There are a lot more hypotheses not mentioned here, mostly hypotheses in which innovation stagnated because of effects which made individuals less innovative (as opposed to affecting coordination). For example, the “television rots your brain” hypothesis: that people who grew up with access to television are less capable of innovating, in general. Or the same but for people who ate the low-fat diet that the government was promoting, or were exposed to too much lead as children, or lost their agency to oppressive schooling and didn’t recover it.
There are lots of hypotheses about overall changes in innovation. But neither Josh nor I are talking about a general decline in innovation. I see patterns where there are big differences between industries, with innovation slowing in some and remaining good in others. I want to explain those differences.
Could you give some more examples of “innovating” and “disappointing” industries?
Were those SF writers clueless optimists, making mostly random forecasting errors? No! Josh shows that for the least energy intensive technologies, their optimism was about right...
Arthur C. Clarke’s Comsats: energy-intensive, huge success
Asimov’s robots: disappointing because intelligence turns out to be harder than we thought.
Asimov’s “Psychohistory”: disappointing because chaos theory?
James Blish’s “Cities in Flight”: antigravity and force fields, ironically capable of running off a small zinc-air battery. Disappointing because we haven’t found a physics rootkit that interesting.
Comsats seem to be working as predicted, based on an energy-intensive technology that stagnated in 1970 and on low energy electronics that have continued to progress well.
It will be possible in that age, perhaps only 50 years from now, for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London … I am perfectly serious when I suggest that one day we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand.
Arthur C. Clarke in 1958 said we should have fusion power and a global library now, we should be getting weather control right about now, and gravity control in 2050.
Josh classifies our global library as 150% of what was predicted.
Other predictions Josh classifies as successful: home-based videophones, robocars, translating machines.
Other predictions that didn’t come close: lunar base, “Transportation 1000 mph and one cent per mile”, undersea cities.
I might have to read the book. I’m not sure I want to, if it’s going to be 60% nostalgia for a future that didn’t happen, and 40% blaming “fundamentalist” environmentalists for everything.
For 1000 mph are we talking SSTs or vactrains? Vactrains—depending on pumping losses—might be quite (whisper it, so Josh can’t hear) ergophobe. Quiet, too. For SSTs, do we just displace all electric load to nukes, so the cost of kerosene is unimportant, and fly larger Concordes? (Anyone who doesn’t like sudden loud noises is an environmentalist!) Do we fly SSTs higher, maybe fueled with cryogenic hydrogen, made from water and low-demand-period electricity?
Undersea cities… don’t sound *very* energy-intensive. How do the citizens of Atlantis earn their living?
What would the lunar base be for? Exploration? An observatory? Helium-3? Near-future projections often involved mining the moon then rail-launching ore into orbit—probably solar-powered. Is this ergophobic? It’s much more efficient than a chemical rocket...
Josh gave a version of this book as a talk at a LW Europe Community Camp. The thing that stayed in my memory wash how important energy costs are. The chart that showed how we got the low-energy invention that were predicted but didn’t get the high-energy invention was impactful.
Helicopters are like flying taxis but their usage was reduced after the oil crisis in the 1970′s with rising energy prices. If we would have cheap energy we would have a lot of them and then likely also something that’s more car-like.
Undersea cities could engage in activities like mining and fish farming.
The book is maybe 25% nostalgia, 30% blame. It seems pretty relevant to how we make long-term forecasts.
He’s talking SSTs. I’m unsure what propulsion methods he prefers for those. He claims sonic booms could have been cut in half compared to the Concorde. A good government would have set a fee for sonic booms that bore some resemblance to how much people disvalued loud noise. But the US government seems unwilling to say what conditions an SST would need to meet.
I’m unclear why I’d want undersea cities when there’s room for seasteads.
Lunar colonies would hedge against some catastrophic risks. They might be created for reasons similar to why Europeans settled the New World.
There are a lot more hypotheses not mentioned here, mostly hypotheses in which innovation stagnated because of effects which made individuals less innovative (as opposed to affecting coordination). For example, the “television rots your brain” hypothesis: that people who grew up with access to television are less capable of innovating, in general. Or the same but for people who ate the low-fat diet that the government was promoting, or were exposed to too much lead as children, or lost their agency to oppressive schooling and didn’t recover it.
There are lots of hypotheses about overall changes in innovation. But neither Josh nor I are talking about a general decline in innovation. I see patterns where there are big differences between industries, with innovation slowing in some and remaining good in others. I want to explain those differences.
Could you give some more examples of “innovating” and “disappointing” industries?
Arthur C. Clarke’s Comsats: energy-intensive, huge success
Asimov’s robots: disappointing because intelligence turns out to be harder than we thought.
Asimov’s “Psychohistory”: disappointing because chaos theory?
James Blish’s “Cities in Flight”: antigravity and force fields, ironically capable of running off a small zinc-air battery. Disappointing because we haven’t found a physics rootkit that interesting.
What if we pick randomly from http://www.technovelgy.com?
Comsats seem to be working as predicted, based on an energy-intensive technology that stagnated in 1970 and on low energy electronics that have continued to progress well.
Asimov said in 1964:
Josh classifies current industrial robotics as 100% of what was predicted for today, home robots as 90%, and AI as 80%.
Arthur C. Clarke said in 1964:
Arthur C. Clarke in 1958 said we should have fusion power and a global library now, we should be getting weather control right about now, and gravity control in 2050.
Josh classifies our global library as 150% of what was predicted.
Other predictions Josh classifies as successful: home-based videophones, robocars, translating machines.
Other predictions that didn’t come close: lunar base, “Transportation 1000 mph and one cent per mile”, undersea cities.
I might have to read the book. I’m not sure I want to, if it’s going to be 60% nostalgia for a future that didn’t happen, and 40% blaming “fundamentalist” environmentalists for everything.
For 1000 mph are we talking SSTs or vactrains? Vactrains—depending on pumping losses—might be quite (whisper it, so Josh can’t hear) ergophobe. Quiet, too. For SSTs, do we just displace all electric load to nukes, so the cost of kerosene is unimportant, and fly larger Concordes? (Anyone who doesn’t like sudden loud noises is an environmentalist!) Do we fly SSTs higher, maybe fueled with cryogenic hydrogen, made from water and low-demand-period electricity?
Undersea cities… don’t sound *very* energy-intensive. How do the citizens of Atlantis earn their living?
What would the lunar base be for? Exploration? An observatory? Helium-3? Near-future projections often involved mining the moon then rail-launching ore into orbit—probably solar-powered. Is this ergophobic? It’s much more efficient than a chemical rocket...
Josh gave a version of this book as a talk at a LW Europe Community Camp. The thing that stayed in my memory wash how important energy costs are. The chart that showed how we got the low-energy invention that were predicted but didn’t get the high-energy invention was impactful.
Helicopters are like flying taxis but their usage was reduced after the oil crisis in the 1970′s with rising energy prices. If we would have cheap energy we would have a lot of them and then likely also something that’s more car-like.
Undersea cities could engage in activities like mining and fish farming.
The book is maybe 25% nostalgia, 30% blame. It seems pretty relevant to how we make long-term forecasts.
He’s talking SSTs. I’m unsure what propulsion methods he prefers for those. He claims sonic booms could have been cut in half compared to the Concorde. A good government would have set a fee for sonic booms that bore some resemblance to how much people disvalued loud noise. But the US government seems unwilling to say what conditions an SST would need to meet.
I’m unclear why I’d want undersea cities when there’s room for seasteads.
Lunar colonies would hedge against some catastrophic risks. They might be created for reasons similar to why Europeans settled the New World.