Society Marches On: Difference between revisions

Even if the technology is predicted perfectly, modern readers may lose [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]] when reading a work written in [[The Fifties]], set in the present day, and assuming the attitudes of the present day will be exactly like those of [[The Fifties]]. They may even be severely bothered if a work from [[The Fifties]] assumes that attitudes in the far future will be just like those in [[The Fifties]]. (Even if the author had no way of knowing about [[The Beatles]], even if it is the far future, it just seems wrong to read that a lover of popular music in the future goes primarily for jazz quartets or big bands, with not an electric guitar or synthesizer to be seen even though the entire house runs on electricity right down to the windows and Muzak.) Sometimes the author will correctly predict some of the effects of a new technology, but completely miss others; many authors correctly foresaw the effect of automobiles on working habits and city design, but not one person foresaw the effect that access to automobiles would have on teen sexual activity.

 

 

This effect increases with the distance between when the work is written and the present day. The necessary distance to invoke this decreases as time passes, so far anyhow -- technology speeds communication up, and communication speeds change. For instance, if a film has been in production for long enough, it may fall under this trope the day it's released.

This will no doubt apply to modern works set [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] as well. Unfortunately, we won't know how until the social changes have at least started.

 

 

{{examples}}

 

 

== Literature ==

** Apartheid-related predictions were often a bit off in this way, due mostly to outsiders imagining some sort of centuries-long, deep-seated race war. Whereas it was a recent and quickly dated policy which was mostly prolonged because it somehow wound up as part of Cold War politics. As soon as the policy was put up to vote, everyone rejected it.

* Minor but interesting aversion in [[Philip Jose Farmer]]'s ''Dayworld'', in which several male characters have traditionally female names (Dorothy, for instance), some female characters have traditionally male names (e.g., Anthony), and circumcision is next to unknown in the United States.

** A notable aversion is to be found, however, whenever Asimov describes music, in that he predicted synthesizers and electric instruments in the Foundation and Empire stories at a time when sticking a microphone on an acoustic guitar was still cutting-edge.

* ''[http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0743436067/0743436067__17.htm Cocoon]'', a short story by [[Keith Laumer]], has everyone living in virtual reality tanks a couple hundred years in the future. The husband "goes" to a virtual office and does virtual paperwork, while the wife sits at "home", does virtual housework and watches virtual soap operas all day. When the husband comes "home", he complains because the wife hasn't gotten around to punching the selector buttons for the evening nutripaste meal yet.

** The Quandary Phase of the radio series (based on ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy (Franchise)/So Long And Thanks For All The Fish|So Long And Thanks For All The Fish]]'') alters it to "novelty cellphone ringtones ". This sets up a similar alteration later, where Ford hands cellphones with novelty ringtones out to a crowd. In the book, it was Sony Walkmen.

** Interestingly, when a comic book adaptation was being written (in the early '90s or so), Adams was approached about changing the line about "digital watches" to "cell phones", and he adamantly refused, insisting that the cartoonist was missing the point. So, what ''was'' the point? Well, um... er... ah! Cell phones are actually useful devices due to their mobility, while digital watches have no advantages over regular watches. So, Adams probably considered digital watches a pointless novelty while thinking that cell phones are actually useful. Uh, you know, probably.

** As shown in the television series, the watches he was talking about used power-consuming LED displays, and so you had to push a button to see the time. The joke is probably that Douglas Adams found those types of watches impractical.

* [[HP Lovecraft]] (a teetotaler) wrote one non-supernatural short story about a young man who yields to temptation and goes to a speakeasy, but is saved from the evils of alcohol by a drunkard who won't stand for the youth making his own mistakes. Written during prohibition, it's set in the 1950s ... and booze is ''still'' illegal.

* A less vintage example: In one of the [[Shadowrun]] short stories from ''Wolf & Raven'', a black baseball player accompanies Wolf to a virtual golf course, and all the white yuppie golfers give him dirty looks because of his skin color. The writer failed to anticipate how Tiger Woods' rise to fame would apply this trope to his story within ''just a few years''.

** Even sillier when taking into account that in the world of [[Shadowrun]], the [[The Magic Comes Back|Awakening]] added Metahuman types such as Elves and Orks, who have become the new [[Fantastic Racism|segregated minorities]] of the world, making the whole issue of skin color less than completely relevant.

[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]