This is utter bullshit. Warren Ellis's excelent "How to see the future"[1], addresses why we're perpetually bored by the times we live in, and are always nostalgic about some bygone golden age:
...We look at the present day through a rear-view mirror.
This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the
Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic-
seeming future narratives. He said, “We look at the
present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards
into the future.”
He went on to say this, in 1969, the year of the crewed
Moon landing: “Because of the invisibility of any
environment during the period of its innovation, man is
only consciously aware of the environment that has
preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully
visible only when it has been superseded by a new
environment; thus we are always one step behind in our
view of the world. The present is always invisible because
it’s environmental and saturates the whole field of
attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone is alive in an
earlier day.”
He goes on to cite some examples of stuff that seems banal and boring because we're just so used to it:
There are six people living in space right now. There are
people printing prototypes of human organs, and people
printing nanowire tissue that will bond with human flesh
and the human electrical system.
We’ve photographed the shadow of a single atom. We’ve got
robot legs controlled by brainwaves. Explorers have just
stood in the deepest unsubmerged place in the world, a
cave more than two kilometres under Abkhazia. NASA are
getting ready to launch three satellites the size of
coffee mugs, that will be controllable by mobile phone
apps.
Here’s another angle on vintage space: Voyager 1 is more
than 11 billion miles away, and it’s run off 64K of
computing power and an eight-track tape deck.
In the last ten years, we’ve discovered two previously
unknown species of human. We can film eruptions on the
surface of the sun, landings on Mars and even landings on
Titan. Is all of this very boring to you? Because all this
is happening right now, in this moment. Check the time on
your phone, because this is the present time and these
things are happening. The most basic mobile phone is in
fact a communications devices that shames all of science
fiction, all the wrist radios and handheld communicators.
Captain Kirk had to tune his fucking communicator and it
couldn’t text or take a photo that he could stick a nice
Polaroid filter on. Science fiction didn’t see the mobile
phone coming. It certainly didn’t see the glowing glass
windows many of us carry now, where we make amazing things
happen by pointing at it with our fingers like goddamn
wizards.
That, by the way, is what Steve Jobs meant when he said
that iPads were magical. The central metaphor is magic.
And perhaps magic seems an odd thing to bring up here, but
magic and fiction are deeply entangled, and you are all
now present at a séance for the future. We are summoning
it into the present. It’s here right now. It’s in the room
with us. We live in the future. We live in the Science
Fiction Condition, where we can see under atoms and across
the world and across the methane lakes of Titan.
The point is that the difference between 1900 and 1960 is fundamental on every level.
Carriages -> Cars
Land Travel -> Aerospace
Iceboxes at best -> Modern refrigeration
Pen and Paper -> Computers
Newspapers -> Ubiquitous electronic media.
Living at the mercy of infectious diseases -> Antibiotics/vaccines.
Coal (at best) -> Nuclear
Outhouses -> Modern Plumbing and sanitation
Etc. You could make similarly great comparisons between 1840-1900.
What do we have now? Looking at atoms? WTF does that matter in any practical sense? And even if you want to get sciency, it's clear that 1900-1960 was when the big changes in physics occurred, at least since Newton.
All of the big practical changes since 1960 have mainly served to isolate us, as amusing as they might be.
If we accept the point that were just in the middle of the transition , and look a little bit forward, we'll see:
1960 -> 2025
Air travel -> life quality telepresence and group meetings globally
Expensive education -> free, high quality education for all
Antibiotics are great(but easy) -> tons of very difficult medical innovations(transplants,printing organs,cancer treatments,diagnostics, AI in medicine ...)
Everything needs workers -> So much can be done automatically, at extremely cheaper cost and extremely rapid pace.
Dirty energy -> Clean energy at competitive price(at least available if not deployed)
Manual cars -> automated cars (?)
We love lucy -> Extreme variety of content
Monopoly -> addictive digital experiences
It's easy to see big changes when you look over 60 years.
In the future people will look back at comments like this and wonder how we could be so blind. But that's because what will be obvious to them is not so obvious to us. We are immersed in our history, we are distracted by flashy short-term trends and comparatively blind to subtle, long-term trends. Partly because we lack the foresight to see which trends will win out in the long run.
However, let's look at how the very nature of the world has changed in the last half century and how that might play out over the next few decades.
Let's look at the developed world. 50 years ago that was pretty much just the US/Canada and Western Europe, with smatterings of incomplete industrialization elsewhere. Today Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea are unarguably developed, first world nations. And the coastal parts of China as well as Chile, Brazil, and several other countries are well on their way to that status and will join it within the next decade or two.
Meanwhile, war is becoming less common, and average quality of life as well as longevity is, overall, increasing everywhere in the entire world. This is an unprecedented event in human history, we are becoming more peaceful, wealthier, and healthier. And not just a small elite portion of the world, all of it (see Hans Rosling's TED talk for more on that).
Let's look at trade. In 1960 trade was remarkably limited. The world population was about 3 billion, gross world product was about 7 trillion USD (compared to 70 trillion today). In between the world grew by about 2x and got about 10x richer. Part of this is due to the invention of containerized shipping, which brought about a revolution in international shipping, increasing shipping tonnage by an order of magnitude or more. Today the total value of goods being transported internationally on the oceans is twice the value of the entire world economy in 1960.
Let's look at communications. Even in, say, 1980 the world was still a relatively disconnected place. Most people on Earth had never made a single phone call, and news of the world was still hard to come by. Today the world is knit together by a world-spanning instantaneous communications network, and the power of communication has been put into the hands of the world's population. It is not unusual nor terribly expensive to carry on a conversation in real-time with a person across the world, not just in the "1st world" but in the "3rd world" as well. News from all parts of the world now comes in the form of first hand reports and cell phone videos as much as it does from reporters repeating accounts from interviewed locals.
And that revolution in communications that has largely taken root only in the last decade has had a transformative effect on the world, and on geopolitics. Look at the revolutions of late, how quickly they spread, how they are still spreading, and how much they have overturned about the way we thought the world worked. The geopolitical landscape of 2015 will be unrecognizable from the perspective of 2005, and much of that is due to communication technology.
Let's look at business. In the US there has been an explosion of entrepreneurship on a massive scale. Many of the largest and most influential companies of today (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) were created not just within the last half century but even within the last 30 or 20 years. And new companies are sprouting up all the time (such as facebook). Meanwhile, a great many people are acquiring the capability to work for themselves on their own projects. The internet has made it that much easier for people to run their own businesses. Musical artists have found out how to be successful without signing on to a major label. Webcomic artists have discovered how to make a living without working through the syndication companies or being employees of large comic book corporations. Craftspeople have discovered how to sell their wares directly to the public through etsy or ebay or their own websites. And so many folks of many varying talents have taken their careers on a sharp detour via crowd-funding systems such as kickstarter. Already hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars are flowing through this new economy of self-made businesses, and it's growing at a fantastic pace. How fundamentally will this change the economy? In the next 20 years will it be more common for people to be their own boss and work as independent contractors than to be employees of a large corporation?
Let's look at medicine. AIDS was discovered in the 1980s. Throughout all of human history the only effective "treatment" for a lethal virus has been a vaccine, and yet scientists managed to develop effective treatments for AIDS within a matter of years. And today AIDS can be treated as a chronic illness. And too our understanding of biology and biochemistry has exploded. We've decoded the genome of not just homo sapiens but many other species and we've only just begun to understand biology on that level. But we've been able to experiment with amazing things, lab-grown organ replacements, genetic therapy, etc. Today someone with insulin dependent diabetes can buy actual, human insulin for a very affordable price. And this is because the gene to produce that insulin has been taken from humans and placed into bacteria which are then grown in vats and the insulin is extracted and purified. This is an amazing, futuristic achievement, and yet it is bog standard ordinary for today's world.
Let's look at technology and manufacturing. Computing power, of course, has exploded, and it will continue to do so as we develop new technologies like memristors and other breakthrough ideas. Manufacturing is in the midst of a sea change, as computer powered CNC machine tools, 3D printing, and much more are paving the way toward vastly accelerated cycles of development (whereby the time-frame between coming up with an idea and seeing that idea borne out in mass-production manufacturing has been shortened to a matter of weeks if not days, in the near future that will be measured in a matter of hours or minutes). And that will pave the way for fully automated manufacturing and fully configurable manufacturing. Imagine if anyone could visit a website, fill in a form, upload a few 3D models, pay a modest sum of money and have a bulk shipment of manufactured goods that were defined by that data (say, laptops, or smartphones, or bicycles, or automobiles) loaded onto a boat in a matter of days. What happens when a company with, say, 5 employees can build iPhones of the same quality and in sufficient volume to challenge Apple? What happens to the undeveloped world when we can make factories that run on solar power and bulk materials and output industrial goods (like tractors, cars, refrigerators, power stations, and water purification equipment), or when factories can produce factories themselves?
The world is a much different place than it was a half century ago, and it is on track to become an astoundingly different place than we can scarcely imagine. And the roots have been planted right here, right now.
P.S. Also, a tremendous amount of social change has happened in the last 50 years, both in the US and in the world. Much of that was enabled or assisted by technological change. It's easy to miss this because when comparing across time we tend to compare like with like, however we should remember that the lives we are comparing to in the 1960s aren't necessarily average lives, they are probably elite lives (e.g. straight christian white males with high-paying jobs).
That's was quite surreal to read. Thanks for taking your time to share such a nerve-rattling history of advancements in science and technology. I will probably print it out and frame it on my wall and remind myself that we are already living in the future even though much remains to be seen and accomplished.
I think it's obvious what "this" I was referring too. However, I do include myself and my post in that comment (which is why I said "we"). I have pointed out some ways in which our world is changing and has changed, but I certainly can't predict the future. Looking back from the perspective of the year 2040 there will no doubt be many trends that in retrospect are blindingly obvious but are not apparent to me.
Isn't that a result of relative stagnation in the 1800's? When things like better microscopes, advanced plumbing, higher speed trains, electricity, phone, radio and other staples of today's world were just being researched and used by a handful of people (with the others wondering why tf does it matter).
Right now, we're paving the way for much more powerful computers (quantum & "living" computers, HUD glasses), cheaper space travel (via privatization of space travel), effective transportation (electric cars, efficient airplanes), medicine (stem cells, man-machine interfaces), energy (nuclear fusion, efficient batteries) production (3D printers, robotics, faster prototyping and research), and other stuff.
And just like the radio, it will be at least another 50 years before we actually use it all on a larger scale, in my opinion...
Stagnation in the 1800's? Keep in mind this was the century that saw the invention and spread of the railroad, the invention and spread of a nearly instant global communication medium with the telegraph, the telephone, the moving picture, photography, the typewriter, large-scale mechanized factories with the spread of steam power, etc.
To me, it feels that it's the everyday life that isn't changing much.
* I got my first computer 16 years ago
* I bought my first mobile phone 9 years ago
* I drive a car that is 18 years old
* I still shop in physical stores
Today :
* I can surf on 20 different websites at the same time as downloading a movie in 1080p
* I can search wikipedia from my phone
* I can have a car that parks itself
* I can shop for some things on the internet
But these aren't revolutions. I like what I got now and wouldn't trade it for what I had 10 years ago, but it hadn't changed my life much. They are improvements that I've come to like. I feel that with so much knowledge and some much technology a real revolution should come faster. I'm not nostalgic, I'm impatient.
Everyday I face problems that I've never solved before. I can query a nearly complete repository of human knowledge and find solutions nearly instantly.[1]
When I'm exploring a new city I have satellite maps of the entire world tied to a searchable index of millions of places, all on a device that fits in my pocket and is more powerful than as a supercomputer was 25 years ago[2].
There's an electric c on the market that rivals gas powered vehicles from Mercedes, BMW, and Porsche in luxury, power, and price. [3]
I'm plugged into a network that can notify me in advance of an earthquake that's going to reach me.[4]
Cars that drive themselves have been approved as street legal vehicles in several states.[5]
Here's a list of a few things I might do on an average day that I couldn't do when I was in high school.
* Call home from the grocery store to ask if we're out of Provolone.
* Check my shopping list and see that items have been added to it since I left the house.
* Find a new restaurant with good reviews and make a reservation in mere minutes.
* Take pictures that rival 35mm film and make them available to friends in minutes (with me, it's usually hours or more, but it could be minutes).
* Find my way home from a random location without asking for directions in a gas station.
* Carry weeks worth of music and years worth of reading in my pocket.
* Order a new coffee maker online and expect it the next day.
* Buy a movie online and watch it instantly.
* Get answers to random medical questions.
* Find documentation for damned near anything.
* Work from home with access to everything I would have at the office.
Yes, many of these are indeed life changing. Could I live without these things? Absolutely, but I could also live without cars, and without air conditioning, and without a lot of things that were revolutionary. Electricity, indoor plumbing, and wired telephones took decades to make their way into average people's homes. If anything, the "digital age" is permeating lives faster and more broadly than the major changes that preceded it.
Ansolutely! I used to carry a Thomas Brothers guide to San Diego in my car. When I got lost it would take me 5 minutes just to figure out where the hell I was. The first time I drove to LA for my college orientation I had a map of California but not one of LA, and I got lost driving back from Westwood to UCLA and ended up in the middle of bel air. Today, it's hard to even remember that frustration.
The other day I was stumbling my way through configuring a server and thinking to myself: "how the hell did anyone ever accomplish anything before Google?".
Life now is clearly better and more interesting than it was 100 years ago. But the pace of innovation is much, much slower. 100 years ago cars, household electricity and recorded sound were all brand new. Every one of these things represents a huge leap forward, giving mankind entirely new capabilities. And all of them were developed and brought to market in the same 20-30 year period.
What have we produced in the last 20-30 years that's even close to providing that kind of new capability? The only recent innovation on that level is TCP/IP, and we've been iterating on that ever since.
"Things are good now" is never a reason to not get better. We've gotten very good at making incremental improvements, but fallen way behind on the pace of breakthrough innovation.
Wireless global communications for the masses is an enormous leap forward.
Cars and planes let me easily move 1500 miles away from where I grew up. And then modern communication technology and video/audio compression lets me communicate, with video, in real time with people back there, from anywhere I go with phone coverage. That's pretty damn significant.
The author of the original article is basically also assuming that none of the interesting things that are currently being researched are going to amount to anything. It's a bizarre mix of sampling problems, observational biases, and cynicism.
Edit: I thought of another pretty huge one: imaging, especially medically (look at how much less invasive many surgical procedures are now than they were 30 years ago), but also for stuff like mapping. We now have collections of images taken from airplanes and satellites of most (all?) of the world. When has that kind of information ever been available in the past? What kind of cool stuff will we be able to do in the next twenty years with all this information that has only seen widespread availability in the last ten years or so?
And then there are the medical procedures that weren't even possible thirty years ago...
