

Futuristic Predictions That Came True in 2012 - andreavaccari
http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-came-true-in-2012

======
shanelja
I hadn't thought of these individual achievements as being that big until I
saw them all together in one place and now I can say that this has truly been
a breakthrough year all across the technology sector.

Every year we seem to be accelerating our speed of development when it comes
to technology, I'm only 19 and in my life I've seen us go from 56kb/s internet
to 1gb/s internet, go from the rare NASA launch to regular private company
launches (don't forget, SpaceX is not the only private company engaging in
these kind of activities, there is also Virgin Galactic in the UK who are
breaching the barriers facing them very quickly.) and medical breakthroughs
across every sector.

We live in the golden age of human history up to now and I would be willing to
place a long bet that in 100 years, we will look back on the last 30 years as
the dawn of the _modern_ age.

~~~
pretoriusB
> _We live in the golden age of human history up to now and I would be willing
> to place a long bet that in 100 years, we will look back on the last 30
> years as the dawn of the modern age._

Well, we live in the golden age of human _technology_.

But, I'd argue, far from the golden age of human history.

And maybe closer than ever to the extinction of mankind, if that "let's fix
the climate issue with even more technology and continue on the same
'development for development's sake' path continues. Not to mention crazy
politicians with nuclear, biological and what have you weapons on their hands
and a battle for global resources like oil and water...

~~~
JanezStupar
Enlighten me then, when was golden age of human history then in your opinion?

I have a problem with you new age romantics, bitching about issues of current
civilization without providing alternatives or even realizing what "reversing"
current state of affairs would really mean.

~~~
pretoriusB
> _Enlighten me then, when was golden age of human history then in your
> opinion?_

Ever occurred to you that it might be in the future?

Or that human history was perpetually in the same state of mess? Good for a
few, a nightmare for others?

Or that "good for humanity" and technological advancements are not necessarily
the same thing, and that e.g living an agrarian life in some 18th century farm
could be better for someone than living as an industrial worker in a highly
modern Foxconn factory, despite increased odds of dying from a decease
preventable today or having to get your water from the well?

Damn, I'd take living in the sixties to living in the '00s any day of the
week, despite having to let go of my iPad.

> _I have a problem with you new age romantics, bitching about issues of
> current civilization without providing alternatives or even realizing what
> "reversing" current state of affairs would really mean._

When there's a problem, like a cancer, you need to remove the cancer. You
don't need an "alternative" to it.

Also, I'm not sure how to read the part about not realising what "reversing
the current state of affairs would really mean".

Who said anything about "reversing"? There's a lot we can do without reversing
anything. Stoping the market craze is not the same as "reversing" progress or
anything. Not to mention that progress != building more advanced things
cheaper.

~~~
JanezStupar
I believe you don't understand that the term "Golden Age" by definition refers
to the past. What you are talking about is denoted by the term "Utopia".

> Or that "good for humanity" and technological advancements are not
> necessarily the same thing, and that e.g living an agrarian life in some
> 18th century farm could be better for someone than living as an industrial
> worker in a highly modern Foxconn factory, despite increased odds of dying
> from a decease preventable today or having to get your water from the well?

Excuse my ad hominem, however your attitude would lead me to believe that you
are at least a middle class kid with romantic perspective. What you are
proposing is an actuality for a class of people who are called, gasp...
Foxconn workers. There is nearly two million of them saying that you are wrong
and that they prefer working for Foxconn over 18th century farm somewhere in
north/central China. And as a guy who grew up on a modern farm I decided that
farming is not my cup of tea (and from family heritage that 18th century
farming where you would be sentenced to hard manual labor from the age of 4
even less so). Don't get me wrong, I love nature and I like that one of my
hobby's is gardening. However I absolutely adore that I have a choice.

> Damn, I'd take living in the sixties to living in the '00s any day of the
> week, despite having to let go of my iPad.

I believe you have no idea what 60's were like. And I believe that you should
go and see more of the world.

------
AlexeiSadeski
Hurricane Sandy was a Category 1 hurricane at landfall. That's pretty much the
opposite of a SUPERSTORM.

Much larger hurricanes have hit New England before. For example, the "Great
New England Hurricane of 1938" made landfall on Long Island as a Category 3
storm, killing over 600 people. The Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 also was
Category 3, killing 390 people.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_Hurricane_of_1938>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Atlantic_Hurricane#Impact>

Imagine if two Category 3 hurricanes impacted the North East within six years
today. We'd never hear the end of how Global Warming was destroying the world.
But since it happened in the early 20th Century, no one cares.

~~~
mikeash
You realize that hurricane category is only one measure of a storm, and not
necessarily even the most important one?

"Superstorm" Sandy is not called that because if its wind speed (which is all
that "category" is about) but because of its _size_ , as in physical extent.

~~~
AlexeiSadeski
Excepting instances of extremely small storms, Category is in fact the second
most important factor when determining the destructiveness of a storm.

First most important is geography - where the storm hits.

Size of the storm is the least important factor. A large but weak storm (such
as Sandy) will always be less destructive than smaller but more intense storm
- assuming that they make landfall at the same location.

Sandy killed only 131 individuals, despite making landfall in an extremely
densely populated area. Within the US, far smaller - but more intense - storms
have killed far more people in areas far less densely populated.

~~~
redwood
Aren't you leaving out storm surge, which is just as much of a result of wind
speed as it is of size... it was the surge that made Sandy at landfall truly
unique.

~~~
AlexeiSadeski
Storm surge is related to intensity much more than size.

~~~
redwood
If that's the case, then why did sandy surge to a record?

------
josteink
Rounded corners being worth 1 billion dollars in patent-lawsuits evidently not
among them. Pantent-trolling being more profitable the producting neither.

Seriously. We have come a _so far_ in technology the last decades. Things we
would consider science fiction or maybe even ipmossible ten years ago is
every-day stuff now.

And our "tech leaders" (and I say that with the most disrespect possible) are
now busy engaging in frivilious lawsuit over the shape of the plastic which
all this technology is packaged in instead of doing amazing stuff. People
claim to "own" rounded corners and flat-screens. Designs already put to market
in the 60s.

In my books 2012 goes down as the year when tech stopped being about tech and
became dominated by anti-competitive lawsuits instead of innovation. The year
where no new tech arrived, only new lawsuits.

And a sad year it was.

~~~
meric
"tech" a hundred years ago was the beginnings of the aviation sector you see
today. What you're seeing now is "tech" moving away from the _____ sector (the
one HN belongs to) into to the _____ sector (the one with brain-machine
interfaces as well as brain enhancing implants).

So I agree with you, 2012 may well be the year the technology sector of 2011
is not the technology sector of 2012.

------
31reasons
A very important breakthrough is missing in the list : Human Genome sequencing
cost dropped to $1000 with processing time of only a day. Just 12 years ago it
cost $3 billion dollars and 15 years of work.

~~~
redwood
I thought we were still hovering above $1000 but getting close?

Either way another important milestone of exponential gain is the cost of
solar!

~~~
pazimzadeh
Are you sure? 23andme.com apparently does it for $100.

~~~
panic
23andMe doesn't fully sequence your genes. They just look for specific
patterns.

~~~
haberman
I think that's a misleading description. They do identify specific base pairs
of your genotype (and you can download this data as a file), the difference is
that they only identify a small subset of all base pairs, whereas sequencing
identifies all of them.

More info: [http://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andme-moves-
into-...](http://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/23andme-moves-into-the-
world-of-sequencing/)

------
Deprogrammer9
How could they forget this prediction of the smartphone by inventor & futurist
Nikola Tesla?

"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a
huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and
rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly,
irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony
we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face,
despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments
through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared
with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest
pocket." - Nikola Tesla 1926

------
petercooper
Are there any citations for the initial predictions? Or is this just a list of
cool technology related things in 2012 that _seem_ like someone might have
predicted them? "The World's First Cybernetic Hate Crime Occurs at a McDonalds
in France" seems awfully specific for a prediction.

~~~
archangel_one
Well no, nobody predicted it would be specifically about an ocular implant at
a McDonalds in France, but the concept of cybernetic hate crimes have been
generally predicted by various sci-fi writers for some time; I, Robot, The
Matrix (in the backstory in the Animatrix at least) and Deus Ex spring to mind
as several examples.

------
joshuahedlund
The only one I would quibble with is the one that has nothing to do with
technology. Sandy was the largest storm ever recorded in the Atlantic, but it
was still not as large as the Pacific's Typhoon Tip in 1979. If three decades
of accelerating climate change explains Sandy, it doesn't explain Tip, or why
its record has yet to be broken.

~~~
scoot
Yes it does - it's about trends, not isolated occurrences (so in that sense I
agree with your quibble, just not with your rationale). The frequency and
intensity of extreme weather incidents is on an upward (and exponential)
track.

~~~
aidos
Honest question: Is there a good source for this information?

Anecdotally it _feels_ like weather is getting more extreme, I'd be very
interested in seeing the numbers.

~~~
scoot
It's difficult to find all the data in one place, but this article has links
to good sources:

[http://ccap.org/extreme-weather-trends-climate-science-
and-p...](http://ccap.org/extreme-weather-trends-climate-science-and-public-
opinion/)

------
eCa
I'd say that Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature[1] beats the crazy
geoengineering businessman with its massive scale. This includes the draining
of the Aral Sea, and was followed by attempts to refill it by
diverting/reversing several rivers.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plan_for_the_Transformati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plan_for_the_Transformation_of_Nature)

------
guscost
Hysterical exploitation of the "first true superstorm" meme sticks out like a
sore thumb. I stopped reading there, and will be reluctant to visit that site
again.

------
SideburnsOfDoom
They missed out on the continuing merger of state mass-surveillance and
corporate mass-surveillance. That's IMHO one of the biggest stories.

------
tgb
I was really skeptical of this article, but turns out that this is actually a
really interesting list. A lot of them are still up-in-the-air as far as end-
results and I'd expect at least a couple of them to fall through in the end,
but still a really neat collection.

------
gregpilling
So I notice that Elon Musk was involved with two of those - the Tesla and the
Dragon space docking. Congratulations to him.

------
monochromatic
> Cybernetic Hate Crime

Are you fucking kidding me? That is not a thing. And if it were, the thing
that happened at McDonald's would not qualify.

~~~
stevoski
I agree with you. Once everything became clear, it seemed that the conflict
was partly fuelled by the wearer of the "cybernetics" being belligerent.

The "hate crime" was simply the wearer being asked to leave, and responding
haughtily. Consequently both sides behaved immaturely, but not in "hate".

------
mddw
The McDonalds affair was not a Cybernetic Hate Crime.

------
kjackson2012
I really hope the one point about communicating with patients in a vegetative
state is wrong. Not because it's not a groundbreaking discovery, but the
implications are horrifying to me. Imagine all those patients who are left to
just lie there their entire lives, and those that like Terri Schiavo that were
allowed to starve to death. If they were actual aware of what was going on,
that is the most horrifying fate I could imagine.

~~~
Ygg2
I don't see how discovering this was true or false has any bearing on the
reality of it?

Reminds me of that scientist that discovered that germs are cause of diseases
and that doctors are spreading the germs with their bad hygiene. So doctors
said "Well I know this theory isn't true, since I'm not responsible for all
the manslaughter I'm committing according to this person. He is clearly
insane.". And several decades later here we are.

------
StavrosK
How are they planning to do the FTL one?

~~~
epimenov
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4534359>

------
chrisringrose
Reading about our _positive_ technological advances makes me feel optimistic
about our future. Go science!

------
nate_martin
What about the Higgs Boson?

