But their computers are still the size of a room and everyone smokes
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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You jest! Asimov’s computers are the size of planets.
The ones that aren't people, at least.
Their computers have AGI already. Our computers consume more energy than entire countries to make studio Ghibli fakes and autocomplete on steroids.
"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" is one of the best self-aware computer novels.
I love that in the novel the computer has already become self aware before it attempts something really difficult - creating a CGI face for itself
Don't forget the reels of tape lmao
When you saw how they managed to put a person on the moon with room sized computers and about 145K lines of code, yeah I can see how they think it’d be possible.
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Technology had been advancing at a breakneck pace for over a century. It’s not crazy for them to think that would keep happening.
Isn’t it though? Each age has had its technological advance that defines that age. But at no time did the next age come immediately. It was always reasonable to assume that after electricity there would be yet another lull before the next paradigm shifting innovation. It seems to me that the great lie of capitalism has been convincing people that every new product is that next great innovation.
Steam power gave way almost immediately to electricity, which gave way to nuclear technologies, which gave way to information technology, all building on what came before.
And then there’s all the various transportation technologies that happened at the same time. Going from the first flight to the Moon in under 70 years it’s no wonder, to me at least, that people thought we’d be on Mars by now.
Especially with Walt Disney putting a Nazi rocket scientist on TV a bunch of times.
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Old sci-fi be like
We've discovered a technology that explores the fundamental truths of human nature, gaze into the black mirror and reflect upon your modern folly.
...Also all the scientists are straight white men and we invented new ways for our women to cook dinner.
Edit: To be clear, old sci-fi is genuinely great. Merely pointing out the funny juxtaposition of nerdy white guys not fathoming any social change in their generally progressive and thought provoking works.
The people writing science fiction were trying to make a living.
They wrote for magazines and TV shows that depended on advertising. A bunch of midcentury advertisers weren't going to have a Black wom,an President.
Another thing to consider is how much change you can put into a story and still expect the average reader to keep up.
There was an article about an early Star Trek episode. One scene involved a couple of lines about a salt shaker. The production team went out and brought a bunch of wild looking salt shakers. [1960's, remember?] None of the 'futuristic' looking salt shakers was any good for the scene, because they realized the TV audience wouldn't understand what that funny looking thing was. In the end they used an ordinary looking shaker.
And then they repurposed the weird-looking salt shakers as medical instruments.
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To be fair; the less commercial stuff was better at that.
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The industrial and technological revolutions were a cause of radical change in human civilization. It was inspiring to think we would continue to grow instead of monetizing every last vestige of this world and our psyches?!
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People are confusing optimism with naiveté. The old sci-fi assumed the rate of progress with be constant or even accelerate. They saw people got to space and moon in what? 20 years? So they thought we will get to Mars by the end of century and beyond our solar system some time after that. They didn't predict the end of Cold War and massive disinvestment from space exploration. But there were plenty of pessimistic takes on the future. In Bladerunner all the animals are dead, in Alien everything is run by evil corporations, in Battlestar Galactica everyone dies, in Star Wars whole worlds are destroyed, apocalyptic visions are common. Getting the dates wrong is not the same as being optimistic.
Cyberpunk like Blade Runner was a direct response to the optimism of the golden age of SF. They said there wasn't enough sin in those stories. So they had protagonists who were heavy drug users taking out assassination contracts on big corpo CEOs and banging a prostitute in a back alley after they're done. They have high technology compared to the time it was written, but it doesn't help the common people make their lives any better. The Earth is a polluted wasteland, and the cities are stuffed full of people with trash all over the place.
Guess which approach is closer to what actually happened?
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The rapid progress and then stalling is not caused by lack of investment, it's the harsh reality of physics.
We cracked how to have machines fly like birds and then it's low hanging fruit to achieve amazing things in atmosphere.
While exploring that, rocketry makes nearby space possible, and the moon is "right there".
But then things are exponentially farther away, and many of them bigger gravity wells, making the trips too long and difficult to make two way trips.
In a very very short time we got heavier than air flight, rocketry, fission, mass production, and all sorts of robotics and computing. But reach breakthrough has a point where we scratch our heads trying to do better. A ton has been spent and will continue to be spent trying to crack controlled fusion. Someone that lived through us managing to split an atom for the first time to fairly widespread deployment naturally assumed fusion would be next and maybe not too long after something that would extract energy directly according to Einstein's most famous formula.
Nuclear rockets could have easily made space relatively cheap. The tech was actively tested by NASA, and it worked pretty well. Nixon canceled that program and saddled NASA with a mandate for a Shuttle without the proper funding.
The USSR's manned program, OTOH, was built mostly to hit a number of firsts (first dog in space, first man in space, first woman in space, first space walk, etc.), but do it as quickly as possible. This resulted in a series of "get it done right the fuck now" decisions. NASA did it the slow way, with each technical advancement building on the last, which is better in the long run (if you fund it, mind you). Russia did enough to build Soyuz and then ran that for decades.
The tech did not hit physical limits. The two major approaches to space flight hit different bureaucratic limits first.
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Meanwhile, Asimov: We'll have robots that will help us accomplish crazy shit but stupid zealots will keep whining about it and holding them back
This is in no way relevant to anything that's happening today.
now take that and replace "robots" with "shareholders". perspective of every single big shareholder today.
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Dystopias on the other hand, were way too optimistic about how long it would take for everything to turn to shit.
I used to wonder if I would ever walk on the moon or Mars during my lifetime when I was a kid. I miss that
In fairness to the Sci-Fi writers, we've launched so many probes into deep space since then.
We've sent satellites to Jupiter and diving bells below the clouds of Venus. We've retrieved soil from Mars and sent signals from beyond the Ort Cloud. We've recorded Gravity Waves and captured light off the edge of Black Holes and recorded the touch of Neutrinos.
We don't have six guys drinking coffee and staring out a window overlooking the moon of Titan. But that is largely because our signaling and robotics has made automated exploration more practical than manned missions.
And also because SciFi writers of the 1950s didn't understand how much radiation humans would need to shield themselves against once they left the Earth's magnetosphere.
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We went from the first flight, to the first spaceflight in 58 years. 8 years after that, we put humans on the moon. I don't think it was unreasonable for scifi writers in the 70s and early 80s to have glorious ideas about what we would accomplish in another 20-30 years.
The year is 2025 And humanity is once again trying to reinvent the wheel
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In my teens, the year 2000 was unreal. It embodied THE FUTURE - it was so far away.
Edit: centuries even.
PK Dick: Everything's been nuked and there are feral psychics roaming the wasteland stealing people's emotions.
Naomi Klein wrote about how older sci fi was so optimistic and how she thinks the current trend of depressing dystopian sci fi is bad for society, which was an interesting take I thought.
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I watched the first Moon Landing on our neighbors' TV. I was so disappointed because I'd been reading my Dad's and big brother's Asimov Magazines since I was six, and I couldn't believe our real technology was so primitive.
as a kid i was so convinced, near the end of 90s i thought "maybe there are huge advancements made but they're saving it for the year 2000 so it'll be bombastic like people have expected."
instead we got fucking segway lol
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Now recontextualize this using modern sci-fi that looks toward multiple centuries from now. Star Trek's egalitarian socialist utopia would never come to pass and the most likely future is that of Frank Herbert's Dune, where nearly 8,000 years from now we have a galactic feudal society where the ultra wealthy fight for control over limited resources while using religion to manipulate the poor into being their cannon fodder.
There were significant lows before the highs of the 23rd and 24th centuries of Star Trek. Incidentally the dark parts happen right around where we are now.
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They didn’t expect bigotry to basically hold us hostage for 100+ years.
Radiant indeed, but then Chernobyl happened and we got a lot more cautious about nuclear power. Also about trusting other countries. Well, we didn't trust them before but that coverup didn't help.
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In 'Starship Troopers' the narrator is amazed that the military has musical instruments that sound like the real thing, but can fit in your pocket. One major plot point hinges on the hero getting a hand written letter delivered by a FTL craft.
Looks like they’re exploring the Pyrenees.
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