Ask A Genius 207 – Science Fiction and S Curve
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/23
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Rick Rosner: People gradually adapt to these changes. Maybe, a better model of the future will be things look like now, and then an S curve pops in and then you have a new S curve. Instead of a gradual thing like the coming smart phones, you can have the things like that.
They took over in less than 10 years. Now, we have a stable relationship with smart phones. We’re constantly buying new crappy ones. You can buy crappy computers. You can buy new crap, but that buying new crap is kind of a stable thing now.
So, you can talk about the conditions under which you get an S curve. Technology must work well enough. People who want to use it—you get the very beginnings of these things. Where only a few are wanting to take the trouble, or are intrepid enough to deal with the technology; then it becomes useful technology, and people embrace them, it becomes hard not to embrace them.
I cannot think of any technological improvement to human life that hasn’t been embraced for some reason. If the technology is clearly convenient and helpful, and doesn’t have major problems, then people will ubiquitously use it.
Science fiction, if not impossible, eventually comes to pass. A story written in 1976 or 1980s science fiction might have a pervasive use of computers that we might not see until 2006. I have to say no to science fiction as a correction.
We will probably never have a society of flying cars because flying cars don’t make sense for a lot of people.
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