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Comment by StrictDabbler | Hacker News Reader

It is baffling that Bradbury was able to write The Murderer in 1953.

The transistor was invented in 1947 and the first fully transistorized radio wasn't available until a year after Bradbury published this, but he got all the way through predicting ringtones, smartwatches, housing automation, GPS digital dispatch/gig economy jobs, and smarmy digital assistants in the span of a single story.

I am not aware of a more prescient bit of science fiction. Bradbury knew how people worked and what we'd try to make.

If you haven't read The Murderer, please do so.

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Ever read "The Machine Stops" by EM Forster? Over 100 years old, and it's got Facebook style interactions!

Yes and video calls that are "good enough".

The most prescient fiction work of the century, in my opinion.

Also "A Logic Named Joe", with social networking stuff.

Ever read Bradbury's "The Veldt"?

Makes you wonder if Bradbury wasn't a real life John Titor.

>It is baffling that Bradbury was able to write The Murderer in 1953.

I thought I had a decent grasp of science fiction classics of that era. After reading the story, I too am baffled, both by my having missed this story, and in the same way you are.

>I am not aware of a more prescient bit of science fiction. Bradbury knew how people worked and what we'd try to make.

While not a start-to-finish prophecy like "The Murderer", from Wikipedia's article on Robert Heinlein's Space Cadet:

>The novel contains an early description of a mobile phone:

>>Matt dug a candy bar out of his pouch, split it and gave half to Jarman, who accepted it gratefully. "You're a pal, Matt, I've been living on my own fat ever since breakfast -- and that's risky. Say, your telephone is sounding. "Oh!" Matt fumbled in his pouch and got out his phone. "Hello?"

>The phone "was limited by its short range to the neighborhood of an earth-side [i.e. terrestrial] relay office".

I especially find this part insightful:

>A cadet avoids having to talk to his family while traveling by packing his phone in luggage.

>I am not aware of a more prescient bit of science fiction. Bradbury knew how people worked and what we'd try to make.

I'm not certain it is, but The Santaroga Barrier by Frank Herbert has a rather interesting excerpt:

>To those men in their oddly similar dark suits, their cold eyes weighing and dismissing everything, the people of this valley were a foe to be defeated. As he thought of it, Dasein realized all customers were "The Enemy" to these men. Davidson and his kind were pitted against each other, yes, competitive, but among themselves they betrayed that they were pitted more against the masses who existed beyond that inner ring of knowledgeable financial operation.

>The alignment was apparent in everything they did, in their words as well as their actions. They spoke of "package grab level" and "container flash time" -- of "puff limit" and "acceptance threshold." It was an "in" language of militarylike maneuvering and combat. They knew which height on a shelf was most apt to make a customer grab an item. They knew the "flash time" -- the shelf width needed for certain containers. They knew how much empty air could be "puffed" into a package to make it appear a greater bargain. they knew how much price and package manipulation the customer would accept without jarring him into a "rejection pattern."

>*And we're their spies, Dasein thought. the psychiatrists and psychologists - all the "social scientists" we're the espionage arm.*

The Santaroga Barrier,

Frank Herbert, 1968

The way that tech uses "dark patterns" to keep us glued to our phones, and use fairly advanced science to do it, was sort of called out if not predicted.

This is fascinating and does, in fact, seem to be the same kind of social prediction rather than tech.

I thank you for the referral.

Paris in the Twentieth Century (1863)

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

he basically just worked from first principles of human nature and took it to the logical conclusion

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