io9
Science fiction is the go-to genre when you're looking for a glimpse of the future. Joel Achenbach makes a persuasive case in the Sunday Washington Post that the best way to stay in front of the dizzying pace of technological progress is to keep up on your Star Trek and take what Arthur C. Clarke wrote to heart. He also quotes Foresight Nanotech Institute President Christine Peterson, who says, "If you look out into the long-term future and what you see looks like science fiction, it might be wrong. But if it doesn't look like science fiction, it's definitely wrong."
Achenbach's point is smart, if unsurprising. His thoughts on why American politicians tend to avoid the subject of the future are especially clear-headed:
Peterson has one recommendation: Read science fiction, especially "hard science fiction" that sticks rigorously to the scientifically possible. "If you look out into the long-term future and what you see looks like science fiction, it might be wrong," she says. "But if it doesn't look like science fiction, it's definitely wrong."That's exciting — and a little scary. We want the blessings of science (say, cheaper energy sources) but not the terrors (monsters spawned by atomic radiation that destroy entire cities with their fiery breath).
Eric Horvitz, one of the sharpest minds at Microsoft, spends a lot of time thinking about the Next Big Thing. Among his other duties, he's president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. He thinks that, sometime in the decades ahead, artificial systems will be modeled on living things. In the Horvitz view, life is marked by robustness, flexibility, adaptability. That's where computers need to go. Life, he says, shows scientists "what we can do as engineers — better, potentially."
Our ability to monkey around with life itself is a reminder that ethics, religion and old-fashioned common sense will be needed in abundance in decades to come (see the essay on page B1 by Ronald M. Green). How smart and flexible and rambunctious do we want our computers to be? Let's not mess around with that Matrix business.
Every forward-thinking person almost ritually brings up the mortality issue. What'll happen to society if one day people can stop the aging process? Or if only rich people can stop getting old?
It's interesting that politicians rarely address such matters. The future in general is something of a suspect topic . . . a little goofy. Right now we're all focused on the next primary, the summer conventions, the Olympics and their political implications, the fall election. The political cycle enforces an emphasis on the immediate rather than the important.
The Future is Now, Washington Post
Photo: IMDB
Comments
Arthur C Clark? Star Trek? Screw that. I'm only going to pay attention to real Sci-Fi like Hellboy, Babe 2, and Brimstone and Treacle. That Hard Sci-Fi is for nerds.
prompts the question "How much does the present look like the "near-future" scifi of the past".
Not many flying cars around, but lots of telecom developments not very well predicted. Still, Heinlein predicted a spaceflight interregnum. Anyone have other examples?
@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: I don't pay attention unless its babes in shiny metal bikinis...
Isaac Asimov wrote a good essay about this. I forget the title of it, but it was in the Gold anthology.
Essentially, he argues that with the rapid pace of development in the modern world, the only way we can possibly stay abreast of the ethical/moral issues coming on the horizon is to anticipate them, and the only way we can anticipate them is to read science fiction where those issues have already been discussed.
For example, we have quite the knowledge base on the possible ramifications of aliens contacting the earth. Pretty much every plausible scenario has been thought through somewhere, both beneficent and malignant.
I, for one, am not going to dwell upon the inevitable Earth-Minbari war. Let future generations deal with that.
I'm a bit nervous about living in Costner's "Waterworld". Mainly because it's a reality centered around Kevin Costner.
The horror!
@Mathmos: Telecommunication advancements were pretty well predicted, I'd say. Jules Verne talks about something eerily similar to the internet in Paris in the 20th Century, back in 1863... but then when it comes to predictions of the future, nobody is really in the same league as Jules Verne.
You call that a rant?
@xv43: Hell, I need to track it down, but there was a Russian writer who - to my thinking quite eerily - predicted the blog. What I think the missing quality is that, while you can predict the blog, you can't predict "I Can Has Cheezburger?," which is somewhat the problem in the article. It's fine to fret over how people don't understand technology or what have you. But the reason, say, that the one scientist didn't see the value of the internet is directly connected to him not envisioning it as quite possibly the most perfect porn distribution device ever imagined. Sci-fi authors are good at catching the big stuff, coming up with the neat ideas for how it's going to work and what it's going to change. But the problem is that when technology becomes 'real' to people, and becomes adopted, is when it ties in with those basic and boring ideas that a lot of sci-fi authors, utopians as they are, would like to just go away.
@Slatz_Grobnik: It was a Russian count in the 18th century--he predicted that every family would be linked via electromagnetic telegraph, and produce daily newsletters about their activities.
I read that article, too, but ALSO can't remember the guy's name.
This is why politicians are inherently awful at anything important. Their job is the now: other countries attacking, specific problems with infrastructure, monetary crises.
Leave everything else to the private sphere. Our government uses 1970s tech to get into space. Virgin Galactic is developing the tech of the 2010s. Need I say more?
@Slatz_Grobnik: The ancient Egyptians started lolcatz! with the usage of hieroglyphs. They were avid fans of scifi. That was 4000 years ago.
@Illuminatus: Yeah, the 70's tech is kind of funny. Even Stargate's spaceship was crap, and that was a pretty decent scifi show.
@Slatz_Grobnik: But that's just it, I think. SF authors aren't all utopians, I'd argue that at least as many of them have dystopian views of future society.
This is a topic near and dear to my heart, when I was a wee college lad, I wanted to write my thesis on this subject - much the way Thomas Kuhn brought out the idea of a philosophy of science, that SF authors create a philosophy of technology. Not just *what* will be invented, but why it will be invented, and how it will be used at all levels.
Even 2001 A Space Odyssey has strong dystopian elements. The character of HAL is a stern warning against giving AI too much free reign, and a valid exposition of what might happen if supremely intelligent computers were given no oversight.
I exempt pulp SF from this discussion, as those are really just adventure novels in space, with aliens instead of communists.
one of the sharpest minds at Microsoft
Faint praise if I ever saw it.
So I'm not supposed to look to the Jetsons for spiritual and ethical advice?
The big thing that Sci-Fi does wrong is predict unbridled technology advances without a realistic timeline. That is to say, we COULD have flying cars and vertical highways and all sorts of fancy futurey stuff, but it would have meant that each new innovation was immediately embraced and built-upon by everyone. What happens to the obsolete vehicles, or the economy of the automobile industry and its predictable buying cycle?
Consequently, Sci-fi predicts too much change in too short a time. We may eventually get there, but not a smooth growth or one where every industry advances at the same speed.
The Future will be Buckaroo Banzai.
just sayin'.
@groonk:
Good news! I've always wanted to be a deranged vigilante... I mean, member of an unregulated private army... wait, I mean Blue Blazer. Yeah, that's it!
-Kle.
@xv43: The term I wound up using to describe it was techno-socialism, and I think that it is almost inescapably linked to sci-fi in general. But the point reflects on dystopian fiction as well, or so I'd say. The television is watching you? No, but you're watching Big Brother, where the total invasion is made sport, and arguably who's behind the screen has an even greater power to control you because you submit to it. That's got problems with it, but I'm sticking to the point that what Sci-fi authors miss is the incredible venial nature of technology's adaption by the public, which is possibly why they are so good at seeing the big picture of what The Future can really do if you take it out for a spin.
I laughed when that article said the first mention of the internet was in 1988. The protocols were all developed in the early 1970's, and the 'I' in TCP/IP stands for "internet."
Of course, they could have meant the first mention of "internet" in the Washington Post. So it only takes 15 years for a major newspaper to notice a technology. That sounds about right!
In any case, if you want to know what you could possibly be living with in 15 years, look at what's in the lab now. It takes at least that long for anything to go from basic research to mass market.
Wanna see a cool future?
I just discovered this amazing animé series from last year called Dennō Coil...
[en.wikipedia.org]
[www.tv-links.cc]
This may be where we're headed.
Let me take an informal poll... which future would you guys rather live in, a cyberpunk urban sprawl, or a post-apocalyptic wasteland?
@Log1c
What if the babes are made of shiny metal too?
@dOk: I'll give 'lube up' new meaning...
Hell even the Jetsons wasn't that far off.
Maybe not the flying origami cars, robot maids or automated exercise equipment.
What did George do all day? Talk to a computer and press a single button while the robots made sprockets. What do most programmers do? Press buttons and talk to computers. Teleconferencing, video phones, online trading, and kids talking in nothing but slang...
Are speaking genetically modified house pets that far off? How many people do you know that would pay to listen to their dog talk or give it the mind of a 9 year old.
@BlindKarma: "How many people do you know that would pay to listen to their dog talk or give it the mind of a 9 year old. "
<-------- (/raises hand)
Very few SF writers bother to get their Science right anymore, and those that do stick to one Science in particular (usually Physics) and give all the other sciences (chemistry, biology, neurology...) the cold shoulder so Achenbach's suggestion is impossible to follow.
Even the "soft" SF writers get a lot of things right. For instance, Philip K. Dick predicted that an absurdly high proportion of the internet would be used for porn and cybersex in _Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said_, and so far that's been spot-on.
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