Why are so many people here pessimistic and dismissive of any future technology? We see this pretty often in this subreddit. You would think it would be a more optimistic subreddit, but it’s almost as if people here really don’t like to discuss new technologies in a fair light. Criticism is fine, skepticism is fine, but making sweeping statements about how you know the future and that things will never get better is just dismissive and disruptive to conversations.
Every major technological revolution changed and reshaped itself in ways that many couldn’t predict. So why not take that into account? X is impossible? Have you actually looked into the science behind that? People just don’t want that? How do you undoubtedly know if people will want or not want a future technology when that technology doesn’t exist in its mature form yet?
These are just really dismissive comments that people keep on touting. AR glasses will never have enough use cases for people to mass adopt. VR headsets or gimmicks and 3D TV failed for a reason. AI doesn’t exist because there is no intelligence to be found. Self-driving cars, just like flying cars, are going to remain a fantasy. Self-driving cars will never be able to account for the harsh unpredictability of roads and weather.
Why do people feel the need to make such a strong statement without having done the research to see whether their claims hold up? There are certainly going to be technology duds, but when everything is treated as a dud, there’s clearly a dud in how people see new technology.
I think people are wary of hype. Future tech is usually overflowing with promise and potential, but it usually either takes longer to be realized than initially thought or is never realized at all. There are also a lot of intermediate points of failure between tech and mass adoption that have nothing to do with the tech itself, not the least of which is simple commercialization and distribution.
Future tech turns up and gets massively overhyped. It’s going to change the world, we hear. But then it gets very boring, people lose their jobs because of it, and reality bites. The bubble bursts, people lose their jobs, and eventually, the exciting new tech finds its level in the few niche applications it was always going to work. A few tedious blowhards stick around trying to convince the world it still has relevance outside these use cases.
I’m not pessimistic about our capacity for invention or innovation. I’m pessimistic because the already wealthy and powerful will use that progress to further exploit the working class while creating an ever more luxurious life for themselves. Honestly, I feel like we’re headed for an Eli and Morlock level of societal divergence.
Well, you see, capitalism has a lot to do with it. A lot of technology isn’t actually doing anything useful. It’s rent-seeking behavior under the guise of being disruptive. A lot of technology is replacing things that don’t need to be replaced. It comes with incredible human cost. Etc. Talk to me when technology actually starts to make us more free.
It’s not the technology where I’m doubtful, it’s people. Because we don’t change, not really. Thousands of years of human history and all the prehistory that came before, but we’re still as tribalistic and xenophobic as we’ve always been. We’ll have nicer toys, sure, and we really can achieve greatness when we work together. But anyone imagining utopia, that’s just not who we are.
Because there’s been a common trend the last two decades of people releasing computer-generated pseudoscience and acting like it has any basis in reality. It’s funny how when you actually talk to anyone who works in these fields, they tend to be quite cynical about new technology, whereas the people who know jack about the topic are always super optimistic and constantly mumbling, ‘Oh, they made fun of the Wright brothers too.’ All new technology is a dud until proven otherwise, and recent technology has a bad track record of proving otherwise.
Because all the progress we made so far in productivity that should have eased our workload and given us more freedom didn’t go to the working class. We work more and afford less, and I don’t see that changing in my lifetime. I think people are just getting sick of all the headlines that turn out to be hype.
Besides that, technological progress seems to be slowing down. Look back to the ’80s, what’s changed since then? Sure, we have reusable rockets now, a few gene therapies, immunotherapy, and so on. But what actually affects our daily lives? Cell phones and the internet, that’s literally about it. And you can’t even point to the other stuff as well since those things are also nothing too drastic.
If humans have shown anything, it’s that we should not have nice things. We will bastardize them for our own gains and disregard the consequences. The technology isn’t necessarily the issue, it’s the application and execution. So your question really just seems to be, why are people pessimistic and cynical about the future? The answer is simple: it’s because of our past human behavior, which is pretty well-documented.
