brockm on Nostr: Science-fiction has predicted a lot of technologies that might come to pass, yes. But ...

Science-fiction has predicted a lot of technologies that might come to pass, yes. But I’d argue they didn’t predict the broader social and political dynamics that would come as a result of them. So while say, you could argue Jerry Pournelle predicted the smartphone in his fiction (which he called “pocket computers”), he didn’t predict the rise of say, social media and the economic and cultural impacts of mobile computing. So I’d say, yes and no.