Elinda wrote:
I just started rereading Foundation (Isaac Asimov). I read it first in the 70's - before the communication age.
I keep comparing the technological advances in the book (set in like the year 12,000) with how actual technology has advanced. The cell phone/smart phone/tablet - mobile information/entertainment access etc were not really envisioned in this story, nor most science fiction I've ever read. Warp speed travel - no problem, synthesized food - sure, but Google Glass would be a real show-stopper in the Thirteenth-thousand century.
I find that kind of interesting for some reason.
Yup. Science fiction more or less completely missed how computers would actually work and change things. They were either seen as glorified counting machines (for like doing actual accounting), or that they'd improve to the state of being artificial brains capable of running cities. But they never got that computing devices would actually be used to enable efficient communication, and that those things would take forms that they just couldn't even imagine at the time.
Here's a
fun site to waste some time on. Interesting stuff in there.