Science Fiction of the fifties and earlier missed the computer revolution! Yes, there were a few writers who foresaw computers, but only one or two saw small, desktop or laptop, miniaturized computers.
Isaac Asimov, for example, had a galaxy populated by humankind and filled to the brim in the Foundation series. Even though he had a "positronic" robot, there were no computers to speak of in any of the stories. Ray Bradbury never used computers in any meaningful way, although he had wall sized TV screens and space ships to Mars. Not to mention some way for fire starters to calculate the precise amount of fire to burn books in "Fahrenheit 451."
There were many other top early writers, such as "Cordwainer Smith", Anne McCaffery, A. E. Van Vogt, John Campbell, and even Ted Sturgeon in "Dune", who created Galaxy-spanning futures yet never addressed the impact of computers on society. I always wondered how their spaceships were navigated without computers, and how their economies could work with only pencil and paper.
I think it was because most people didn't understand computers and thought (or hoped) that they must be a passing fad. When I first got into the computer business, I read an article by a "pundit" who believed that a computer programmer had to have a specially wired brain, and the rest of the populace never would understand the things. Even the CEO of IBM, Tom Watson, announced that the total market for computers worldwide would be no more than 50 units! They would have been amazed by the way computers have permeated society.
Can you think of any technological advances that changed our society to the same degree that computers did? Except for cell phones, I guess.
Next time: Science Fiction and Transportation.
No comments:
Post a Comment