[nottorp]

Almost no scifi has predicted world changing "qualitative" changes.

As an example, portable phones have been predicted. Portable smartphones that are more like chat and payment terminals with a voice function no one uses any more ... not so much.

[burkaman]

The Machine Stops (https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/...), a 1909 short story, predicted Zoom fatigue, notification fatigue, the isolating effect of widespread digital communication, atrophying of real-world skills as people become dependent on technology, blind acceptance of whatever the computer says, online lectures and remote learning, useless automated customer support systems, and overconsumption of digital media in place of more difficult but more fulfilling real life experiences.

It's the most prescient thing I've ever read, and it's pretty short and a genuinely good story, I recommend everyone read it.

Edit: Just skimmed it again and realized there's an LLM-like prediction as well. Access to the Earth's surface is banned and some people complain, until "even the lecturers acquiesced when they found that a lecture on the sea was none the less stimulating when compiled out of other lectures that had already been delivered on the same subject."

[morpheos137]

There is even more to it than that. Also remember this is 1909. I think this classifies as a deeply mysterious story. It's almost inconceivable for that time period.

-people a depicted as grey aliens (no teeth, large eyes, no hair). Lesson the Greys are a future version of us.

The air is poisoned and ruined cities. People live in underground bunkers...1909...nuclear war was unimaginable then. This was still the age of steam ships and coal power trains. Even respirators would have been low on the public imagination.

The air ships with metal blinds sound more like UFOs than blimps.

The white worms.

People are the blood cells of the machine which runs on their thoughts social media data harvesting of ai.

China invaded Australia. This story was 8 years or so after the Boxer Rebellion so that would have sounded like say Iraq invading the USA in the context of its time.

The story suggests this is a cyclical process of a bifurcated human race.

The blimp crashing into the steel evokes 9/11, 91+1 years later...

The constellation orion.

Etc etc.

There is a central commitee

[madaxe_again]

Zamatyin’s We was prescient politically, socially and technologically - but didn’t fall into the trap of everyone being machine men with antennae.

It’s interesting - Forster wrote like the Huxley of his day, Zamyatin like the Orwell - but both felt they were carrying Wells’ baton - and they were, just from differing perspectives.

[anthk]

>The air is poisoned...

That's just the Victorian London.

[dmd]

“A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.” ― Frederik Pohl

[6510]

That it has to be believable is a major constraint that reality doesn't have.

[marci]

In other words, sometimes, things happen in reality that, if you were to read it in a fictional story or see in a movie, you would think they were major plot holes.

[ajuc]

Stanisław Lem predicted Kindle back in 1950s, together with remote libraries, global network, touchscreens and audiobooks.

[nottorp]

And Jules verne predicted rockets. I still move that it's quantitative predictions not qualitative.

I mean, all Kindle does for me is save me space. I don't have to store all those books now.

Who predicted the humble internet forum though? Or usenet before it?

[arcade79]

Well, there was Ender's Game, it came in '85. Usenet did exist at that point, though. Don't know if the author had encountered it.

The Shockwave Rider was also remarkable prescient.

[ghaff]

Kindles are just books and books are already mostly fairly compact and inexpensive long-form entertainment and information.

They're convenient but if they went away tomorrow, my life wouldn't really change in any material way. That's not really the case with smartphones much less the internet more broadly.

[nottorp]

That was exactly my point.

Funny, I had "The collected stories of Frank Herbert" as my next read on my tablet. Here's a juicy quote from like the third screen of the first story:

"The bedside newstape offered a long selection of stories [...]. He punched code letters for eight items, flipped the machine to audio and listened to the news while dressing."

Anything qualitative there? Or all of it quantitative?

Story is "Operation Syndrome", first published in 1954.

Hey, where are our glowglobes and chairdogs btw?

[nottorp]

Hah, can't resist posting even if this story is old and dead by now.

Went further in Herbert's shorts volume and I just ran into a scene where people are preparing to leave Earth on a colony ship to seed some distant world...

... and they still have human operator assisted phone calls.

[lloeki]

That has to be the most dystopian-sci-fi-turning-into-reality-fast thing I've read in a while.

I'd take smartphones vanishing rather than books any day.

[ghaff]

My point was Kindles vanishing, not books vanishing. Kindles are in no way a prerequisite for reading books.

[lloeki]

Thanks for clarifying, I see what you mean now.

[nottorp]

You may want to make your original post more clear, because i agree that at a quick glance it says you wouldn't miss books.

I didn't believe you meant that of course, but we've already seen it can happen.