Do you see the possibility for scaling back technology to be a realistic scenario in our day? Google Glass is one example of a technology that was developed, worn, thrown on the ground and stomped on repeatedly. What do we see as those boundaries, and what tech do you foresee in the distant future that Discovery seems to be headed into?
Somewhat. You cannot uninvent a thing but you can make something that works but isn't practicable.
No one has walked on the moon since the early 1970s. and they may not this decade, either. No one forgot HOW to build rockets and trans-lunar injection burns and everything else you need to get there. It's just too expensive and no one has needed/wanted to enough to make it happen again.
Giant VTOL passenger traffic. The Empire State Building was in part conceived as an airship port. You could get on your flight across the world right there, theoretically. They don't do that anymore. The last flights out of downtown New York on a vertical take off vehicle occurred via Chinook type helicopters off the old PanAm building. No more passenger airships, no more PanAm, no more flying coach from skycrapers. They don't do that anymore.
The electric car was almost given up on when the design outnumbered gasoline and steam cars in the early 1900's. It's back now, though.
Atomic Weapons: This is 1940's technology. It was developed at the same time as liquid fueled rockets and jet engines. There isn't anything stopping all but the poorest countries from throwing everything they have into obtaining or making these weapons, but the nuclear club remains small and has in fact shrunk a little. It's not a technological reason but a political one. For the most part, the human race would like to see them all gone. I hope.
Undersea Colonies: There's a NASA habitat, off the keys, a hotel off the keys where you can spend the night and have pizza delivered, and there's that new restaurant in Sweden. 3. That's it. There used to be more people (not counting military submarines) living and working in scientific undersea laboratories than now. There used to be dreams of undersea colonies. but it hasn't happened, and it looks more and more like it may never. No one forgot how. They just don't.
Seasteading: along with the last bit, just to make Nemo cry more, the idea of seasteading while perfectly technologically possible, simply hasn't suceeded. The most recent attempt at sea steading has two people on the run from Thai authorities with a possible death sentence on the line. That, plus the strange tale of the Republic of Minerva, isn't going to make anyone who can make this happen, enervated to do so any time soon.
Vaccinations: all but the most complete extremist idiotic fringe used to make sure their kids got shots, and diseases were wiped out. Now there are more extremists and the idiot fringe looks more like a blanket.
(was going to add greening the desert, etc, but the more i wrote the more depressing it is. i think we may be on the cusp of a new dark age, if we don't fight it like mad now)
