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Pacing of information in a fictional world

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the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
I'm kicking this back and forth for a couple of projects at the moment.  Both are set in (different) far future worlds, one about a thousand years from now, the other closer to two thousand.  Both are settings in which a great deal of complicated history has happened in those timespans, and where the protagonists and the basic social assumptions are about as different from ours, as ours are from people in other cultures a thousand years ago.

I'm finding myself caught between a) the story moving at a reasonable pace, b) getting the necessary bits of information in, and c) having it actually be reasonably plausible for the characters to think about or explain any of this.  (How many times, when getting into your car, do you turn to the other person with you and say "As you know, other person in hypothetical example, the internal combustion engine, powered by burning oil extracted from the ground, allows a carriage to move much faster than anything pulled by horses, and over the last century they have become a dominant form of transportation... ")

On the one hand, stopping for five thousand words of people explaining stuff to each other is not really workable for snappy pacing*; on the other, it's not going to help the book to go racing into a supposedly tense and exciting scene where the reader does not know what is going on, or why.  Anyone got any thoughts on what balance there works for you, and examples you like ?

*It could in theory work for Neal Stephenson-type pacing, but much though I like his work I am not Neal Stephenson nor have I any desire to be.

meh:

Explain the counterintuitive stuff.

Work your pacing magic for the rest.

sleepdeprived38:
The novel Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan, never really stops to explain anything at all and it forced me to reason out much of what the technology is like from little hints.  That's not to say that there are no explanations at all, but (if i am remembering my reading experience correctly) I was well into the novel before there was any kind of an explicit explanation about the tech, the rest is done through little clues.  It was kind of fun to work it out that way.  So I say use none the first time through, and then when you have someone read it, have them mark points where they are totally lost not knowing why x does y, or how z was made. 

Aakaakaak:
Something Asimov did in the Foundation series was to start his major break points with excerpts from The Encyclopedia Galactica. Could you use a similar technique by outlining the new technology pieces used maybe?

You could describe the item through the individuals senses. "He heard the familiar whine of the laser cannon charging up as the beam of light increased in speed, moving from dipole to dipole." (probably not the correct way to explain charging a laser gun.)

svb1972:
Heinlein both /sucked/ and /excelled/ at this issue with varying degrees.

If you want to explain why there are flying hover cars, perhaps the best way to do is a hobbyist conversation.
Like Jim mentions, you want to avoid the talking head problem. (Or, you can have one)

In your future worlds, are there AI Agents?  What's the 'internet' like?  What is the access to information like.
I loved the use of the Encyclopedia Galactica, in the Asimov books.  it depends on what your narrative is like.  If it's doable, having the character muse about how cool his jetcar is, without having him go into detail about why they replaced the horse and carriage.  Let the reader make that leap from the information you gave him.  Why does everyone have cortical implants and a wetware computer in their heads?  Well, just show them interacting with the Agents, show how their daily life is effected by it. 

A Captain of a Starship walks onto his new Command and his implants interface with the Ship's computer.  Said ship already has his brain-signature on file, with command level access.  He gets a list of his entire crew.  As he walks onboard from his point of view everyone has a nametag floating over their head, with the option for him to expand with a thought so he can get some information, perhaps even bring up a full Service File on the individual in question, as well as create notes for himself.  That explains the way the implants work so much better, than a long winded explanation that makes no sense for the character to make to himself, or the person next to him.

Two people watching TV are not going to talk about the history of tvs.

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