[bofhers] Re: [bofhers] Espectacular artículo de Isaac Asimov en 1964: Predicciones acerca del 2014
- From: Culebras Culebras <davidelculebras@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bofhers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2014 14:38:41 +0100
Increíble yo creo que a cierta un 75% y el hotel submarino, ¿cuenta
rapture? Muy chulo el articulo.
Saludos.
El 01/01/2014 12:40, "Kyle von Bofhlander" <kylebofh@xxxxxxxxx> escribió:
> Una vez más reafirmo mi admiración por este visionario/consumidor de
> LSD. Porque lo que predice sólo es posible con una mente preclara o
> mediante un estado alterado de la conciencia.
> August 16, 1964 Visit to the World's Fair of 2014 By ISAAC ASIMOV The
> New York World's Fair of 1964 is dedicated to "Peace Through
> Understanding." Its glimpses of the world of tomorrow rule out
> thermonuclear warfare. And why not? If a thermonuclear war takes place, the
> future will not be worth discussing. So let the missiles slumber eternally
> on their pads and let us observe what may come in the nonatomized world of
> the future.
>
> What is to come, through the fair's eyes at least, is wonderful. The
> direction in which man is traveling is viewed with buoyant hope, nowhere
> more so than at the General Electric pavilion. There the audience whirls
> through four scenes, each populated by cheerful, lifelike dummies that move
> and talk with a facility that, inside of a minute and a half, convinces you
> they are alive.
>
> The scenes, set in or about 1900, 1920, 1940 and 1960, show the advances
> of electrical appliances and the changes they are bringing to living. I
> enjoyed it hugely and only regretted that they had not carried the scenes
> into the future. What will life be like, say, in 2014 A.D., 50 years from
> now? What will the World's Fair of 2014 be like?
>
> I don't know, but I can guess.
>
> One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from
> nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By
> 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls
> will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch
> of a push button.
>
> Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will
> be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the
> glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the
> intensity of the light falling upon it.
>
> There is an underground house at the fair which is a sign of the future.
> if its windows are not polarized, they can nevertheless alter the "scenery"
> by changes in lighting. Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled
> temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and
> light controlled, should be fairly common. At the New York World's Fair of
> 2014, General Motors' "Futurama" may well display vistas of underground
> cities complete with light- forced vegetable gardens. The surface, G.M.
> will argue, will be given over to large-scale agriculture, grazing and
> parklands, with less space wasted on actual human occupancy.
>
> Gadgetry will continue to relieve mankind of tedious jobs. Kitchen units
> will be devised that will prepare "automeals," heating water and converting
> it to coffee; toasting bread; frying, poaching or scrambling eggs, grilling
> bacon, and so on. Breakfasts will be "ordered" the night before to be ready
> by a specified hour the next morning. Complete lunches and dinners, with
> the food semiprepared, will be stored in the freezer until ready for
> processing. I suspect, though, that even in 2014 it will still be advisable
> to have a small corner in the kitchen unit where the more individual meals
> can be prepared by hand, especially when company is coming.
>
> Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in
> existence. The I.B.M. exhibit at the present fair has no robots but it is
> dedicated to computers, which are shown in all their amazing complexity,
> notably in the task of translating Russian into English. If machines are
> that smart today, what may not be in the works 50 years hence? It will be
> such computers, much miniaturized, that will serve as the "brains" of
> robots. In fact, the I.B.M. building at the 2014 World's Fair may have, as
> one of its prime exhibits, a robot housemaid*large, clumsy, slow- moving
> but capable of general picking-up, arranging, cleaning and manipulation of
> various appliances. It will undoubtedly amuse the fairgoers to scatter
> debris over the floor in order to see the robot lumberingly remove it and
> classify it into "throw away" and "set aside." (Robots for gardening work
> will also have made their appearance.)
>
> General Electric at the 2014 World's Fair will be showing 3-D movies of
> its "Robot of the Future," neat and streamlined, its cleaning appliances
> built in and performing all tasks briskly. (There will be a three-hour wait
> in line to see the film, for some things never change.)
>
> The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they
> will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. The
> isotopes will not be expensive for they will be by- products of the
> fission-power plants which, by 2014, will be supplying well over half the
> power needs of humanity. But once the isotype batteries are used up they
> will be disposed of only through authorized agents of the manufacturer.
>
> And experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014.
> (Even today, a small but genuine fusion explosion is demonstrated at
> frequent intervals in the G.E. exhibit at the 1964 fair.) Large solar-power
> stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert
> areas -- Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan. In the more crowded, but cloudy
> and smoggy areas, solar power will be less practical. An exhibit at the
> 2014 fair will show models of power stations in space, collecting sunlight
> by means of huge parabolic focusing devices and radiating the energy thus
> collected down to earth.
>
> The world of 50 years hence will have shrunk further. At the 1964 fair,
> the G.M. exhibit depicts, among other things, "road-building factories" in
> the tropics and, closer to home, crowded highways along which long buses
> move on special central lanes. There is every likelihood that highways at
> least in the more advanced sections of the world*will have passed their
> peak in 2014; there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that
> makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft,
> of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air*a foot
> or two off the ground. Visitors to the 1964 fair can travel there in an
> "aquafoil," which lifts itself on four stilts and skims over the water with
> a minimum of friction. This is surely a stop-gap. By 2014 the four stilts
> will have been replaced by four jets of compressed air so that the vehicle
> will make no contact with either liquid or solid surfaces.
>
> Jets of compressed air will also lift land vehicles off the highways,
> which, among other things, will minimize paving problems. Smooth earth or
> level lawns will do as well as pavements. Bridges will also be of less
> importance, since cars will be capable of crossing water on their jets,
> though local ordinances will discourage the practice.
>
> Much effort will be put into the designing of vehicles with
> "Robot-brains"*vehicles that can be set for particular destinations and
> that will then proceed there without interference by the slow reflexes of a
> human driver. I suspect one of the major attractions of the 2014 fair will
> be rides on small roboticized cars which will maneuver in crowds at the
> two-foot level, neatly and automatically avoiding each other.
>
> For short-range travel, moving sidewalks (with benches on either side,
> standing room in the center) will be making their appearance in downtown
> sections. They will be raised above the traffic. Traffic will continue (on
> several levels in some places) only because all parking will be off-street
> and because at least 80 per cent of truck deliveries will be to certain
> fixed centers at the city's rim. Compressed air tubes will carry goods and
> materials over local stretches, and the switching devices that will place
> specific shipments in specific destinations will be one of the city's
> marvels.
>
> Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear
> the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people
> you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading
> passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it
> possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather
> stations in Antarctica (shown in chill splendor as part of the '64 General
> Motors exhibit).
>
> For that matter, you will be able to reach someone at the moon colonies,
> concerning which General Motors puts on a display of impressive vehicles
> (in model form) with large soft tires*intended to negotiate the uneven
> terrain that may exist on our natural satellite.
>
> Any number of simultaneous conversations between earth and moon can be
> handled by modulated laser beams, which are easy to manipulate in space. On
> earth, however, laser beams will have to be led through plastic pipes, to
> avoid material and atmospheric interference. Engineers will still be
> playing with that problem in 2014.
>
> Conversations with the moon will be a trifle uncomfortable, but the way,
> in that 2.5 seconds must elapse between statement and answer (it takes
> light that long to make the round trip). Similar conversations with Mars
> will experience a 3.5-minute delay even when Mars is at its closest.
> However, by 2014, only unmanned ships will have landed on Mars, though a
> manned expedition will be in the works and in the 2014 Futurama will show a
> model of an elaborate Martian colony.
>
> As for television, wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set; but
> transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which
> three-dimensional viewing will be possible. In fact, one popular exhibit at
> the 2014 World's Fair will be such a 3-D TV, built life-size, in which
> ballet performances will be seen. The cube will slowly revolve for viewing
> from all angles.
>
> One can go on indefinitely in this happy extrapolation, but all is not
> rosy.
>
> As I stood in line waiting to get into the General Electric exhibit at the
> 1964 fair, I found myself staring at Equitable Life's grim sign blinking
> out the population of the United States, with the number (over 191,000,000)
> increasing by 1 every 11 seconds. During the interval which I spent inside
> the G.E. pavilion, the American population had increased by nearly 300 and
> the world's population by 6,000.
>
> In 2014, there is every likelihood that the world population will be
> 6,500,000,000 and the population of the United States will be 350,000,000.
> Boston-to-Washington, the most crowded area of its size on the earth, will
> have become a single city with a population of over 40,000,000.
>
> Population pressure will force increasing penetration of desert and polar
> areas. Most surprising and, in some ways, heartening, 2014 will see a good
> beginning made in the colonization of the continental shelves. Underwater
> housing will have its attractions to those who like water sports, and will
> undoubtedly encourage the more efficient exploitation of ocean resources,
> both food and mineral. General Motors shows, in its 1964 exhibit, the model
> of an underwater hotel of what might be called mouth-watering luxury. The
> 2014 World's Fair will have exhibits showing cities in the deep sea with
> bathyscaphe liners carrying men and supplies across and into the abyss.
>
> Ordinary agriculture will keep up with great difficulty and there will be
> "farms" turning to the more efficient micro-organisms. Processed yeast and
> algae products will be available in a variety of flavors. The 2014 fair
> will feature an Algae Bar at which "mock-turkey" and "pseudosteak" will be
> served. It won't be bad at all (if you can dig up those premium prices),
> but there will be considerable psychological resistance to such an
> innovation.
>
> Although technology will still keep up with population through 2014, it
> will be only through a supreme effort and with but partial success. Not all
> the world's population will enjoy the gadgety world of the future to the
> full. A larger portion than today will be deprived and although they may be
> better off, materially, than today, they will be further behind when
> compared with the advanced portions of the world. They will have moved
> backward, relatively.
>
> Nor can technology continue to match population growth if that remains
> unchecked. Consider Manhattan of 1964, which has a population density of
> 80,000 per square mile at night and of over 100,000 per square mile during
> the working day. If the whole earth, including the Sahara, the Himalayan
> Mountain peaks, Greenland, Antarctica and every square mile of the ocean
> bottom, to the deepest abyss, were as packed as Manhattan at noon, surely
> you would agree that no way to support such a population (let alone make it
> comfortable) was conceivable. In fact, support would fail long before the
> World-Manhattan was reached.
>
> Well, the earth's population is now about 3,000,000,000 and is doubling
> every 40 years. If this rate of doubling goes unchecked, then a
> World-Manhattan is coming in just 500 years. All earth will be a single
> choked Manhattan by A.D. 2450 and society will collapse *long before
> that!*
>
> There are only two general ways of preventing this: (1) raise the death
> rate; (2) lower the birth rate. Undoubtedly, the world of A>D. 2014 will
> have agreed on the latter method. Indeed, the increasing use of mechanical
> devices to replace failing hearts and kidneys, and repair stiffening
> arteries and breaking nerves will have cut the death rate still further and
> have lifted the life expectancy in some parts of the world to age 85.
>
> There will, therefore, be a worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth
> control by rational and humane methods and, by 2014, it will undoubtedly
> have taken serious effect. The rate of increase of population will have
> slackened*but, I suspect, not sufficiently.
>
> One of the more serious exhibits at the 2014 World's Fair, accordingly,
> will be a series of lectures, movies and documentary material at the World
> Population Control Center (adults only; special showings for teen-agers).
>
> The situation will have been made the more serious by the advances of
> automation. The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot
> be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will
> therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. Schools will have
> to be oriented in this direction. Part of the General Electric exhibit
> today consists of a school of the future in which such present realities as
> closed-circuit TV and programmed tapes aid the teaching process. It is not
> only the techniques of teaching that will advance, however, but also the
> subject matter that will change. All the high-school students will be
> taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in
> binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the
> computer languages that will have developed out of those like the
> contemporary "Fortran" (from "formula translation").
>
> Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease
> spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have
> serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say
> that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty
> in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort
> will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a
> machine.
>
> Indeed, the most somber speculation I can make about A.D. 2014 is that in
> a society of enforced leisure, the most glorious single word in the
> vocabulary will have become *work!*T
>
> --
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>
>
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