I disagree - I don't think P and I are looking at different parts of the same elephant (a tail, a trunk) because everything is so interconnected that you can't unpick them.
As I understand it P has asked: how can we work out which future technologies are more likely to occur than others? He's then added that he wants to think about this in terms of 'reality' (which does rather imply that political forces aren't 'reality' but I'm not touching that one for now). So if I've got this right, the discussion is about which things are scientifically more likely to occur - antigravity machines, jetpacks, what-have-you - given an infinite amount of resources and time (which is very far from 'reality', but...). To flip the question around, P seems to be asking: is there anything which is scientifically and technologically impossible? Because anything else is therefore possible, and the reasons why some things are more possible than others is down to factors other than science, because we've already said it can potentially happen.
So: if there's some small scientific possibility that we could have functioning jetpacks, the reasons why they will or won't be widespread by 2040 can't just be due to science, it's due to investment and resources and all the other things I mentioned earlier. Maybe we need a series of other scientific advances to take place before we get our jetpacks, to do with fuel cells and propulsion and aluminium skeletons - but each of those advances is just as dependent on the political forces, and moreover need to be integrated in some way that's likely to involve political and economic will.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-01-26 06:08 pm (UTC)As I understand it P has asked: how can we work out which future technologies are more likely to occur than others? He's then added that he wants to think about this in terms of 'reality' (which does rather imply that political forces aren't 'reality' but I'm not touching that one for now). So if I've got this right, the discussion is about which things are scientifically more likely to occur - antigravity machines, jetpacks, what-have-you - given an infinite amount of resources and time (which is very far from 'reality', but...). To flip the question around, P seems to be asking: is there anything which is scientifically and technologically impossible? Because anything else is therefore possible, and the reasons why some things are more possible than others is down to factors other than science, because we've already said it can potentially happen.
So: if there's some small scientific possibility that we could have functioning jetpacks, the reasons why they will or won't be widespread by 2040 can't just be due to science, it's due to investment and resources and all the other things I mentioned earlier. Maybe we need a series of other scientific advances to take place before we get our jetpacks, to do with fuel cells and propulsion and aluminium skeletons - but each of those advances is just as dependent on the political forces, and moreover need to be integrated in some way that's likely to involve political and economic will.