this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (4 children)

It’s why a lot of sci-fi written in the 1900’s takes place in like the 90’s and 2000’s. Writers thought that we would keep on exponentially advancing and have Mars colonies and flying cars by now. They could have never predicted that interest in space exploration would have waned, like people stopped caring about the space shuttle, and that the actual technological revolution took place in the computing space.

[–] buttnugget@lemmy.world 0 points 10 hours ago

This is because of the socio-political dimension of things. It’s not just that people just randomly changed their minds, so much technological innovation is driven by war or the threat of war.

[–] jnod4@lemmy.ca 0 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

No one predicted phone addiction

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 0 points 12 hours ago

It's weird reading work by authors like Asimov, where people travel between planets as a matter of routine, and we have sentient robots, but not mobile phones.

i think a lot of people simply couldn't have imagined computers back in 1900. that is simply because computers are a rapid qualitative progress instead of just a quantitative one.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 0 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

To be fait, a lot of sci fi does involve very advanced computing, like HAL in 2001.

[–] dzsimbo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

And some even got the cyberpunkiness almost right (Johnny Nmemonic swung so hard!). I think for every visionary piece, we have 100 lost contemporary 'trash' (not trash, more like a picture of the spirit of the time) that has already been lost.

I mean Star Trek was pretty wickedly ahead of it's time for all of the creator's shortcomings. Still can't believe that teleporting doesn't kill you every time.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 0 points 11 hours ago

Has it ever been proven in any of the shows that the transporter didn't kill everyone that used it and just made such prefect copies that no one realized?

Like it created an extra copy of Riker and there was the tragedy of Tuvix. Though I'd say the former is evidence that it is new copies but the latter might be evidence against it, since they each had memories of their time merged when they separated. Actually, that whole incident kinda brings into question what's going on for a transporter to accidentally merge two people and not in a "horrible teleportation into a wall accident" way and then somehow de-merge them.