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nottorpyesterday at 11:00 AM4 repliesview on HN

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.


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burkamanyesterday at 9:28 PM

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."

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dmdyesterday at 4:53 PM

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

6510yesterday at 11:46 AM

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

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ajucyesterday at 11:57 AM

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

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