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I have a book called Flies from the Amber and it depicts a future society where a 30-35 years old man is called a child, and consequently not allowed to vote.

But it is true that with development of the society the "child/adult" borderline is creeping higher and higher. The main reason is longer lifespan; another reason is economic ability to keep children away from adult activities until males grow long beards, literally. Consider that the optimal age for a woman to have a child is somewhere between 18 and 25 years old, but a good chunk of it is spent in the "child" limbo. Parents want to keep their precious offspring in child state as long as possible because they got used to it; some say that children are not mature enough to make adult decisions - but I think most people are not mature enough to make those decisions by any age (divorces aplenty).

People do not necessarily become more mature if they are kept in diapers longer. Real world makes people mature, and everyone has to make their own, personal set of mistakes to learn from. It hardly matters, IMO, if the person does that when she is 18 or 21 or 25 years old. But the earlier they start, the earlier they learn.

Wil McCarthy's "Queendom of Sol" science fiction series released a few years back had Blindsight used as the basis of an advanced martial arts discipline in the final volume, "To Crush The Moon". (Read them in order or you'll be very confused). He swore he wasn't just making the phenomenon up at the time. So... guess he wasn't.

Wil McCarthy has an interesting book called Hacking Matter, which talks about Quantum Dots and explains a bunch of applications.

Quite an interesting read, and well written. And I think you can download the book online at his website, as well.

Highly recommended - entertaining, informative read.

to ask this...

The guy who wrote "the wellstone" is convinced that quantum dots can also be used to create programmable matter, something he came up with in one of his science fiction books.

I am just curious. Is this (programmable matter via quantum wells/dots) something that actual work is being done on anywhere, or that actual signs of progress can be seen in, or that Mr. McCarthy has the actual capacity to encourage actual science work to be done on? Or is this just a lone science fiction author running around trying to convince people to take him seriously?

Wil Mccarthy's web site

Tons of interesting info...

Heh. I actually know the difference between von Neumann and Harvard architectures, but I still made this mistake for a few seconds. I guess it's because I read "too much" science fiction, and the concept of vN-machines occurs from time to time. They're good as a sort of "final nemesis" very-bad-concept, and the construction of such machines is often outlawed in whatever social system is being described. Just last week, I read The Wellstone by Wil McCarthy, which mentioned von Neumann machines. :)