Future Shtick
For the last three Tuesdays I have shown cheesy videos from the 70's available on YouTube. I bet you were hoping that was enough. Alas, here is one more.
Future Shock was a well-received "futurologist" book that I remember reading. Alvin Toffler was the author, and he became best buddies with Newt Gingrich in his later years. Orson Wells was only a shadow of his former self (metaphorically), and his voice was available for productions like this for a reasonable fee. Wiki describes the term Future Shock to mean "too much change in too short a period of time."
Maybe I should write a book called Future Shtick. I could say things like the Amazing Criswell who in Plan 9 from Outer Space said that "the Future is where we will spend the rest of our lives." Never were truer, or dumber, words spoken.
Moore's Law states that every two years the power of a computer chip will double and the cost will halve. Thus things that seem like Science Fiction become science fact. I think that eventually this will stop. Compound growth cannot continue forever. As Herb Stein once said, if something can't continue, it won't continue. But for the near term this will continue and us old fogeys will continue to receive more change than we can handle.
Be sure to notice the height of 1970's technology in this documentary, especially the 8-track tapes!
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