Society and Technology
Brooks anticipates a number of developments that would come about in the decades after his book, including a juvenile justice system that is empowered to remove children from homes with unsuitable parents. Technologically, he equips his future with electric cars and dirigible-like aircraft called "anemons." He envisions electricity generated with solar power. He predicts color photography and advances in electronic communications. In what may be the most surprising feature in the book, dogs are taught to understand human speech and respond with a simple code of staccato barks — a foreshadowing of modern communication with apes and other animals using methods like sign language.
Read more about this topic: Earth Revisited
Famous quotes containing the words society and, society and/or technology:
“Children belong in families, which, ideally, serve as a sanctuary and a cushion from the world at large. Parents belong to society and are a part of that greater world. Sometimes parents are a channel to the larger society, sometimes they are a shield from it. Ideally they act as filters, guiding their children and teaching them to avoid the tempting trash.”
—Louise Hart (20th century)
“The distractions, the exhaustions, the savage noises, the demands of town life, are, for me, mortal enemies to thought, to sleep, and to study; its extremes of squalor and of splendor do not stimulate, but sadden me; certain phases of its society I profoundly value, but would sacrifice them to the heaven of country quiet, if I had to choose between.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)