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David Graeber made a closely related point when he asked where the flying cars are—ie, why has the modern world stopped delivering on the promises of technological progress and advancement that we once took for granted?

Graeber notes that, when he was a kid, science fiction imagined future technologies that science eventually delivered—space travel and nuclear-powered ships and lasers and what-not. But, at a certain point, science stopped delivering. We never got our flying cars, our colonies on the moon. We have viagra but not a cure for the common cold.

What we did get was an increasingly sophisticated facsimile of scientific progress in the form of special effects. We’re very good at creating the illusion of a more sophisticated future. And we got a lot of investment in technologies of surveillance and control. But not so much the stuff that was supposed to make our lives easier or better or more fantastical:

“For most of human history, the top speed at which human beings could travel had been around 25 miles per hour. By 1900 it had increased to 100 miles per hour, and for the next seventy years it did seem to be increasing exponentially. By the time Toffler was writing, in 1970, the record for the fastest speed at which any human had traveled stood at roughly 25,000 mph, achieved by the crew of Apollo 10 in 1969, just one year before. At such an exponential rate, it must have seemed reasonable to assume that within a matter of decades, humanity would be exploring other solar systems.

Since 1970, no further increase has occurred. The record for the fastest a human has ever traveled remains with the crew of Apollo 10.”

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit

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