Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind?
 

This Popular Science article is very interesting. Mostly I think futurists are pretty dillusional. Still, if all of this came true, I wouldn't want to live to see the day it happened. I'm not all that 'down' with stuff we already have, like cell phones. Imagine uploading your brain to a computer and travelling on a space ship but not with your body, only with your consciousness. Too freaky.

Uhm...unless I missed something, that whole article was just about what SOME sci-fi writers thought COULD happen to us. Like they mentioned, Asimov predicted that we would have robots as butlers, but all we got were those robo-dogs for 70 dollars a pop.

And I don't really think cell phones are all that bad. Unless they're secretly stealing my souk.

This whole bit about uploading a copy of your mind into a cyber world while maintaining your own in your body is interesting, however simply dl'ing the latest updated copy of your mind into a new body in case your body dies does not speak well to me.

For instance, if I did that, had an accident with my body and had my copy dl'd to a new body, would the host body hold an identity identical to mine? Sure, I suppose. But it wouldn't be the original me. I still would have died and my ego would no longer exist, however to the rest of the world, i'd still be around.

That kind of creeps me out. Especially if that happened to a loved one and they were replaced by a copy that was "them."

It would be different if both universes were not experienced separately, though. If I were experiencing the digital and physical existence and was sentient of both planes of existence at the same time, then it would not weird me out.

How can envisioning what comes next become impossible? If that was true, then we wouldn't be advancing at all. How could people come up with new technology and such if they can't see beyond what already exists?

Popular Science is the stupidest science magazine ever. It's like People except under the pretension of being smart. Entertaining, maybe, but don't draw any conclusions based on an article out of it.

i like PS but, meh...naw they'll probably just keep churning out Star Wars: The New Republic novels till the end of time.

Popular Science is a great magazine just every once in a while they get a bad article or two. It's not so much that we can't see where we are going. The problem is that there are so many possibilities. You can predict all you want but there are so many possible paths it is hard to be sure which one we will take and what might happen because of it.

I don't know. Do they really think we'll be in spaceships going through singularities in black holes by 2030?

This has always been true. The article is just about the latest generation to figure it out, which happens to be us. The same thing happens with end of the world movements. If you look into it, there's never been a time in human history when many people were not staunchly convinced that they were living in the last days of civilization. Each generation figures out that this one is the last one and this time they mean it. Similarly, every generation of sci-fi writers figures out that technology is progressing too quickly to predict where it'll go next and we'll be heads living in jars on the moon in the fantastic year X where X is equal to the present year + 50.

There are a few differences for this generation though. The first being that there has almost always been a general concensus on where we are headed with technology. Lacking that there are a few visionaries that confidentaly and accurately, or at least semi-accurately, predict the future. Both of these are absent for the most part in todays sci-fi; which could be from lack of talent.

The second difference is the very real possiblity of an incredibly drastic shift in how our lifes are lived. I think they compared it to the difference in lifestyle between the stone age to today, except it could happen in a generation. There has been some talk of late about quantum computers on this section. It seems a break through happens every few months or even every few weaks. Once the first fully finctional quantum computer comes on line life as we know it will change forever. Inside of 30 years after that you could have a watch with more computing power than a room full of todays supersomputers. Not to mention all the advances in quantum theory and other areas that will come from such powerful computers. That is just one technology. Nanotech is taking similar strides as well as Biotech and Genetics. At this point a major break through in anyone of these technologies could cause a shift in lifestyle of an unheard of scale. Going back to quantum computers for a second, if this technology happens first, and it probably will, it will cause a train reaction in the other fields that will cause massive breakthroughs in understanding.

Yes every generation has noticed technology is progressing to fast to accurately perdict but the more conservative writers could make a fairly good stab. We as a generation are standing on the edge of a cliff and the ground we're standing on is about to give way. Once that happens everything we have ever known, maybe not everything but most things, will be changed for ever and in unbelievably drastic way. I hope everyone is ready for the fall.

Edit: It occurs to me that I'm not sure that I'm ready for that fall. I'd like to think I am but once the Pandora's Box is open you can't close it, as the saying goes. Ready or no though I will eventualy be joing the ranks of those who are removing the dirt from under our feet. It hadn't occured to me what my choice of profession truly meant until now.