If all past predictions had come true, we would have things like self-cleaning clothes or underwater cities. Some predictions from the past were correct but the inventions, like talking cars and video telephones, didn't turn out to be as popular as once thought.
Two of the most famous novels predicting our future were George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
Published in 1949 as a warning against the dangers of a totalitarian government, Orwell's book described a future government called "Big Brother" that constantly rewrote history and watched citizens' every move on TV cameras that couldn't be turned off. Huxley's 1932 book envisioned a freer world where everyone takes mood-enhancing drugs and babies are concocted in giant laboratories. Retrieved on August 1, 2008 from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june01/predictions.html#
The prediction from George Orwell’s 1984 (circa 1949) that Big Brother will monitor citizens every move with cameras has come true in part with traffic, store and cell phone cameras recording the daily events and posting the captured data to web sites such as you tube, news media and other video sharing sites. http://www.trafficcam.com/
Additionally, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World circa 1932 wasn’t far off with the prediction of test tube babies which occurred on July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world's first successful test-tube baby was born. The exact prediction did not materialize but the point is that some form of the prediction did. The problem with prediction is forming an abstraction that encompasses a wide variance of possible events. This initial event began a new hope for women who want to have children through the new procedure of in vitro fertilization.
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2008/07/24/2008-07-24_30_years_of_testtube_babies.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2008/07/24/2008-07-24_30_years_of_testtube_babies.html
http://history1900s.about.com/od/medicaladvancesissues/a/testtubebaby.htm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-394894/Worlds-test-tube-baby-pregnant.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IVF
2 comments:
Ed,
Nice analysis, but I wonder how true this really is. Orwell's premise wasn't that there would be a lot of cameras out there, it was that Big Brother would be watching. I agree with you that there are a lot of cameras, but I don't think anybody is watching.
I know that a lot of paranoid people think that the government is always monitoring them, but can you imagine how many people it would take to monitor us, then the number to monitor the monitors (they have to be watched too!), and the ones to monitor those monitoring the monitors, and so on? We would all be employed as monitors at one level or another...
I do believe Big Brother is watching but is not disclosing the details, since that would be a dead giveaway.
What would you say if the monitors monitoring the monitors and so forth were computers rather than people?
The computer system can search for key phrases and syntax more efficiently and without emotion than their human counterpart. The human emotion is what people key in on. What do you think?
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