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Was H. G. Wells' Vision Of The Future Correct?

gncxx said:
Mythopoeika said:
wembley9 said:
But if you look at places like Brazil where these has been intense mixing of populations (African, native American and European) for centuries, the population is anything but homogenous.

Hmmm, interesting point there. Wonder what happened there?

Probably because people don't choose their partners on the basis of what kind of racial mix they have to offer their country.

Do you mean there wasn't much interracial nookie going on?
 
Mythopoeika said:
gncxx said:
Mythopoeika said:
wembley9 said:
But if you look at places like Brazil where these has been intense mixing of populations (African, native American and European) for centuries, the population is anything but homogenous.

Hmmm, interesting point there. Wonder what happened there?

Probably because people don't choose their partners on the basis of what kind of racial mix they have to offer their country.

Do you mean there wasn't much interracial nookie going on?

I've no doubt there was, I just don't think it's compulsory. I'd like to think love dictates your preferences rather than bothering exclusively about race.
 
Or there was divisions based on the culture of the immigrants. Look at all the Little Italy´s and Chinatown you still have in the US for example.
 
I'm a bit disturbed by how quickly this thread has turned from 'Are we all going to become Morlocks?' to 'Are we all going to become mixed-race?'
 
James_H2 said:
I'm a bit disturbed by how quickly this thread has turned from 'Are we all going to become Morlocks?' to 'Are we all going to become mixed-race?'

Yeah, I'm not seeing the connection either.
 
Why would we evolve at all? Everyone is able to survive and breed, regardless of fitness or favorable traits. I think the genetic flaws that would kill us 'in the wild' will just keep piling up until we're incapable of surviving without major technological aid.
 
"I think the genetic flaws that would kill us 'in the wild' will just keep piling up until we're incapable of surviving without major technological aid."

How close are we to that point now? How many of us can contruct a tool to enable us to catch, kill and prepare the meat we eat? Or produce sufficient harvest of grains and produce, never mind process them into something we can use?

I'm not saying that Tesco Express is a 'major technological aid' but I'd be buggered without them!
 
Cultjunky said:
"I think the genetic flaws that would kill us 'in the wild' will just keep piling up until we're incapable of surviving without major technological aid."

How close are we to that point now? How many of us can contruct a tool to enable us to catch, kill and prepare the meat we eat? Or produce sufficient harvest of grains and produce, never mind process them into something we can use?

I'm not saying that Tesco Express is a 'major technological aid' but I'd be buggered without them!
Not knowing how to hunt or farm etc aren't 'genetic flaws' though.
 
Wells' "The War in the Air" was very prophetic both of air warfare in general, particularly as it came to be played out in the first and second world wars, and in some ways of the general "shape" of the various alliances and campaigns of World War 2.
 
In The World Set Free Wells imagined an 'atomic bomb'; instead of blowing up in a single, rapid detonation he imagined it burning continuously for days or weeks, eventually causing the same amount of devastation but more slowly.
 
In The Super Accelerator someone boots a dog through the air so fast it catches fire on The Leas in Folkestone. Most interesting thing that's ever happened there? :shock:
 
shruggy63 said:
In The Super Accelerator someone boots a dog through the air so fast it catches fire on The Leas in Folkestone. Most interesting thing that's ever happened there? :shock:
Wells probably had a better grasp of the principles of science (pre-Einstein in his early work), than a lot of people living today.
 
H G Wells 1914 novel The World Set Free, contains one of his eeriest and most accurate predictions - use of nuclear weapons:

"...nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands ....Destruction was becoming so facile that any little body of malcontents could use it. Before the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city."

Also, this article published the same year in Life magazine, speculated as to how fashion would look like a century hence.
A man and woman in 2014 declare "Weren't they funny!" when appraising the clothing of 1914:

funny.png


Not a bad "hit" I reckon!
People wearing far skimpier clothes, showing scandalously more flesh than in 1914. Elaborate hair-dos and extensive body-art (tattoos).
If those two were attending Glastonbury today, they'd barely get a second glance.
 
Concerning the Eloi and Morlocks;

I expect that genetic engineering will cause a great diversification of mankind, and although there may be both eloi and morlock-like phenotypes, they will be only two of a myriad differently types of possible forms that a human mind might occupy.
 
H G Wells 1914 novel The World Set Free, contains one of his eeriest and most accurate predictions - use of nuclear weapons:

"...nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands ....Destruction was becoming so facile that any little body of malcontents could use it. Before the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city."

Also, this article published the same year in Life magazine, speculated as to how fashion would look like a century hence.
A man and woman in 2014 declare "Weren't they funny!" when appraising the clothing of 1914:

View attachment 56495

Not a bad "hit" I reckon!
People wearing far skimpier clothes, showing scandalously more flesh than in 1914. Elaborate hair-dos and extensive body-art (tattoos).
If those two were attending Glastonbury today, they'd barely get a second glance.

Would fit in on a Pride Parade these days. I preferred when Pride was a tad more conservative and was about people (LGB) who had a same sex attraction. These days it's overrun (and run) by poseurs.
 
H G Wells 1914 novel The World Set Free, contains one of his eeriest and most accurate predictions - use of nuclear weapons:

"...nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands ....Destruction was becoming so facile that any little body of malcontents could use it. Before the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city."

Also, this article published the same year in Life magazine, speculated as to how fashion would look like a century hence.
A man and woman in 2014 declare "Weren't they funny!" when appraising the clothing of 1914:

View attachment 56495

Not a bad "hit" I reckon!
People wearing far skimpier clothes, showing scandalously more flesh than in 1914. Elaborate hair-dos and extensive body-art (tattoos).
If those two were attending Glastonbury today, they'd barely get a second glance.
And she's smoking! <gasps> Scandalous! <faints>
 
Herbert George also predicted, tanks in the 1903 short story The Land Ironclads' although they were rather larger than the real thing and ran on on flexible wheels (these wheels were based on a concept by JW Dunne, an aeronautical engineer, who later wrote An Experiment with Time, about his theory of time and precognitive dreams). Wells also predicted wind turbines as a source of electricity in The Sleeper Awakes, which is also an early dystopian novel.
 
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