Sci-Fi Writers of the Past Predict Life In 2012

cylonlover writes "As part of the L, Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future award in 1987, a group of science fiction luminaries put together a text 'time capsule' of their predictions about life in the far off year of 2012. Including such names as Orson Scott Card, Robert Silverberg, Jack Williamson, Algis Budrys and Frederik Pohl, it gives us an interesting glimpse into how those living in the age before smartphones, tablets, Wi-Fi and on-demand streaming episodes of Community thought the future might turn out."

Comments

not really the strength of sci-fi

[Trepidity]

This is vaguely interesting, but imo, near-term predictions of technological development aren't really what you go to sci-fi for. If you really want an accurate prediction 15 years out, there are more qualified but generally less exciting people to get it from than sci-fi authors: that's near enough that you really just need people with a good amount of historical knowledge, extensive information about current developments, and perhaps especially, accurate knowledge of current research progress, prospects, and bottlenecks. And a decent ability to synthesize and evaluate all those variables.

Sci-fi's strengths are, instead, more about what-if than what-is-likely. One kind is technological what-ifs, imagining (at least in hard sci-fi) conceptually plausible but not anywhere near buildable technologies and their results and implications; and ethical/political/etc. what-ifs, analyzing how future societies might operate (often in either dystopian or utopian visions).

At least, that's what I go to sci-fi for.

Re:Pr0n

[Culture20]

Murray Leinster predicted the internet in the March 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction in a story titled A Logic Named Joe (full text at the link).

Forster predicted "internet" social networking and remote shopping in 1909. http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html