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I just uploaded the last item in "Yesterday's Tomorrows", a futurist essay by "the father of science fiction," Hugo Gernsback. In his essay, written in 1926, he describes the year 1976. Those of you who believe the guys who say the singularity is near or that death will be conquered within your lifetime should read it.
Futurists! Where in the hell is my flying car? Why are there no bases on the moon, like the futurists said in the 1960s we'd have by now? Why did no one see digital photography coming? Or phones in your pockets? Or the internet?
Gernsback sold electronic components, some of which he designed himself, yet didn't seem to understand "electricity, the mysterious fluid." He thought we'd be able to control the weather with it, and even more nonsensical things. He seemed steeped in the cult of Tesla, who had promised wireless delivery of electricity.
Coincidentally, Soylent News just mentioned a story about transplanting porcine hearts into humans, and the company's co-founder is a futurist. Of course, I left a comment about futurists.
I go into it in detail about futurism both in the book's foreword and the introduction to the Gernsback essay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:10AM
Gernsback sold electronic components, some of which he designed himself, yet didn't seem to understand "electricity, the mysterious fluid." He thought we'd be able to control the weather with it, and even more nonsensical things.
Yes, yes, quite nonsensical. Nobody could control the weather with electrons. [uspto.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @12:08PM
Flying cars exist. They just aren't affordable. And everybody in flying cars would lead to disasters falling out of the sky. But maybe an Uber-like with flight pathed drones is just around the corner.
I think sometimes you just have to throw sense out the window in order to see what could be, instead of just what is now. You aren't going to be right, but you might be partially correct. A- for effort ;)
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Tuesday August 25 2015, @06:21PM
You are of course, rightly using precedent to evaluate present claims and activity.
But the fanboys want to fight the Klingons and live forever, dammit!
So you have a lot of evidence-free and faith-doctrine denial in your responses.
Basically, everybody is afraid of their own dying. The former enthusiasm for hopes of an afterlife are now transferred to an assurance that technology, given time, will address all wants - including those with classic Freudian displacement behaviors.
SPACE BOYS! YOU ARE GOING TO CROAK SOMEDAY!
You're betting on the pantomime horse...