Asking the wrong questions
Two problems in the article analysis<p>One is the classic hard vs soft sci fi.  A classic example in book form is Stranger in a Strange Land reads like a story about 60s boomer hippies from India who meditate and get high and die in an allegory of Jesus, because it is.  There&#x27;s a very thin wrap of search and replace science fiction over that hippie story most famously a giant plot hole where the author wrote in video telephone video conferencing without following up on the hole in the plot generated by being able to see the other party.  In comparison, hard sci fi takes into account and weaves a story about the human effects of technology...<p>The other problem is in the &quot;The authors polled a range of experts&quot;.  Asking my plumber about theology or my lawyer about physics is obviously dumb, and in pop culture we accept that asking a 50s dude about the 70s is pretty much a waste of time.  However in all fields of human activity if you want an intelligent commentary on contemporary computer programming you have to either hatch or grow a contemporary computer programmer.  The opinions of a dude in another field from decades ago are only accidentally going to be correct.  Regardless who was an expert in automation in the 60s, I&#x27;m pretty sure they weren&#x27;t being asked because they almost certainly didn&#x27;t have cool authoritarian credentials because the topic wasn&#x27;t cool enough at that time, so by definition they were talking to the wrong people.  The history of many present day trends and concepts shows they were not very cool before they became cool, therefore asking contemporary experts on the topic of cool will mostly not work.