NsF (Science fiction)

Science fiction authors of the previous century were not able to "predict" future that surrounds us today because modern technologies -- small computers, interconnected world, total video surveillance -- would be considered as magics by readers who lived in the times of big computers, magnet tapes and slow connections. If we take the "problem of small steps" into consideration, we could find in the old science fiction a lot of predictions that were quite precise not in design features but in functional aspects of today devices and technologies.

Analogous correction must be made for descriptions of cultural and psychological problems.

Old science fiction authors had described the backside of progress: poisoned polluted air, gigantic machines, herds of ant-like workers controlled by computers, overpopulated cities, nature destroyed by devastating resource consumption... We do not see the signs of this predictions around us. We live in a relative clean environment in comfortable cities and we have quite painless jobs protected by trade laws. Even the homeless people on the street have a better live than was predicted for "simple citizens" in the science fiction literature.

It seems the old predictions were wrong. Unfortunately they are correct.
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