Predicting the Future - 1964 looks at 2014 (Asimov)

[K. A. Pital]

Really nice predictions. I believe Asimov was a bit off with population pressure forcing people underground and under the ocean. It has to be a lot stronger for this to happen, most coastal cities should look like Megatokyo by the time and the northern territories fully utilizing simpler techniques to enjoy a nice climate, like a geodesic dome above a city.

[Simon_Jester]

Again, I think Asimov just chronically overestimated the footprint required for urban areas on a planetary scale. If you think forty billion people would require tiling the whole planet with city a la Trantor, it's logical that 6.5 billion would be enough to get the population spilling over onto the continental shelves.

[K. A. Pital]

40 billion is a lot. If we imagine similar cities to today, we'd be facing 15% of Earth land area covered in urban structures. That's a lot. It may not be Trantor or Coruscant, but it would look rather similar since with such a massive urban density land areas between built environments would quite likely contract to oversized parks or walking forests, with some landmarks and deserts remaining more or less untouched. But even city-planets had untouched or abandoned poles, IIRC.

[Alferd Packer]

I'd give Asimov a pass on the 40 billion number because Trantor was conceived in the 50s, well before the green revolution, so he envisioned much of the planet given over to the algae farms he so championed, with a smaller emphasis on off-planet food imports for luxury items. Not helping matters is that he has a notoriously bad imagination, at times, when it came to future applications for 50s-era technology, so something like input-intensive farming would've never occurred to him.

[Broomstick]

I can't help but wonder if his life-long status as a city boy divorced from farmland could account for some lack of imagination regarding agriculture.

[phongn]

I can't help but wonder if his life-long status as a city boy divorced from farmland could account for some lack of imagination regarding agriculture.

Probably, but a lot of his writing predated the Green Revolution, which brought astounding gains in productivity. I don't think anyone (farmer or otherwise) could've predicted what was about to happen.

No, this is a clear miss. Plastic and glass pipes sound similar—they're both pipes, after all—but the idea behind them is completely different. Fiber optics converted a difficult technical challenge that "[e]ngineers will still be playing with...in 2014" to one that is pretty much solved. Not that Asimov could have been expected to get this one right: The first working fiber optic cable was tested a year after this was written, and the first patent applied for a year after that.

Asimov gets full credit for recognizing that laser communication would require protection to be useful on the ground, but the difference between his (reasonable) expectations of how we would get around the problem and reality are too great.

Everyone was working on optical waveguides at the time since it was seen as the only solution (shoot beam straight through a plastic pipe), albeit one fraught with technical problems. I think it's sort of a near-miss.

[K. A. Pital]

I don't think anyone (farmer or otherwise) could've predicted what was about to happen.

High yield cultivation was more or less a predictable outcome if you knew what was going on in the field. Fertilizer too.

[Vendetta]

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.

I'd consider the "Considerable Resistance" to faux-meat a HIT, myself. Quorn? *shudder*

Do you eat mushrooms?

Because, y'know, same stuff. Basically.

Quorn works best when used in strongly flavoured sauces though, because it doesn't carry much flavour.

(and yeah, it's way better than any fast food grade "meat")

[salm]

(and yeah, it's way better than any fast food grade "meat")

There is pretty decent ground "meat" out there.
If you make a spaghetti "bolognese" with this ground "meat" it tastes pretty good. It does lack the defining meat taste but it´s nonetheless good food.

[Vendetta]

I was referring to the substance usually found in fast food or processed food, which is only technically meat in that it was once attached to an animal. (if you're really lucky, even the animal they say it was)

Quorn is a way better choice for a meal than that, as long as you prepare it with some kind of flavoured sauce and/or season it well.

[salm]

Ah, sorry, I missread.

I just looked up Quorn and apparently it´s been around in Germany only since 2012.
I´ll give it a try.