Why didn't we get the fantastic future we were promised?
In 1961, it was possible for the President of the United States to stand in front of the nation and say 'we choose to go to the moon!' - and for the nation to deliver it 7 years later. At that moment, the future felt limitless.
But today, the US cannot even send a man into low Earth orbit without relying on Russian technology (itself a 1960s relic), and has no ability at all to put a man on the moon, let alone anywhere further afield.
50 years ago, people were told that by now we would be living in underwater cities, driving flying cars and having vacations on the moon - or even Mars.
Instead, when we go on vacation in 2016, we still often board Boeing 747s - a plane designed before the invention of the pocket calculator, and which first flew in 1969 - BEFORE that moon landing. We don't even have supersonic airliners anymore - which we did have in 1976.
We're still driving cars based on the internal gasoline-powered combustion engine, a 19th century technology. All the way back in the 1920s, Henry Ford was contemplating alternative fuels and engine types.
We were promised by President Nixon in 1971 that cancer would be cured by the time of the US Bicentennial. It didn't happen.
We were told we were entering the Atomic Age - that by the year 2000, a thousand nuclear reactors would be powering America. But today, the US has only 100 nuclear reactors.
What happened? Why didn't that bright future materialize? And how can we go back and rediscover that bright future that we all want?
Grayson Turner
Your country is too big and has shit infrastructure.
Mason Rodriguez
Technology is not a linear progression. 60 years ago scientists and more importantly to our former view of the future, science fiction writers, believed that we would have an energy revolution by the instead of the digital one we got. That doesn't mean we don't live in fascinatingly advanced times. The idea of the Internet would have been inconceivable a century ago and you used it to post your question. You are living in futuristic times whether you like it or not.
Evan Baker
>watch Jetsons episodes >the writers of the show imagined large advances in transportation that never occurred, but were completely unable to imagine anything more than room-sized computers with reel-to-reel tape
Carson Russell
>Why didn't we get the fantastic future we were promised? guess
Tyler Jackson
because individuals are weak and stupid
Ryan Wright
are you fucking dumb? nasa is sending people to mars in 2020 we have the internet, the closest thing we have to a collective brain. it's fucking amazing, try telling someone in 1970's about the internet and they wouldn't understand or believe you.
touch phones are normal. technology is literally everywhere. they're devoloping exoskeletons. I say in about 20 years we're going to be in cyberpunk territory, the only difference it won't have dingy neon signs, for that just go to tokyo
Charles Torres
well, if we stopped space exploration (and by "we" i mean US) it's because of the fall of ussr. There were no reason to send people on the moon, US just did it to do it before the russians. I strongly hate communism but we lost our ticket to the stars at the same time ussr collapsed
Charles Diaz
we're already in cyberpunk territory we've been in it for a while
Nicholas Sanchez
we're in the early stages, but in 20 years we're going full blade runner territory. exciting times, but also scary
Chase Howard
but also comfy as fuck
Nathan Miller
comfy if you're some supergod boss of a corporation and can keep buying augments to stay alive. hell to the lower class
Angel Moore
by design. Remember that same president was assassinated by forces inside the government. Technological advance unleashes human freedom and threatens the elite. All modern advances have to do with advancing the monitoring and control systems in the world.
Elites need to impoverish and enslave a tiny remnant of mentally and genetically degraded mankind before they are willing to permit real advances.
Austin Ortiz
because capitalism as you can see profit doesnt equal development
>still driving your 20 ton tank because thats profit for your shitty companies >instead of flying with your car
Jayden Clark
...
Dominic Lewis
Fall of the Soviet Union.
USA is capitalist and that only works to the benefit of people if there is competition.
Without competition capitalism slows all progression to a crawl.
Ian Williams
NASA hoax everything they do. If there is a real space program, it is super top secret.
This, except JFK hoaxed his death. Politicians are basically actors. Our history is full of lies.
Kevin Hill
>We were promised by President Nixon in 1971 that cancer would be cured by the time of the US Bicentennial. It didn't happen. actually a lot of cancer cases are cured
Ayden Butler
Pretty sure it's been the sequestering of public capital by private financial interests.
All of the last 80 years of technological advancement has been made primarily through government funding of research and development, in particular, US military funding of DARPA, NASA etc.
There has been strong political movement from the right over the past 40 or so years to reduce public spending on research and development, while simultaneously pushing for funding increases for stimulus packages, e.g., money for lending businesses, often on 0% interest (or close to that), primarily within the financial and petrochemical industries.
Carter Turner
>nasa is sending people to mars in 2020
A crewed mission to Mars by 2020? As far as i know they aren't going to send there any manned mars-mission before 2035.
Jordan Baker
Transportation advances slowly until the market forces a switch from oil, or someone huge enough to outbid the oil lobbies wants to try a new method.
Wyatt Turner
>There has been strong political movement from the right over the past 40 or so years to reduce public spending on research and development Bullcrap. Back in the 60s, it was libtards who said the space program was a waste of money and we should just spend that on nigger gibesmedat.
Hunter Peterson
my bad. the rover is 2020. you are correct. still amazing though >back in the 60's really makes you think