[Gilgamesh]

Today, I saw this article published on CIO.com and I wanted to share it. It's interesting enough and it's not too long...

What Science Fiction Writers Have Learned About Predicting The Future of Technology (http://www.cio.com/article/471261/What_Science_Fiction_Writers_Have_Learned_About_Pr edicting_The_Future_of_Technology?source=nlt_cioin sider)

As far as know, good old Jules Vernes is one of the best predictors around :)...

[phil_geo]

That is a very interesting article. And the point they made about man walking on the moon and then the last man walking on the moon 3 years later was fascinating.

The man-on-the-moon-project was created by one of the two driving forces behind human behavior - fear. Fear that the Russians were going to destroy us. Once the U.S. proved it was superior in technology, people didn't want to spend any more money on that junk. The true advances for the next 40 years were driven by the other force - pleasure (read profit).

We very briefly saw a confluence of the two forces - $150/barrel oil made people scared, and also showed a huge opportunity for profit in renewable energy. And we started to throw money at it and had the potential for huge advances. But oil has already collapsed in price, and both reasons are largely gone. Obama won't be able to get any real traction for advances in renewable energy during his presidency now.

[Gilgamesh]

Even Internet was invented during the Cold War... :) Maybe we need Cold War to make jumps in inventions :)

[Andols]

Even Internet was invented during the Cold War... :) Maybe we need Cold War to make jumps in inventions :)

i read another article once saying war has done more for technological progression than anything else. had some pretty valid points. nothing like bullets flying past you to get the creative juices flowing.

[phil_geo]

Yeah, I heard something similar. The story I heard was that some famous doctor was asked what invention had advanced medical science more than any other, and he answered (in all seriousness) "the Gatling gun."

[psikeyhackr]

The title is kind of funny considering the date.

November 19, 1961
Fact Catches Up With Fiction
By ISAAC ASIMOV

Twenty-five years ago, space flight was virtually the exclusive property of a small group of young men, most of them in their teens, who wrote and read science fiction. The outside world was largely unaware that these men, or science fiction, or even the concept of space flight, existed. Among those who did know of this field of literary endeavor, reaction varied from amused tolerance to annoyed contempt. "Escapism," they said.

Yes, it was escapism. It was escape from the problems of the Nineteen Thirties, the threat of fascism and of war, the thought of what aerial bombardment might do to cities. But it was escape into the harder world of the Nineteen Sixties. The young authors wrote—and a few people read— of the danger of nuclear warfare and of the struggle to achieve space flight. If the authors were escaping from one horrid reality, they were doing so by facing future hazard without blinkers. That is not classical escapism. It might even be called foresight.

Now the world has entered the age into which science-fiction authors "escaped" a generation ago. The front pages of the newspapers read like some of the highly imaginative stories of the Thirties. The President of the United States can call for concerted effort to place a man on the moon and be greeted with a soberly enthusiastic response.

But science fiction suffers a malady no other branch of literature does. Each year sees possible plots destroyed.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fact.html?_r=2

It may ask you to register with the NYT to see all of it.

psik

[Michael B]

We very briefly saw a confluence of the two forces - $150/barrel oil made people scared, and also showed a huge opportunity for profit in renewable energy. And we started to throw money at it and had the potential for huge advances. But oil has already collapsed in price, and both reasons are largely gone. Obama won't be able to get any real traction for advances in renewable energy during his presidency now.
Europeans think differently because of climate change. From more economic cars to wind farms to the next generation of renewable energy power stations, we are ahead. Well, ahead for now;).

[nealasher]

Just slightly off-subject here since it's not entirely about technology, but I bet Larry Niven is chuckling now astronomers have discovered a black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Wasn't that what the Pierson's Puppeteers were running away from?

[phil_geo]

To be fair, astronomers postulated black holes at the center of galaxies, including our own, in the 1960s. That probably led Niven to creating the premise for Ringworld.

[psikeyhackr]

1958: David Finkelstein, resolves the nature of the black hole event horizon
1960: Martin Kruskal, new coordinates to study Schwarzschild black hole
1963: Roy Kerr, solution for a rotating black hole
1964: Roger Penrose, black holes must contain singularities
1964: Ginzburg, Doroshkevich, Novikov, Zel'dovich, black holes have no hair
1964: Salpeter and Zel'dovich, black holes power quasars and radio galaxies
1967: John Wheeler, introduced the term "black hole"
1969: Donald Lynden-Bell, black hole at the centre of galactic nuclei
1970: Stephen Hawking, the surface area of a black holes event horizon always increases
1971: Bolton, Murdin, Webster Cygnus X-1 identified as black hole candidate
1972: Jacob Bekenstein, black hole entropy
1972: Tom Bolton Cygnus X-1 identified as black hole

http://www.weburbia.com/pg/hist4.htm