[tt] [ExI] Today's Dilbert

[Perry E. Metzger]

Mark Plus <markplus at hotmail.com> writes:
> People with this general outlook have to explain why the real 21st
> Century doesn't resemble all the "brochures" about it published in
> the latter 20th Century.

Because predicting the future is hard.

> Futurist visionaries active in the 1970's who influenced today's
> transhumanists, like Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson,
> F.M. Esfandiary, Keith Henson and Jerry Pournelle, predicted that by
> now we'd L-5 and moon colonies, satellites beaming extra solar power
> to Earth, survivable cryonic suspensions and practical "immortalty."
> What happened to that future, any way?

Instead we got a global internet carrying your pessimistic message
around the world in seconds, the mass sequencing of genomes, creation
of organisms with completely synthetic genomes, etc.

Some of the technologies we never thought could happen happened
quickly. Some things we never expected at all happened. Some things we
expected turned out to be either further out or impossible.

I don't think any of this is much of a surprise.

Perry