I don't fancy your chances of being correct in any of your prognostications, but rather, chalk them up as more science fiction, and in a right wing world where anything (even the most morally reprehensible) is possible; including a return to virtual slavery and child labor.
Well the line on the profit graph must always rise, along with parasitic (drones) shareholder expectations!

I liked the Dunes trilogy, and the eventual outcome.

And planet moving tractor beams, which can even realign earth sized planets or moons, into new orbits.

The unexpected failure to change the human condition has its origins in corporate greed, and "minds" that serve their needs, rather than mankind!
Minds that oh so cleverly warp and twist the facts, or indeed, simply ignore science based evidence, simply because it doesn't fit the preferred belief system, or the corporate wish list! And if the cap fits?

Anyone can own their own opinion, but nobody can own the facts! Or ignore them at their peril!

The human condition is not aided either, when there are just too many of us, or one group believes they're born to rule; and therefore exploit the less well off shamelessly.

Simply put, our future will be little different than that of Venus, unless so called scientists, stop refusing the face the facts; as opposed to cherry picking from them, just to suit the conformation bias!

Something that ought to be forever banned from the world of real science!
Expose the literal facts, even the extremely unpalatable ones; then let the chips fall where they may!
Rhrosty.

'But the changes in our society since his boyhood are enormous, and they result from great productivity which in turn is the outcome of advances in technology and a much greater scientific understanding of the natural world. Those advances don't have to be linear.'

A fascinating train of thought. Of course advances in science, technology and in social evolution are not linear. But what is the trigger that starts a specific advance?
Human kind, that is homo sapiens, has been on the move out of Africa for over 100,000 years. Yet what we call civilisation can not be dated back much more than 5,000 of these years. Why the long delay? Why did we suddenly find a need to better understand our environment and our place in it?
After reading a story in Australian Geographics 123 "Messages from Mungo” by John Pickrell it suddenly hit me. It is the environment we create for ourselves that causes the change in us! Mungo Man died 40,000 years ago and to all intend and purposes he and his people lived much like the Aboriginal people lived when the white man invaded Australia 250 years ago. In 40,000 years they never built any cities, never had permanent homes. Because there was an overabundance of living space in this new continent. If crowding occurred someplace, they just moved elsewhere. Once living space becomes restricted and people are forced to live in cities, that brings out a desire to improve conditions and a need to understand the limits.

So, it is quite likely that in the distant future, when living space no longer challenges us, that social and technical evolution will settle at (or regress to) a new level.

Science fiction has been entertaining and enlightening for most of my life. Much of it has come to pass, especially that sub-section of it I refer to as social fiction. "1984" remains pretty much spot on, with the failure to predict computers being the only jarring note.
William Gibson is hard to fault.

My experience with Sci-fi has been similar, however I don't agree that
"the changes in our society are enormous...because...if there is a problem of any kind, we approach it to see what is its cause, and how we can best deal with it....I remain positive about humanity's capacity to...apply knowledge well. In most of the world, conditions for the ordinary person are very much better than they were twenty years ago, let alone a century ago."
There is no discernible difference between the way most human societies are organised and run today than in the past. It is still dog eat dog, profit at all costs, slash and burn and to hell with the consequences. There have always been individuals who can see the problems of human behaviour, but they have always been paid lip service and ignored. We know the causes of Middle-Eastern strife, but the solution doesnt suit our oligarchs.
There is a plethora of knowledge about how humans could live in plenitude and harmony, but that knowledge is ignored because that's not the way we evolved. If you think living in a vast megapolis with all the attendant problems is better than in a forest or on a fertile river plain with clean air, water, and an abundance of food for the taking, then I guess they're better off, but I know I would rather be dead that in the position of 99% of humans today.
For me the beauty of Sci-fi for me was that the best tales reflected the failings of the human psyche, but gave pointers to how it could be improved. Heinlein springs to mind.

Another interesting thread Don.

I used to find most science fiction very good on the yacht, when I was a long way from anywhere, with no TV reception, & difficult radio as well.

I found most short stories, & even many novels were very forgettable, particularly the plots. In just 3 to 6 month you had totally forgotten the thing, & could read it again as if a new novel.

Supply was always a problem, but then I got lucky. I picked up the 30 volume 15Th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannia at a garage sale in Honiara, Solomon Islands. After a bit of hopping around it, I decided to read it cover to cover was the best idea. Bet not many have done that.

Funnily enough, it often felt like I was reading science fiction when reading it.

Encyclopaedia Britannica! God I hate this auto spell correction.

Nice to read a thoughtful piece based on science fiction; a pity not to see a reference to my bellwether, Analog magazine. One way or another it has influenced my thinking. An abiding irritation with time travel stories that ignore the underlying paradox led me to to discover the same explanation of time as the physicist Julian Barbour, admittedly 20 years after him, but by the same sort of epiphany. Mine usually occur in the shower where I do my best thinking.

The incredible rate of change in the 20th century is another issue that science fiction highlights. I got to comparing it to other centuries, notably the the 16th, in the immediate aftermath of the voyages of Bartholomew Diaz and Christopher Columbus. The change was enormous - the discovery of and travel to the whole world, printed books, the Reformation and the start of modern science in the hands of Galileo. Perhaps his greatest discovery was to distinguish between acceleration and velocity. It is not the volume of change over the 20th century that is important, it is the rate of change and it seems to me that this has been constant over the centuries.

Another is the question of world population. Dispassionately, I can't decide whether there were too many people in the world or not enough! It seems to depend on what issue one looks at. Some 20 (or was it 30) years ago the late Harry Stein published a piece in Analog describing how he flew coast to coast across America in his light aircraft and how his abiding impression was of a vast and empty land. Current prediction seem to favour 10 billion as the number at which world population will stabilise. That is probably about double when Harry wrote but still comfortable.

Perhaps the greatest failure of science fiction is to predict how earth's biota, humans included, will evolve when it moves permanently into interplanetary space. Evolution had no problem adapting marine life to life on dry land. It should have no problem adapting to life in vacuum and zero gravity.

Fair enough, I guess. Perhaps Asimov and others might simply have assumed that good governance was a technology with the details settled, even if the broad brushstrokes were different at different times.There might be democracy or aristocracy but the municipal services worked.

Heinlein made a good shot at some predictions that were accurate. mobile communications, telecommerce, ATMs and "Working Girl" automated vacuum cleaners to mention a few doodads. He also tried to address societal issues, investigating through parody the drives of a militaristic culture in "Starship troopers" that seems oddly less parodic as time goes by. In "beyond this horizon" and "for us the living" the imposibility of actually restricting electronic surveillance was acknowledged, and countered by a cultural taboo that made invasion of privacy socially unacceptable, capable of ostracising even a journalist who was crass enough to photograph a private moment. This without preventing surveillance from investigating crime. Setting aside the almost steampunk depictions of computer hardware, "the moon is a harsh mistress" examines the foment of revolution in the only remaining site for a penal colony.

Frederick Pohl's depiction of enforced consumption seems a chilling prediction of even current difficulties in getting out of the rat race, yes, carried to absurdity. Don's mention of A.E van Vogt also recalls to mind the "weapon shops of Isher" - how would law enforcement and commerce respond to freely available weapons that could only be fired in self-defence? Where coersion by force was not practical?

The mistake that many writers may have made including my favourites is that they expected people and culture and civil administration to advance as sensibly as technology, assuming a better society of better people, urbane civilisations of polite people to match our star trek communicators, exquisite surgery and convenient online shopping.

Rusty

Rusty wrote:
"The mistake that many writers may have made including my favourites is that they expected people and culture and civil administration to advance as sensibly as technology, assuming a better society of better people, urbane civilisations of polite people to match our star trek communicators, exquisite surgery and convenient online shopping."

This is very true, and it irritates me now that age and experience is making me increasingly misanthropic. It's the mindset of current aficionados of technology and progress and is leading us into dystopia, not utopia.

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 was pretty spot on; in this age of facebook and all these other electronic digital gadgets that demand our attention, who bothers to read, and to ponder?

Sure, we can all get our news instantly from a number of feeds, and newspapers in print will probably become obsolete by 2020, but we need people to interpret what's happening, and try to make some sense of it all, so that life is not just one damn thing after another.

What an interesting set of comments! Each one made me think again, Asimov shows many different societies and all of them have problems. It is indeed as though humanity does not advance in the way technology does. Nonetheless, today's developed societies offer a vastly better life for the average man or woman than was the case when I was a boy, let alone when my parents were children. Yes, there is still greed, and over-mighty people and powers, and we haven't learn how to deal with them.

Many thanks to all who have commented.