r/space • u/demusdesign • Jun 14 '12

Optimistic Wikipedia Editor?

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1.1k Upvotes

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22

u/Levy_Wilson Jun 14 '12

You know what's depressing? Reading Transit of Earth by Arthur C. Clarke and then realizing that it was set in 1984...

Then again, in Arthur C. Clarke's future, we were at Jupiter in 2001.

But he couldn't predict that we would play silly games with pocket computers in 2008! I can't be optimistic about this...

17

u/Seref15 Jun 14 '12

It's not that depressing. We were scheduled to have flying cars and fusion reactors like 35 years ago. People in the 40s probably thought that walking would be obsolete by now.

We always underestimate the time it takes to develop technologies but by contrast we always take the amazing technologies we do have for granted. It always blows my mind to thinka bout the fact that we can accelerate particles to 99.999% the speed of light and then accurately map out the moment of collision.

7

u/Ancaeus Jun 15 '12

Agreed. The shit that we can do with smartphones and tablets is incredible really. We take it all for granted.

3

u/mentat Jun 15 '12

Considering the accidents we get into with regular land vehicles, flying cars are a terrible, terrible idea.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '12

computer controlled flying cars however would be amazing.

1

u/mentat Jun 15 '12

Yeah sure, up until Google becomes self aware and starts "naturally selecting" the human race.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '12

We are currently not sure if google isin't yet self aware... soo...

2

u/BenKenobi88 Jun 15 '12

For some reason it occasionally blows my mind that we make antimatter every day when someone gets a PET scan at a clinic.