[extropy-chat] Futures Past

[Dirk Bruere]

On 10/9/05, Greg Burch <gregburch at gregburch.net> wrote:
>
> Since I was old enough to read, I've been engaged by projections about the
> future. My favorite parts of the set of children's encyclopedias we had in
> the early 1960s were those that provided projections about the future. They
> showed me such wonderful visions: Atomic-powered cars! Cities under the sea!
> Vacations on the Moon! All this would come to be by the time I would be the
> age my parents were then. Well now I am that age and we know what happened
> to all of those glossy futures.
>
> But somehow, I never seem to learn. Seven years ago, we had a discussion
> here on the List about what we called "near-term projections" for the future
> to c. 2015. I gathered together some of the ideas in that discussion and put
> them in what I called a "futurist time capsule." Here it is:
>
> http://www.gregburch.net/writing/NearTerm.htm
>
> It makes for interesting and, in many instances, painful reading. Bear in
> mind that this was the vision some of us had in the Spring of 1998. We were
> surfing at the zenith of the 1990s Bubble. The Collapse of the Bubble, 911,
> Enron, Columbia – all were in the future.
>
> What do you take away from looking back on looking forward?
>
>
That the future isn't what it used to be.

Dirk
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