplanes, rockets, spacecraft, computers, 2 World Wars, bridges, skyscrapers, …I wonder if they felt the same way at times. I think for every technology you can find good, neutral, and bad uses. I don’t expect that to change anytime.
Sadly, just about anything created with the intent of making “things” better or enjoyable has or can be used for negative purposes. A baseball bat can be used for entirely different purposes and outcomes. Nobel’s invention of TNT is another. Guns, anyone? The larger issue now more than ever, often due to advances in and misuse of technology, is the broad scale and depth of damage it can do in very short order. It can remain hidden, buried in code for years and unleashed “out of left field” at the perpetrators wishes. THAT should scare the bejeebers out of anyone. We now return to our regularly scheduled day………
Rick, I’m reminded of Winston Churchill’s writing of his apprehensions about the application of new technology. Here’s an article with a few quotes.
Ed, thanks for an interesting read. Lots of good food for thought.
As the years have gone by I’ve become increasingly convinced that the Amish were right about everything.