[usefulcat]

> It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make, since it will lead to an “intelligence explosion.”

It’s not uncommon to find these kinds of predictions from the twentieth century, which of course with hindsight can seem wildly optimistic.

But I think there are understandable reasons for that optimism.

Imagine you were born in the early twentieth century, say roughly 1910 +/- 10 years. If you had been born then, you would probably have lived through all of the following:

- The transition from horses to motor vehicles

- The invention of the airplane, from first flight to supersonic

- Not one but two world wars

- The splitting of the atom

- Human spaceflight, including traveling to the moon

If you’d been born slightly earlier, you could also add electrification to that list.

When I compare what I’ve seen in my life so far, I don’t think anything comes close (for better and worse) to even one of those things. So yeah, of course they were optimistic about technological progress—look at what they just lived through.

[Timwi]

> When I compare what I’ve seen in my life so far, I don’t think anything comes close (for better and worse) to even one of those things.

I dunno, I personally consider the internetification of the world to be on a level with the developments you've listed. We've transitioned a lot of things away from the real world into cyberspace: banking, shopping, postal communication... and now even recent technologies such as radio and TV are being replaced by it. I don't know how old you are, but I've lived through that and it has been quite a ride — for better and worse, as you say.

Nevertheless, I agree that little has changed since. Maybe this puts you at < 20 years of age? I don't want to be presumptuous.

[usefulcat]

No, I'm much older than that. I was in college in the early 90s when the internet first became known to the general public. I guess I just don't consider internetification to be that impressive. I mean, sure, it's nice that I can pay for things electronically and Amazon is very convenient, but compared to being able to fly? Or travel to the moon? Or split the atom? To say nothing of the many, many millions who were directly affected by two world wars.

As for the replacement of radio and TV, I think that's one of the least impressive aspects. Broadcasting via the internet enables on-demand consumption. Which is nice, but hardly revolutionary compared to the ability to broadcast audio and video at all, which we had already been doing for many decades. There's also the fact that it's easier for individuals to publish/broadcast, which I suspect is more impactful.

However there is one major exception related to my opinion of the impact of the internet. The huge number of 'information sources' that exist today (previously these would have been called news sources) means that it's pretty trivial for every person to listen to only those sources that cater to their existing preferences. Which is exactly what nearly everyone does. IMO this has had a huge impact on driving political polarization, which is in turn having a very large negative impact on governance and society as a whole. At least in the US, people were far less politically divided when there were fewer sources of news, probably because there was less disagreement on basic facts.