Of Techno-Hype and Truthiness

"Medical researchers are making revolutionary breakthroughs every day!"

"Really? That's great. Can you tell me about some of these breakthroughs?"

"Um, uh . . . um, uh . . ."

"I know! That cure for cancer people have been waiting for since forever. They've got that now, right?"

"Not exactly."

"Oh. Then greatly improved treatments for cancer, so that we don't have to cut pieces off of people and beat them up with chemo, and lung cancer, for instance, isn't a death sentence."

"Well, no."

"I see. Then we've made such breakthroughs in the area of viral diseases. Like the common cold--"

"Not the last time I checked."

"Okay, so we're not close to curing viral diseases, and maybe not so much better at treating them. But what about vaccines? We've improved those so that you don't, for instance, have to keep taking them every time a virus mutates. So you don't have to get a new flu shot every fall. Right?"

"No, we haven't done that either."

"Gene therapy--I remember how people were talking about that like it was going to be all over the place."

"Not quite . . ."

"Printed organs, so those who need a new heart or a new liver don't need human donors."

"Alas . . ."

"I remember hearing about plans for reservatrol-based anti-aging drugs that sounded like they would have had them on the market years ago . . ."

"Anti-aging drugs? I can't even guess where you got that one."

"New antibiotics, to help with those disease-causing bacteria that have developed resistance to the old antibiotics--"

"No."

"Okay. Then at least drugs for the conditions that have been treatable for years must be cheaper and more readily available than before. I'll bet drug prices have just fallen through the floor, and people's health insurance premiums and copays with them--"

"You wish."

"So then what are the big breakthroughs you're talking about?"

"Um, uh . . . medical researchers are making revolutionary breakthroughs every day!"

So does the conversation tend to go if anyone tries to point out the difference between the hype and the actual rate of technological progress with, well, almost everyone. They "know" that amazing progress must be ongoing--but they can't name specifics, because in many areas there aren't any, those grand promises that hack journalists make sound as if they've already happened (but for the ass-covering "may" with which they qualify their statement) never really coming to pass, the goods never materializing, but the constant promises leaving their impression, producing that state of expectancy. And so they don't let the lack of evidence dissuade them from their belief, the "truthiness" of the proposition in their minds absolutely invulnerable to questioning by any interlocutor they are likely to meet.

Alas, truthiness and truth are two different and often entirely opposed things.