[eliben]

It's curious how these predictions always turn out to be based on the current technology, pushed to its limits. Kinda like sci-fi from the 1950s predicts advanced space travel but barely any computers in the early 21st century.

[partisan]

This is a great observation. I grew up reading books that said we would be living in torus shaped space stations and shuttling back and forth to the moon. As you pointed out, there was never any emphasis on computers in these predictions, just video conferencing at best.

The present is disappointing when taken from that perspective, but fortunately Elon Musk probably grew up reading the same books and dreaming about the same future.

[simonh]

I'm reading 'The Stainless Steel Rat' to my daughters as bedtime reading right now. They're loving it, but I can't help noticing how dated much of the technology is. I remember even reading it back in the late 80s it was beginning to show it's age a bit, but then it's 5 years older than I am. Truly great story though, lots of fun.

[Cyph0n]

I could have sworn that Arthur C. Clarke and Asimov both had computers in their sci-fi universes, but now that I try to think about it, you're probably right. The closest thing I can think of to a computer is HAL from 2001.

[zardo]

They had computers, but they usually remained gigantic expensive machines. They could forsee supercomputing, but not personal computing.

[Cyph0n]

But you have to hand it to them, they and many of their contemporaries did an amazing job building the tech for their futuristic worlds. You could read Foundation or Childhood's End now and you probably wouldn't notice that they were written in the 50s.