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> That is, he almost exclusively addresses the technological advancement, while keeping the societal structures largely intact.

Looks like it to me too. Which is probably far more realistic than all the "society will radically change thanks to technology" takes. In the last 70 years we've seen technological advances we couldn't have dreamed off yet society is in most parts still the same as it was back then. Sure, progress has been made, but not as much as many scifi writers hoped for.



It depends what you mean by "progress."

No one imagined Facebook and Twitter or even Microsoft and Apple. But also no one imagined gay rights and other progressive changes, or the general change in social register and emotional tone.

What hasn't changed much is - ironically - movies and science fiction itself. All the old 50s tropes - superheroes, militarism, mutant superpowers, apocalyptic alien evil, sentient robots - are still around today, although sometimes with more of a dystopian slant than was usual back then. And with much better visual FX.

It's not so much that retrofuturism is a thing, it's more that neither SF nor tech ever really outgrew it. There's been no shockingly unexpected and mind-expanding culture of neo-futurism to replace it. (Yet.)




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