I think most people continue to have a primitive association between prosperity and "the Mandate of Heaven." If something is good, it leads to economic growth, and this reflects that the gods are happy about that thing. Of course, I'm exaggerating slightly, but it is almost certain that some people do engage in a certain amount of guilt-by-association during bad times, versus a happier praise-by-association during good times.
See this FRED chart, which shows real median family income in the USA:
Family income hits a peak in 1999 and then is stagnant or declining for the next 15 years, hitting a low point in 2014. It does not recover till 2018.
And this is certainly one of the biggest shocks about the Internet: that it did not lead to prosperity. I'm old enough to remember the optimism and confidence of the late 1990s, we were all certain that the Internet was about to usher in the biggest economic boom in human history.
Exactly the opposite happened: we experienced 19 years of stagnation of family income, the longest stretch in the history of the USA.
So, we've all learned some things, and some of the things we learned have been humbling. Deindustrialization was a bigger deal than we realized, and the cyber economy was a smaller deal than we realized, and competition from China was a bigger deal than we realized.
Between 1870 and 1970 the dramatic advance of science and technology contributed to rapidly rising standards of living. And it was fascinating to speculate about where such trends would go in the future. And that fascination expressed itself in part through science-fiction.
But what kind of science-fiction would appeal today? We've already been saturated by dystopian science-fiction, how much darker should it get? Would people necessarily be interested in a bleak science-fiction that suggests everything is going to get worse and worse forever?
I suspect real-life trends have to resume an upward march of progress before the public is again intrigued by this kind of speculative fiction.
Comments
I think most people continue to have a primitive association between prosperity and "the Mandate of Heaven." If something is good, it leads to economic growth, and this reflects that the gods are happy about that thing. Of course, I'm exaggerating slightly, but it is almost certain that some people do engage in a certain amount of guilt-by-association during bad times, versus a happier praise-by-association during good times.
See this FRED chart, which shows real median family income in the USA:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/
Family income hits a peak in 1999 and then is stagnant or declining for the next 15 years, hitting a low point in 2014. It does not recover till 2018.
And this is certainly one of the biggest shocks about the Internet: that it did not lead to prosperity. I'm old enough to remember the optimism and confidence of the late 1990s, we were all certain that the Internet was about to usher in the biggest economic boom in human history.
Exactly the opposite happened: we experienced 19 years of stagnation of family income, the longest stretch in the history of the USA.
So, we've all learned some things, and some of the things we learned have been humbling. Deindustrialization was a bigger deal than we realized, and the cyber economy was a smaller deal than we realized, and competition from China was a bigger deal than we realized.
Between 1870 and 1970 the dramatic advance of science and technology contributed to rapidly rising standards of living. And it was fascinating to speculate about where such trends would go in the future. And that fascination expressed itself in part through science-fiction.
But what kind of science-fiction would appeal today? We've already been saturated by dystopian science-fiction, how much darker should it get? Would people necessarily be interested in a bleak science-fiction that suggests everything is going to get worse and worse forever?
I suspect real-life trends have to resume an upward march of progress before the public is again intrigued by this kind of speculative fiction.