On Wed, 2014-09-10 at 22:07 -0400, Bruce A. Metcalf wrote: > This is obvious, yet many will continue to insist that history can > offer > relevant answers. I do not believe that it can. > > > > ... I am looking for ostensibly "neutral" and "academic and > broad-based" > > studies. > > But they aren't available because we don't have any other example of > a > culture enduring such a high rate of technological change for such an > extended period. Academia, by its nature, cannot address novel > phenomenon.
OK let me re-post something that I posted a few days ago in response to Chew Lin Kay's thread about whether SciFi can change the world At the bottom are links to two videos - one from the 1920s and the other from the 1960s predicting the future. Please watch them and judge for yourself, but I will post my own reactions first. The first thing that strikes me about the two videos is not what they got wrong, but how much they got right. To me the question is" Were these simply accurate predictions" or road maps that inspired people of that age to make those predictions come true. Someone did say in this discussion that SciFi would serve as a beacon to inspire - so were these predictions simply "made to come true"? That would be SciFi guiding and moulding society, not necessarily (but possibly) in the right way. The second thing that strikes me is the fact that both these videos had the stereotype "heterosexual core family" - faithful husband, earning and paying the bills, expressing anxiety about wife's bills; devoted wife and mother, playing the female role, cooking, looking after the house; an adolescent girl child whose dress and behaviour appears totally out of place today - as she allows he mother to come her long straight hair. So what did the videos get right and what did they get wrong? The videos got much of the technological aspects right. The videos got the social and psychological aspects wrong.. So how good would Sci Fi be in guiding future societies? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czr-98yo6RU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4 shiv
