X-Message-Number: 18981
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 13:51:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: optimism

George Smith writes:

> The acceleration of technological change is overwhelmingly obvious IF you
> alter your perception of time.

Well, sure, George, no one would argue with that.

On the other hand, the "pace of change" did not bring TV to medieval
peasants--or antibiotics, for that matter. Science does not progress
equally fast in all areas, nor is the progress smooth. I remember
listening to a presentation by Ray Kurzweil, who used a lot of trend
curves and remarked along the way that humanity recovered from the Black
Death within a generation or so. Fine, I thought--but this could not have
been much consolation to those who lived through (or died in) the actual
period of the Black Death.

Another plague could strike tomorrow. We were amazingly fortunate that
AIDS is relatively hard to catch in the western world. The next virus may
not be so obliging. And even if we evade a new catastrophe, there is no
guarantee that the science we want (e.g. molecular repair of brain damage)
will come rolling along on schedule, while the science we are not so
enthusiastic about (e.g. bioterror weapons) somehow doesn't.

Really the "acceleration of change" is a meaningless concept for specific
areas, or for individuals, because it is so broad and generic. I wish it
weren't so.

One must also be careful with trend curves. According to a piece written
by G. Harry Stine around 1960 ("Science Fiction is Too Conservative") I
should have acquired an amount of power equal to that of the Sun, sometime
in the 1980s. Stine was quite diligent in his curve fitting. Unfortunately
he fitted exponential curves to curves which, in reality, have turned out
to be S-shaped.

Caveat predictor.

As for Vernor Vinge, whom I admire tremendously and know quite well, he
prefaces his public-speaking forays into future science by noting that he
enjoys taking the position of an extreme optimist. When you say, "All
right, now, Vernor, we've heard what you'd like to happen, and what might
happen; what do you really think is most likely to happen?" he becomes a
bit evasive--at least in my experience.

--CP

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