[ExI] future fizzle

[Stefano Vaj]

2009/5/29 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
> Somehow we need to inject into these common articles the meme that there is
> a really good reason why we do not have the stuff envisioned by mid 20th
> century futurists: we found a better way.

This is the optimistic version. Add to that stuff which was
"conceptually" wrong.

But I would not underestimate what has not been achieved because of a
decline in fundamental search funding, increasing short-sightedness by
both businesses and goverments, the involution of western academia and
of the relative social status of scientific and technical jobs, the
dying away of the cultural incandescence of the era 1870-1970...

Where we are stronger than expected is with simulation, emulation,
simulacra. Fine and dandy with me, but the doubt remains that rather
than preparing, supporting and anticipating a takeover of the real
world, such "progress" ends up having a compensatory nature for the
delays and failures of the latter...

We planned to put men on Mars in 1982, 30 years later we have trouble
even in resuscitating Apollo-era technology, but special effects of
gigantic spaceships traveling across universes keep improving, thank
you.

-- 
Stefano Vaj