Ask A Genius 204 – The Future, Inconsiderate Considerations
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/20
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Rick Rosner: It is easier for people to call bullshit on the future on Twitter. People go along and hear predictions with these weird things and things being overturned, then you look at your life and think, “Where is the future? We had cars 100 years ago and cars now.
We have phones and movies now. Some are 3D. Some have special effects, but still they’re movies. So where is the fantastic future?”
That kind of misses—when the future arrives, it arrives all the sudden and then ka-boom within a couple of years things are different. “You got airbags. Fine. You got auto-park. Fine. It doesn’t change that we’re still driving cars.”
So, you have a bunch or a couple of ways for people toc all bullshit on the future. That doesn’t disqualify the future. That those ways of calling bullshit don’t disprove that the future is going to kick everyone’s ass.
On the one hand, we have shown stability is characteristic the way things are; it doesn’t preclude rapid changes in the ways things are. You have gradual changes that by their nature of being gradual do not seem like a big deal. It is like, “So what? The auto-parking car. How does this change my life?”
So that by the time you get to the self-driving car, you find the radical change that is the frog in the water that is being brought to a boil. You get used to a thing with changing technology, so you’re not blown away as easily.
The future finally gets here. It is like a principle of reality versus science fiction, which is, in science fiction you get to see the future and it is, awesome. You get to see it all at once. But, even with S curves, stuff takes a while.
When it gets here, then you see how it got here, and when it shows up, it is a culmination of old stuff and new stuff and it is grubby and sleazy and cheap. The sense of wonder has been sucked out of it by the process that it took to get here and how grubby it is by the time it gets here.
The principle is that you never get as much enjoyment out of the real future as kind of would anticipate seeing science fiction portrayals of the future.
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