X-Message-Number: 18986 From: Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 12:05:58 EDT Subject: Optimism (CP) --part1_17d.78287d5.29fd77e6_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >One must also be careful with trend curves. According to a piece written by G. Harry Stine around 1960 ("Science Fiction is Too Conservative") I should have acquired an amount of power equal to that of the Sun, sometime in the 1980s. Stine was quite diligent in his curve fitting. Unfortunately he fitted exponential curves to curves which, in reality, have turned out to be S-shaped. Oh, they're not just S-shaped. They're actually turning down in some areas. Remember, in 1969, men could go to the Moon, had working nuclear rocket engines with 250,000-lb thrusts, etc. But this has nothing to do with the natural increase of technology, which is indeed exponential. It's just that Stine forgot to include the exponential growth of government power and its exponential ability to consume resources in his equations. "The fault lies not in our technology, Horatio, but in our selves." --part1_17d.78287d5.29fd77e6_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18986