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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:26am on 2007-07-16 under

"At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years." -- Arthur C. Clarke (thanks to [livejournal.com profile] blueeowyn)

[I don't know when Clarke said that; at the moment, I'm thinking of it in terms of a couple of July milestones that happened two dozen years apart (one more positive than the other).]

[And happy birthday to [info] xpioti!]

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There are 5 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] redbird at 12:07pm on 2007-07-16
And both world-changing, and both thoroughly part of the background and assumptions of our lives.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] realinterrobang.livejournal.com at 12:16pm on 2007-07-16
That sounds...optimistic to me, and prompts the question, "Then what?"

Here's a technological feat that I don't think will be possible to achieve in the "next few hundred years," but maybe afterwards -- cleaning up the mess frm the 20th and 21st Centuries. I expect that's a multi-century task, even given much better technology than the current state of the art, and much better politics than the current art of the state.

Then again, I never really liked Clarke, so I'm liable to want to find the holes.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] austin-dern.livejournal.com at 04:11am on 2007-07-17

The solutions to today's problems will generally inspire new ambitions and therefore new problems after that. I think most people would say the pressing problems of (say) 16th century Europe have been extremely well solved, but now we've gone on and have new Inevitable Conflicts.


Four hundred years from now, people are going to have a hard time understanding what precisely we were all worked up about.



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(no subject)

posted by (anonymous) at 10:47pm on 2007-07-17
Looks like a leading, uh, nonquestion, and in any case I don't know: what milestones?
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 11:03pm on 2007-07-17
1945-07-16: Detonation of the first atomic bomb at Alamagordo, NM
1969-07-16: Apollo 11 launches from Cape Kennedy, FL
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