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Science Fiction into Science Fact?
Selanit asks: "I'm a student of English literature at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, with a pronounced interest in all things tech as well. Next term I'll be taking an Independent Study course which combines the two -- the topic will be 'Influences of Science Fiction on Real-World Tech.' The professor and I are still trying to assemble a reading list. So here's my question: what science-fiction novels have had a particularly noticeable effect on the development of technology? I'm mainly interested in books that have been written since World War II. The line of inquiry is not limited to computers; any kind of link between sci-fi and hard tech will do (e.g. Cap'n Kirk's communicator == prototype mobile phone). Books that have lent a name to a technology are also interesting (like the 'Little-Endian, Big-Endian' terms which were lifted from Gulliver's Travels, or 'Babel Fish' from Douglas Adams)."
I've heard it said that Arthur C. Clarke had the idea for geosynchronous satellites, and wrote about them in a few of his novels.
Come on, give it up, that's
I am sure others will list more from this work, but there is a really interesting passage that describes inter-networking as a wasp's nest.
From (old) Star Trek and (by reference) Dune equates easily to my cube at work.
I've read (I believe here on /.) that many Silicon Valley companies gave that to employees and said "this is what we're aiming for", especially referring to his vision of the Metaverse. This was before the bubble popped, of course .
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WWJD...For a Klondike Bar?
That term was coined by William Gibson in one of his stories. I'm sure someone knows which story it was.
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http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html
Do your own assigment.
remote control arms used to work with nuclear and hazardous material. I think it's in a short story though.
Read some of the early Heinlein. He invents a lot of stuff, well before it's time. The waterbed, I believe was just one of the things in a long line... :-)
Jules Verne, from "20,000 Leagues" to "From the Earth to the Moon".
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
"The Forever War" by Joseph Haldeman has an interesting bit on cloning.
;-)
---Spoiler---
Towards the end, which is several thousand years in the future, almost everyone is a clone, and it tells a bit about how this affects the world.
He also really plays with the einstein-rosen bridge (worm hole) quite a bit.
Its not a ton of stuff, but its a -great- read regardless
Also, although its been probably written 20 times by the time I write this, Asimov is often credited with inventing the term "robot".
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Jules Verne wrote about nuclear submarines a long time before their invention. Even though this is not your typical "science fiction" book it did have an influence on people.
I know that this is the obvious thing to say, but hell, Isaac Asimov would be a great start in reading on things. His stories not only deal with technology, but how technology can get the better of us. As in the story where everyone depends on calculators and doing math by hand is revolutionary (sorry if I forgot the name). He not only shows us where we can go, but also where not to go.
Seriously. 1984.
Heinlein was writing stories about going to the moon way before we actually did it. And as far as realism goes, he was pretty close to the mark (as opposed to say, Jules Verne, who also wrote about going to the moon, but wasn't quite as informed).
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, rockets to the moon,... Jules Verne has to be the most visionary science fiction writer I can think of in recent history. Assimov and friends will take his place soon, but I don't think our tech has advanced far enough yet for that.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
Although some things stated by Asimov are quite out of this world, we _are_ having a lot of robotics going on around us, in some form of automation or the other.
;-) are not yet here, robotics and AI is a fast advancing field. Sure, no fancy AI taking over the world tomorrow, but the technology is so subtle that we do not notice it, or even if we do, not pay much attention to it.
Sony's Aibo, cars & washing machines with computers built into them, automated support systems, expert systems (before someone yells that these things are not widely used in the industry, I'd like to let them know that I'm in the support industry working on automated-support query solving agents). And what about bots which crawl the web and gather data.
We could go on and on, the basic fact is that although things like Daneel (or for that matter Marvin
I think Sci-Fi has had less to do with bringing about certain technologies (still waiting on my ansible) than it has on coining terms that have been applied to technologies.
For instance, look at Neuromancer. It gave us the term "Cyberspace", which was cool, but then tried to convince us of a guy running around trying to fence one-megabyte ram sticks. Talk about dystopian...
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Gargoyles - ok, this might be a more obscure reference. But the gargoyles from Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash have definately helped define the wearable computer look.
Oh, right, that didn't actually happen, did it?
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
Plan 9
Came up with the idea for the Orgasmatron and the Orb...wake me when someone's built them!!!!
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WWJD...For a Klondike Bar?
Flash Gordon by Alex Raymond.
pronoblem
Many may laugh at this but I think Star Trek has had a big influence on Science, Many Ideas have been models after these books and TV Shows. I.E. Ebooks.
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I would have to say that the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne was my first real experience with science fiction. The book is set in 1866, I have no idea when it was written. I could probably find out on google, but I am lazy. Anyway, it was written before there were submarines around. Plus, it was a great book.
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Star Trek : The Next Generation Technical Manual
While this book may be the inverse (or reverse?) of what you're looking for, it is extremely interesting, and will surely help you a lot from a research standpoint for your project. It is basically a detailed description of every technical aspect of the ST:TNG universe, which includes many convergences between science fact and science fiction.
Also don't forget to note the name of the first space shuttle ever: The Enterprise.
I'm sure /. will be inundated by people making this connection, but Arthur C. Clarke came up with the idea for communications satellites in geostationary orbits in 1945 (about 25 years before their actual use). However, his idea wasn't outlined in a novel, but in his paper, "Extra-terrestrial Relays. Which is still an interesting read, almost 57 years after its publishing.
4-star general in a one-man army.
Jules Verne had the idea for nuclear subs way back when. Maybe not current enough for you, but definitely a great example.
You'll find lots of etymology in the Jargon file, including the origin many words taken from literature.
I own a copy of the printed book, because I enjoy browsing it so much.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
He predicted the Y2K problem (Ghost from the Grand Banks), and communications satellites (The Fountains of Paradise), and also invented the concept of the space elevator. He didnt invent the AI, but he certainly popularized the concept in film and text (2001 A Space Odyssey). Not to mention a realistic look at the role large corporations would play in space travel (Pan Am flights to the Space Station). I've never read The Deep Range, but it is supposed to be quite visionary as well regarding undersea exploration.
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For some very very high-impact affects, check out some of the old-school sci-fi masters. Ever heard of Clarke Orbit? Also known as geosynchronous orbit (but shorter), it was originally Arthur C. Clarke's idea for stationary communications satalites. For another big one, try Asimov's robots: He invented the concept on his own: it's his word, and he created the concept. The newer sci-fi isn't going to be of much use, I think. But look at some of the much older stuff. Those are the only two examples I can think of off the top of my head, but I bet Heinlein did something.
Or, on the other hand, if you can be satinfied with sci-fi influencing/predicting the real non-tech world, what about Orwell? 1984 is more relevant now than ever, even if it's not a technology impact. Bradbury, et al. may be useful.
Just my 2c.
- Work of science fiction describing some future technology is released
- Some years later, a device similar to the aforementioned technology is released
- You're assuming the latter stems from the former
Who's to say that the "inventor" of the cell phone got the idea from watching Star Trek? Maybe he got the idea from Dick Tracy? Or maybe it's just a natrual evolution of the technology? <SARCASM> Gee, a portable, wireless telephone - what a crazy idea! Thank god for Gene Rodenberry, or we'd never have anything like that! </SARCASM>And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
One of Robert Heinlein's books (Stranger in a Strange Land possibly?) contained the idea of the waterbed in it. Because it was published before anyone could "invent" the waterbed there was no way for anyone to get a patent on it. Eventually people started making them. This is one example of real life imitating art.
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
"CyberCheating" by Joe Schmoe, written in 1988. He details a world-wide "web" of computers devoted to doing other people's homework. Today's version of that technology: Ask Slashdot
324006
Ender's game details a future earth with a worldwide "internet" which allows people (in this case children) to communicate and express their ideas anonymously and let the quality of their ideas, not their age, determine their acceptance.
Work as if you might live forever, Live as if you might die tomorrow.
The German Author Hans Dominik predicted and described in the early twenties of the last century the development of oil platforms, super sonic jet planes and nuclear reactors. Noodlenose
"Put your hand in the box."
"What's in the box?"
"Pain."
Yep, that pretty much describes my cube at work, except it's not just my hand, but rather my whole body that ends up hurting at the end of the day. Damn you, cheap furniture and crappy lighting! Damn you all to hell!
;-)
Anything by William Gibson. The man is a freakin' prophet. A few years ago he sat down and started writing today.
A venture capitalist suggested that I read Brin's "Earth" years ago. Since then, I've re-read it twice, getting more out of it each time. A lot of the ideas he covered as non-fiction in "The Transparent Society" were present in "Earth." Of course, it's hard to measure how much Brin influenced the world with his vision of the effects of networking, v. how much he simply foresaw many of its effects. I know it influenced me considerably and I passed on many of the ideas in my talks at many of the early Web-related conferences.
don't waste yer mod points.
The Handheld
Distributed wireless networks
Did the flip out phone come directly from ST or did they just have the same obstical to overcome and the results are just similar?
Science fiction sparks the imagination with ideas, and certianly alows people in science to say "WOW, thats a good idea, lets see if its possible".
Science fiction went to the moon first that does not mean someone watched the movies and said, "Hey, lets go to the moon".
I can think of a few things that did come from Sci-Fi, and links to them, but I refuse to do your work for you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Boycott this ask Ask Slashdot. It is not our job to do someone elses homework. (unless they plan on paying us.)
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If Tranformers counted as literature, then the Chevy Avalanche could be an example.
You ask for novels, yet your example is taken from a TV series. So, which do you prefer? And which medium do you believe is more influental?
:-)
Secondly, I believe that your choice of Star Trek's communicator isn't actually a good example.
I wasn't born then, but I guess that Walkie Talkies and CB radio or their equivalent existed back then, so it doesn't require much effort to imagine a much smaller version of such a device.
It'd be much more interesting to find out about devices or procedures that can be traced back to SciFi that were not just foreshadowing advanced versions of an existing technology.
(I'll answer your question about SciFi devices in real life in another post, since I want to look for some sources to back up these claims...
Btw, being a SF-nut, one interesting thing I noticed about SciFi movies: You can always tell their production era by looking at hairstyles and makeup. Hardly any SF movie has the guts to do something completely out-of-fashion when it comes to the looks of actresses and actors.
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"This [device?] contains a million data"
And I remember clearly Spock presenting a square piece of plastic about the same size and look of a nowadays common 1.44MB diskette without the metal slider door.
Scientists and inventors do not scour literature looking for devices and ideas to turn from fantasy into reality, which means that Sci-Fi has had zero effect upon what gadgets get invented.
More simply, engineers don't sit around waiting for writers to come up with the ideas.
A better thesis would be, "What ideas have been foretold by science fiction writers years before technology made it possible?"
Or, "Since writers tend to take the social aspects of technology under consideration more often than engineers, what novels and authors have correctly identified social and techonological necessities long before engineers invented the device that created the situation?"
If so, he is credited incorrectly. For the term "robot," try Lem instead. Asimov is known for "the three laws of robotics" which, IIRC, were actually devised by Campbell
-- MarkusQ
Just on that last bit - Asimov may have popularized "robot" in its current sense, but he didn't invent the word - he says so himself in a few of his introductions.
Its originally from a Czechslovakian play written around 1900 or so. It means "slave"/"menial worker" in Czech.
Horrah for pointless asides.
Moorcock wrote this space opera in the early sixties, in which the survivors of humanity shunt their ships from their collapsing universe into another only to run into an alien race that challenges the humans to a game of altered realities where images and emotions are weapons: the "Blood Red Game". Sounds a bit like pencil & paper RPGs and VR to me.
Then again, I happen to be stoned.
is responsible for a large amount of the VR research that is currently going on (Jaron Lanier et al.) also, there is some research being conducted to allow blind people to "see" by connecting their optic pathways directly to some kind of video input.... this too was credited to Gibson as being the main influence.
Perhaps not as influential as it was prophetic, but here are a few of the many entertaining elements made real with each passing year: First, the term 'cyberspace' is coined here (or was it in an earlier short story?) and the rowdy, lawless net culture that we have today us described in detail. Second, the visualization of data as high-res 3D abstraction is presented as the main interface to this new 'cyberspace', and this was in 1983, long before even the first vga adaptor. While we still primarilly rely on CLIs and window systems to manipulate data, this does describe the 3D games that are played today rather well. Large polygonal objects projected in perspective was not commonplace technology 20 years ago.
Third, the fragmentation of the US by corporate influence is held as an obvious trend, something again that is coming to pass with each mega-merger we see in the news. AOL/TW anyone? Microsoft? oh, the list goes on. Gibson is loosing his edge with the younger generation taking his works for granted, even un-inspired. They fail to grasp how utterly amazingly accurate many of his early 80's predictions have come to pass.
Heinlein, especially in his early years, is full of technology that is commonplace today that was pie-in-the-sky when he wrote it. He just didn't always call it by the same names we do today.
I'd have to go digging for specific technologies in specific titles, but it's all good-to-great reading anyway.
Expect to find mobile phones, faxes, video phones, voice dictation, computers of various intelligences, maglev, flywheels for energy storage (we use 'em as a UPS in datacenters; he used 'em in spaceships), sophisticated chemical synthesis (Venusians making real maple syrup from a sample), all sorts of rocketry and space tech, and lots more.
Also good is Niven, though more of his things (such as matter transporters and indestructible ship hulls) are still in the distant future. Zahn likes to take some form of technology, such as $6M-Man-like soldiers (Cobra et al.) and see what it might do to people and society--you get a chapter or two of a space western and the rest of the book of social analysis and commentary.
Sounds like a fun project, if for no other reason than the reading list!
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
If I understand correctly, his description was so good that he actually has a patent on the darn things.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
How fitting that it was a Space Shuttle in name only.
The military seems to be trying to develop many of the concepts introduced by Heinlein in "Starship Troopers" ... the movie (ugh) didn't have to make any great leaps of imagination to re-create the weapons or armor ...
There is an interesting book on the subject from MIT press, came out in 1996.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal/index.html
From dictionary.com:
Word History: Robot is a word that is both a coinage by an individual person and a borrowing. It has been in English since 1923 when the Czech writer Karel Capek's play R.U.R. was translated into English and presented in London and New York. R.U.R., published in 1921, is an abbreviation of Rossum's
Universal Robots; robot itself comes from Czech robota, "servitude, forced labor," from rab, "slave." The Slavic root behind robota is orb-,
from the Indo-European root *orbh-, referring to separation from one's group or passing out of one sphere of ownership into another. This seems to be the sense that binds together its somewhat
diverse group of derivatives, which includes Greek orphanos, "orphan," Latin orbus, "orphaned," and German Erbe, "inheritance," in addition to the
Slavic word for slave mentioned above. Czech robota is also similar to another German derivative of this root, namely Arbeit, "work" (its Middle High German form arabeit
is even more like the Czech word).
Arbeit may be descended from a word that meant "slave labor," and later generalized to just "labor."
mahlen
If I want your opinion, I'll ask you to fill out the necessary form.
"tolkien ring", which some people still refer to Token Ring as...
John Brunner came up with the idea of a software
worm that could bring the internet to a slow crawl
way back in 1975.
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 19:38:06 -0600
Dear William,
Here's a simple explanation of what powers every electrical circuit.
When we crank the shaft of the generator and rotate it, the rotation transforms the input "mechanical" energy into internal "magnetic field" energy. In that little part of the circuit that is between the terminals of the generator and inside it, the magnetic field energy is dissipated on the charges right there, to do work on them. This work (expending the magnetic energy) forces the negative charges in one direction, and the positive charges in the other direction. In copper, for example, for every electron we "push" off an atom into the conductor as a free electron to make "current", there is a "hole" left on that atom. That "hole" is a positive charge.
So the same magnetic field energy, while moving those electrons, also applies forces to those positive holes. The positive charge of each hole, however, is attached to a far heavier mass (the atom) than is the charge of the electron. So the atoms with positive charges (ions) are pushed and rocked back a little.
That's all that rotating the shaft of the generator accomplishes. None of that input shaft energy was transformed into EM energy and sent out down the powerline, as electrical engineers assume. Not to worry, energy does get sent down the powerline. But not from the generator shaft energy or its transduction.
Essentially then, all the energy we put into the shaft of the generator is dissipated inside the generator itself, to push the positive charges in one direction and the negative charges in the other. The separation of the charges forms what is called a "dipole" (opposite charges separated from each other a bit).
That is all that the generator does. That is all that burning all that coal or oil or gas does. It heats a boiler to make steam, so that the steam runs a steam turbine attached to the shaft of the generator, and turns it -- and therefore forcing those charges apart and making that dipole between the terminals of the generator.
Generators and batteries make source dipoles, nothing else.
Let's stop right there and see what happens, once we have a dipole.
In 1957, Lee and Yang were awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of broken symmetry, including the broken symmetry of opposite charges (such as the ends of a dipole, like between those terminals of that generator). Ugh! In lay language, what the dickens is that? What does it mean? Let us deviate a little, so we understand what has been said when we say that "the dipole, once made, is a broken symmetry in the fierce energy flux of the vacuum".
In quantum mechanics, the vacuum (empty space) is not inert at all, but is one of the most active and energetic things in the entire universe. Imagine a giant sea of "energetic bubbles", boiling up and bursting, and with mind-boggling energy. Each little bubble arises and disappears so quickly that it cannot be individually seen; but during the moment that it exists, it has enormous energy.
The vacuum or so-called "empty space" is just a seething sea of such extraordinarily energetic bubbles of energetic particles appearing and disappearing at an incredible rate. Because an individual bubble cannot be seen, it is said to be "virtual" (not observable) as compared to something that hangs around a long time and thus can be "seen" or "observed". An ordinary old electron that hangs around all the time is thus observable; an electron born as a special "bubble" momentarily in the seething vacuum and disappearing again almost instantly, is not observable but "virtual".
Photons (pieces of electromagnetic energy) also come in both "observable" and "virtual" size. An ordinary old photon hangs around a long time and so it is observable. We say it is "real energy" because we can interact with it, detect it, and observe it. A photon born momentarily as a "special bubble" in that seething vacuum does not hang around, and so cannot be "seen" or measured or observed. So it is said to be "virtual".
These virtual bubbles appearing and disappearing in the vacuum are quite real. The reactions of lots of them with mass is what creates all the forces of the universe. Any and every kind of force.
It turns out that a charge -- any charge, either electric or magnetic -- is in violent virtual photon energy exchange with that vacuum, continuously. That fierce absorption of energy and emission of energy is in fact "what charge really is".
Let's visualize that as virtual photons (photon bubbles) in the frenzied vacuum continuously interacting by the uncountable zillions with an ordinary old charge (say an electron). All the forces we observe acting upon that electron, are created by the frenzied interaction of those virtual photon bubbles with that electron.
And the same for any other charge.
So a dipole (two opposite charges separated a little) is a broken symmetry in that violent energy exchange between the charges of the dipole and that seething energy bubble sea. That is well-proven, both experimentally and theoretically, in particle physics since 1957 and the award of the Nobel Prize to Lee and Yang.
It still hasn't made it into the electrical engineering textbooks and curricula yet.
Here's what we mean by that "broken symmetry of the dipole in the fierce flux of vacuum".
The charges on the dipole continuously receive energy in little temporary "bullet strikes" called virtual photon absorptions. So the charge continuously absorbs EM energy, steadily and violently, from the active vacuum at an incredible rate. All the time. Night and day. More in one second than all the manmade power systems on earth have used in our entire history. In other words, it really receives an incredible amount of energy continuously!
So the dipole has to re-radiate (emit) that continuously absorbed virtual energy back to the active vacuum, as fast as it receives it. Else its rapidly increasing stored energy would rise so sharply that it would create a new "Big Bang" and an entire new universe bursting out of the old one.
Obviously the world is not continuously exploding around every dipole or electron. In fact, the dipole and the electron are quite stable. So the dipole or electron has to be re-radiating that absorbed energy back to the vacuum as fast as it receives it.
Now there are two ways the opposite charges in a dipole could possibly radiate that energy back to space. (1) they could radiate it back as the same kind of virtual photons that it absorbed. In that case, there would exist "mirror symmetry" in the vacuum flux, as if everything hitting the dipole charges from the vacuum were just reflected exactly right back to the vacuum, like light reflecting perfectly from a mirror.
But that's not what happens. What happens is (2) a lot of the little bitty momentary photons are "piled up" and added together, to make a bigger "chunk" of EM energy. These "big chunks" of EM energy are the bigger, permanent kind of photons! They are observable. That's real energy, and you can intercept it, collect it, and use it to power real loads.
That reradiating the absorbed virtual photon energy as observable photon energy called a "broken symmetry" in that vacuum "bubble flux". In other words, the dipole charges absorb energy from the vacuum in very tiny momentary bits -- as something like "disintegrated" EM energy. But the spin of the charges of the dipole integrates that "disintegrated" EM energy into very much bigger pieces that are permanent and hang around. So part of the energy received from the vacuum in a form that cannot be "seen", is "glued together" into energy that can be and is seen, and re-emitted back to the vacuum in that real EM energy form.
So we "see" the dipole as if it were just sitting there and pouring out real EM energy continuously, in all directions, like a spray nozzle or giant energy gusher. We don't see the input energy from the vacuum at all! But it's there, and it's well-known in particle physics. It's just that electrical engineers -- particularly those that have designed and built all our electrical power systems for more than a century -- do not know it.
So, according to proven particle physics and a Nobel Prize, the easiest thing in all the world is to extract EM energy from the vacuum. All you wish. Anywhere in the universe. For free. Just pay a little bit once, to make a little dipole, and that silly thing is like a great oil well you just successfully drilled that has turned into a mighty gusher of oil without you having to pump it. The dipole just sits there and does its thing, and it pours energy out forever, for free, as long as that dipole continues to exist.
So pouring from the terminals (from the internal source dipole) of every generator and battery, there is a stream of EM energy pouring out, once that internal dipole is made. This outflowing EM energy has been extracted and converted directly from the seething vacuum by that dipole's broken symmetry. The outflowing EM energy is not transformed shaft energy one put into the generator! That flow of energy extracted from the vacuum fills all space around the external wires attached to the terminals, and it flows at the speed of light.
The external (attached) circuits and power lines etc. catch some of that available EM energy flowing through space (generally flowing parallel to the wires but outside them). Some of the flowing energy is intercepted and diverted into the wires themselves, to power up the internal electrons and force them into currents, thus powering the entire power line and all its circuits.
However, the power system engineers use just one kind of circuit. In the standard "closed current loop" circuit, all the "spent electrons" (spent after giving up their excess energy in the loads, losses, etc.) are then forcibly "rammed" back through that little internal section between the ends of the source dipole (between the terminals). These "rammed" electrons smash the charges in the dipole away, and destroy the dipole then and there.
It can easily be shown that half the "caught" energy in the external circuit is used to destroy that source dipole, and nothing else.
For more than a century, our misguided engineers have thus used a type of circuit that takes half of the energy it catches, and uses that half to destroy the source dipole that is actually extracting the EM energy from the vacuum and pouring it out of the terminals for that power line to "catch" in the first place! The other half of the "caught energy" in the powerline is used to power the external loads and losses.
So half the caught energy in the power line is used to kill the source dipole (kill the free energy gusher), and less than half is used to power the loads. It follows that our electrical engineers are trained to use only those power circuits that kill themselves (kill their gushing free energy from the vacuum) faster than they can power their loads.
Well, to get the energy gusher going again, the dipole has to be restored in order to extract the energy and pour it out again.
So we have to pay to crank the shaft of that generator some more, to turn that generator some more, so that we can dissipate some more magnetic energy to re-make the dipole. We have to work on that shaft at least as much as the external circuit worked on that source dipole to destroy it. So we have to "input more shaft energy" to the generator than the external power system uses to power its loads. Since we pay for the input shaft energy, we have to keep on burning that coal, oil, and gas etc. to do so.
All our electrical power systems are "suicidal" vacuum-powered systems, freely extracting their useful EM energy from the seething vacuum, but deliberately killing themselves faster than they power their loads.
All that the burning of all that coal, oil, gas, etc. accomplishes is to continually remake the source dipole, which our engineers insure will then receive be killed by the system itself faster than the system gives us work in the load.
To borrow a phrase from Tesla, this is probably "the most inexplicable aberration of the scientific mind ever recorded in history".
No electrical engineering department or professor in the United states teaches or even knows what powers an EM circuit, or an electrical power line, even though the basis has been available in particle physics for nearly half a century.
All that wanton and senseless destruction of the biosphere and pollution of the planet, just to get our electrical energy from self-suicidal power system, is insane. There is absolutely no need for it. That hundreds of thousands of engineers and scientists have continued this gigantic farce uncomplaining, is absolutely inexcusable. That the leaders of our scientific community continue to propagate such nonsense, is also inexcusable.
There is no problem in getting all the EM energy one wishes, for nearly free, anywhere in the universe, and that follows from the broken symmetry of the dipole. Just make a dipole. You get the energy flow for free, thereafter, so long as you will just leave that dipole intact and not destroy it (or at least destroy it slower than you power the load).
All the universities, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and the great national laboratories are completely working on the wrong end of the energy problem. So is the Department of Energy, save one small project to donate a website to the Alpha Foundation's Institute for Advanced Study (AIAS), of which the present author is a fellow emeritus (old dog). The conventional power system scientists have got the cart before the horse, have had it that way for more than a century, and are determined to forever keep it that way.
The real and only energy PROBLEM is simple: Figure out better mechanisms to intercept that FREE electromagnetic energy flow from the source dipole, once made. Collect lots of that freely flowing energy in collectors and circuits. Then discard the stupid closed current loop circuit and dissipate the collected energy in the loads WITHOUT dissipating half of it to kill the dipole and the free-flowing EM energy from the vacuum.
In one AIAS paper, we gave some 17 ways to attack that real only energy problem. Several of those ways are doable now, but just require funding and a proper development program. And some engineers who also know some particle physics. I personally know three inventor or inventor groups with overunity EM systems in at least successful laboratory experiment, or in actual prototype. Our own group with its motionless electromagnetic generator using the Aharonov-Bohm effect is one of those three systems that can be developed and brought into mass production within one year, given adequate funding (say, about 23 million per system). The energy crisis can be totally solved, forever, anytime the scientific community will permit it, fund it, and not try to "steal" it from the inventor(s).
The electrodynamics that U.S. electrical engineers are using to design those present electrical power system monstrosities and the accompanying extraordinarily vulnerable and awkward and archaic infrastructures and distribution systems is 137 years old, put together in the time of the American Civil War, for goodness sakes! At that time, the atom, the nucleus, and the electron were not even discovered yet. The classical EM model is known today to be seriously flawed (e.g., Wheeler and Feynman pointed part of it out, and even tried to correct it. They failed because their corrections were not sufficiently extensive). Even so, later even that 1865 Maxwellian EM model was also seriously curtailed in the 1880s (after Maxwell was already dead). It was further crippled, first partially crippled by Heaviside and then permanently crippled (as far as free energy systems) by Lorentz. Prior to Lorentz's changes, the Maxwell-Heaviside equations do prescribe both (1) Maxwellian systems that put out less energy than the operator inputs (i.e., the conventional stuff), and (2) Maxwellian systems that put out more energy than the operator himself inputs. The model (before Lorentz's changes) does include "electromagnetic windmills in a free electrical wind", so to speak. After Lorentz's change, it is as if the further-stripped model now only contains "windmills which are sealed in a barn so no wind can ever get to them".
Let me put it this way. Every electrical system we every built, and every one today, is powered by EM energy extracted directly from the active vacuum by the source dipole in the system. Always has been, always will be. If one really wants to get serious about it, all EM energy in space comes from the time domain (see my Giant Negentropy paper). Literally we "consume or use a little time, to get EM energy in 3-space. One second of time converts to something like 9x10exp16 joules of EM energy. So if we convert one microsecond per second, at one point in space, into EM energy in space, we get something like 9x10exp10 joules per second -- that's 90,000 megawatts at that single point. Even at a very efficient conversion process, we can get 1,000 megawatts there at that single point or location. And we can simultaneously do that at each and every spatial point or location that we choose.
So how many programs are the National Academy of Sciences and National Science Foundations funding for working on the only real fundamental electrical power system problem (how to dissipate the freely flowing EM energy in loads, without ramming the spent electrons back through the source dipole and destroying it)? Check their websites. There is no really "innovative science" going on to solve that problem. The scientific community will spend and has spent billions on the notion of hot fusion, without adding one watt to the power grid, but they will not spend a paltry $40 million to solve the only remaining problem that would allow very cheap and clean electrical energy for the entire world, forever. And that would dramatically and permanently reduce the despoiling of this beautiful biosphere, the strangling of species, and the global warming. Let alone eliminate those nuclear powerplants and eliminate further nuclear wastes from them.
The cost of a single large new electrical power plant for a few years, can solve the energy crisis forever.
Kyoto was a flash in the pan prior to what can really be done with a single well-funded and well-directed research program in 3 years. We could have working commercial power systems, self-powering, going into production in one year from the date such a program is initiated, if we can get something like a Presidential Decision Directive to keep the infuriated scientific community, the Big Nuke Power boys, and the Big Oil and Big Coal boys off our backs. Two years later that that first year, the range of systems will include nearly everything necessary to permanently replace this terribly vulnerable and antiquated centralized power system that is going to require vast billions of new dollars and years of work, just to try to stay up with demand.
Oh, how long will a dipole pour out that EM energy freely, you asked? Let's put it this way. The dipoles in the atoms of all the primary matter in the universe, have been continuously pouring out EM energy freely extracted from the vacuum, for some 14 billion years or so. So as far as we are concerned, the dipole will pour the energy out freely forever, or for at least the next 14 billion years -- and that's close enough to forever for government work, so to speak.
All we have to do is take the "electrical windmills" out of the closed current loop barns we have been putting them in for over 100 years.
If the environmentalists really want to save the planet, then it is the scientific community they should be attacking and condemning. To do that, they will have to have some decidedly unorthodox scientific advise. But we do have some extraordinary scientists who can and would do it. They would have to be paid, but they can meet all objections and the deepest scientific criticism.
The global warming, hydrocarbon combustion pollution, nuclear power plant pollution, and dams pollution and degradation of species and the biosphere, are totally unnecessary. The only reason we have an environmental problem now approaching such epic proportions, is because of the abject and total failure of our own scientific community for more than a century. That was excusable for a half century, but since the rise of particle physics -- and specifically since the discovery of broken symmetry -- it is no longer excusable. Indeed, it so threatens the very survival of the United States (and about 3/4 of the Earth that is going to be destroyed by about 2010 on our present course) that it has become simply inexplicable.
How else can one explain the fact that, in 100 years, we have not produced a single electrical engineering department, university, national laboratory, etc. that even understands what powers an electrical circuit? And still do not, even though the broken symmetry of the common source dipole has been established for nearly a half century?
The organized scientific community --- not the political community --- is totally responsible for the environmental crisis.
Unfortunately, the environmental community and the political community have been very naïve; they have turned for their "expert advice" to those same engineers and scientists and organizations and laboratories that do not even know what powers an electrical circuit. And that have been responsible for the crisis in the first place. And they have naively believed every word they were told by those advisors.
Hey! Those who brought on the problem in the first place, and who so stoutly defend the present mess (destroying the careers of scientists who object and try to change it), cannot be depended upon to properly advise anyone on how to correct it. That is like setting the fox in the henhouse to guard the hens.
The environmental community does a lot of activism, because it is filled with persons sincerely passionate in their urgent intent to save this precious planet. The community has a lot of clout, and it also attracts a lot of money from donors wishing to clean up the biosphere, and to have a clean air and planet once again, with thriving natural species rather that species strangling in the sludge and the mud.
However, sadly the community focuses (understandably!) on the wrong problem, because it receives the wrong scientific advice. The environmental community is led to believe that what is being done by our energy scientists and engineers is the very best that can be done. That is totally false. Both the environmentalists and the politicians are being misled by our scientific community.
Contrary to popular opinion, science does not progress by sweet reason, but by an unending series of cur dog fights. Any historian of science can give dozens and dozens of notorious examples (vacuum energy and cold fusion are two present cases where the innovative scientists are being savaged without mercy). The Big Dogs who hold the upper hand in the present cur dog fights, are irrevocably committed to more of the same systems the environmentalists despise: Big nuclear power plants, more hydrocarbon burning, ever more oil and gas pipelines, ever more dams, etc. You cannot power the big cities and the increasing populace with windmills and solar cells. Or with fuel cells either, though that is now the "decision" made by the various cartels that we shall have forced upon us. Reason: with fuel cells, you will have to keep burning some fuel, and keep that energy meter on your house and some kind of "gas meter" on your car. EM energy from the vacuum is deadly opposed by the cartels because it is total anathema to that desire. By removing that gas meter on your car and that electric meter on your house, some vast financial empires are threatened and will be destroyed eventually. We simply wryly point out that the top dogs did not get on top by placing touch football; they got there by playing very hard-nosed football. They will do whatever it takes to oppose the knowledge and funding of COP>1.0 electrical systems freely taking their energy from the seething vacuum. Including kill the inventors and discoverers as necessary. They have been doing it for several decades already.
So the dispute over eliminating the energy crisis versus saving the environment then becomes artificially limited to the false "either-or" choice between more energy-systems-as-conventional to provide more energy, versus severe curtailment of energy use from less energy-systems-as-conventional to decrease the impact on the environment.
That choice forces one to a choice in the national economy and way of life, when only the conventional power system technology is considered. With conventional technology, to maintain the economy for a decent standard of living for all, we have to have CHEAP AND ABUNDANT electrical energy and more of it every year. With conventional approaches, to maintain the environment we have to have CLEANER AND LESS electrical energy every year.
The real solution is to kill the controversy and cut the Gordian knot, and get rid of that phrase "conventional power system technology" and that phrase "and less". To do BOTH things at once -- have cheaper, clean, and more abundant electrical energy and more every year -- we only have to turn to proper use of the enormous electromagnetic energy so easily and universally produced from the seething vacuum.
There is a very good and proper science of the type of electrodynamic models that have to be used to develop such new "vacuum powering" systems: (1) higher group symmetry electrodynamics should be used, such as O(3), which is capable of modeling the vacuum interaction as well as the curvatures of spacetime interactions (both of which conventional classical electrical engineering discards), and (2) we have to put some sharp but open-minded scientists on working on the real problem: how to dissipate the collected EM energy in a dipolar circuit, without using half of it to destroy its own dipolarity.
We have to fund those sharp young grad students working on their doctorate, and those post-docs working on new energy research, to work in "EM energy from the vacuum". Try finding a single doctoral thesis, candidate, or post-doc working on a funded project in that respect.
The entire solution to the energy crisis and to the environmental problem due to energy is doable, and it's doable in three years. But take an example: To get those two things going via our own proposed COP>1.0 power system (the motionless electromagnetic generator), we have had to move our final year of research to the National Material Sciences Laboratory of the National Academy of Science of a friendly foreign nation.
Which, by the way, has been teaching the higher electrodynamics in its universities now for more than a dozen years.
And which, by the way, does know what really powers an EM circuit.
Hope this fills the bill for you.
Best wishes,
Tom Bearden
References for Scientists:
Modern Nonlinear Optics, Second Edition, 3 vols., edited by M. W. Evans, Wiley, 2001. The 3 volumes comprise a Special Topic issue as Vol. 119, I. Prigogine and S. A. Rice (series eds.), Advances in Chemical Physics, Wiley, ongoing. M.W. Evans, P. K. Anastasovski, T. E. Bearden et al., "Derivation of the B(3) Field and Concomitant Vacuum Energy Density from the Sachs Theory of Electrodynamics," Foundations of Physics Letters, 14(6), Dec. 2001, p. 589-593 ----- "Development of the Sachs Theory of Electrodynamics," Foundations of Physics Letters, 14(6), Dec. 2001, p. 595-600; ----- "Explanation of the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator with O(3) Electrodynamics," Foundations of Physics Letters, 14(1), Feb. 2001, p. 87-94. ------ "Explanation of the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator by Sachs's Theory of Electrodynamics," Foundations of Physics Letters, 14(4), 2001, p. 387-393. ------ "Operator Derivation of the Gauge Invariant Proca and Lehnert Equation: Elimination of the Lorentz Condition," Foundations of Physics, 39(7), 2000, p. 1123-1130. ----- "Effect of Vacuum Energy on the Atomic Spectra," Foundations of Physics Letters, 13(3), June 2000, p. 289-296. ----- "Runaway Solutions of the Lehnert Equations: The Possibility of Extracting Energy from the Vacuum," Optik, 111(9), 2000, p. 407-409. ----- "Classical Electrodynamics Without the Lorentz Condition: Extracting Energy from the Vacuum," Physica Scripta 61(5), May 2000, p. 513-517. ----- "On the Representation of the Maxwell-Heaviside Equations in Terms of the Barut Field Four-Vector," Optik 111(6), 2000, p. 246-248. "The New Maxwell Electrodynamic Equations: New Tools for New Technologies. A Collection of 60 papers from the Alpha Foundation's Institute for Advanced Study. Published as a Special Issue of the Journal of New Energy, 4(3), Winter 1999. 335 p. T. E. Bearden, "Extracting and Using Electromagnetic Energy from the Active Vacuum," in M.W. Evans (ed.), Modern Nonlinear Optics, Second Edition, 3 vols., Wiley, 2001; Vol. 2, p. 639-698. T. E. Bearden, "Energy from the Active Vacuum: The Motionless Electromagnetic Generator," in M. W. Evans (Ed.), Modern Nonlinear Optics, Second Edition, 3-vols., Wiley, 2001; Vol. 2, p. 699-776. T. E. Bearden, Energy from the Vacuum: Concepts and Principles, World Scientific, Singapore, 2002, in process. T. E. Bearden, "Giant Negentropy from the Common Dipole," Proceedings of Congress 2000, St. Petersburg, Russia, Vol. 1, July 2000 , p. 86-98. Also published in Journal of New Energy, 5(1), Summer 2000, p. 11-23. Also carried on DoE restricted website http://www.ott.doe.gov/electromagnetic/ and www.cheniere.org. T. E. Bearden, "Bedini's Method For Forming Negative Resistors In Batteries," Proceedings of Congress 2000, St. Petersburg, Russia, Vol. 1, July 2000, p. 24-38. Also published in Journal of New Energy, 5(1), Summer 2000, p. 24-38. Floyd Sweet and T. E. Bearden, "Utilizing Scalar Electromagnetics to Tap Vacuum Energy," Proceedings of the 26th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference (IECEC '91), Boston, Massachusetts, 1991, p. 370-375. M.W. Evans, "The Link Between the Sachs and O(3) Theories of Electrodynamics," in M. W. Evans (Ed.), Modern Nonlinear Optics, Second Edition, , 3 vols. Wiley, 2001; vol. 2, p. 469-494. M. W. Evans, "The Link Between the Topological Theory of Ranada and Trueba, the Sachs Theory, and O(3) Electrodynamics," in M. W. Evans (Ed.), Modern Nonlinear Optics, Second Edition, , 3 vols. Wiley, 2001, vol. 2, p. 495-499. M. W. Evans, "O(3) Electrodynamics," a review in M.W. Evans (ed.), Modern Nonlinear Optics, Second Edition, 3 vols., Wiley, 2001; Vol. 2, p. 79-267. M. W. Evans and L. B. Crowell, Classical and Quantum Electrodynamics and the B(3) Field, World Scientific, Singapore, 2001. M. W. Evans and S. Jeffers, "The Present Status of the Quantum Theory of Light," in M. W. Evans (ed.), Modern Nonlinear Optics, Second Edition, 3 vols., Wiley, 2001; Vol. 3, p. 1-196. , B. Lehnert, "Optical Effects of an Extended Electromagnetic Theory," in Modern Nonlinear Optics, Second Edition, 3 vols., Wiley, 2001; Vol. 2, p. 1-77.
H. G. Wells was the first to describe an atomic bomb, before World War 1 I think, but an important insight nevertheless! Also see "The Land Ironclads" for the first description of tanks in warfare.
Of course he also established most 20th century sci-fi themes. See "The Time Machine," "War of the Worlds," "The Invisible Man," etc.
Although it will probably be brought up again, Peter Disch wrote a pretty decent book that was reviewed here on Slashdot a while ago called "The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of" that examines the impact that science fiction has had on both our technology and society at large.
le sigh
After he wrote Snow Crash, the ultimate cyberpunk novel, Neil Stephenson wrote The Diamond Age. Its key plot device was a book with leaves of paper that were computer controlled and displayed whatever the person wanted to read at the moment. Thus a single volume was the equivalent of the entire internet or library of congress or whatever. This differed from using a laptop computer because his society was "neo-Victorian" and everybody wanted to be seen with books, not computers, as a kind of status thing. The funny thing is that Electric Ink is on the verge of making this a reality and has already got posters up in department stores...
IIRC, "Robot" is Czech for "Worker". The first work to use "robot" in the mechanical man context was "RUR"
Best Slashdot Co
William Gibson, "Neuromancer" (AI freedom fighters)
Neal Stevenson, "Snow Crash" (Lang. Hacking/Franchise system.)
Vernor Vinge, "A Fire Upon The Deep" (Long distance low bandwidth networking)
Frank Herbert, "Dune" (Ecology)
We seem to be missing this kind of vision these days, cynicism being much more fashionable.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
With all the genetic engineering going on today, have a look at A Brave new world, by Aldous Huxley. I'm not sure when it was first published, but since Huxley died in 1963, it should give you some idea.
blah blah blah....
I can't remeber exactly where i read this.. maybe someone else will... but i read about a new device they are calling a phaser.. it shoots an ionized beam.. then releases electrical current along the beam... stunning the individual
I've been told from a retired Navy man that control rooms on latter-day vessels are based on the Enterprise model, which didn't exist until the show did. Previously, key combat stations (such as the helm and tactical) were not in the same room as the skipper. Note: I have not been able to confirm or deny this story; anybody else want to?
In the original series, whenever one character handed another character computer data, the prop they used was a brightly colored square wafer. IMHO, it looked 3.5" on a side--The microfloppy.
Again, unconfirmed: did the taser descend from the "stun" setting on the phaser? Trek showed just how useful it was to have a less-lethal weapon.
The military uses needle-less pneumatic hypodermic injectors to do mass injections--perhaps lining up a regiment to all get a Tetanus booster or something. How is this related to McCoy's spray hypo? I'm not sure.
Finally, a case of ST influencing technobabble rather than technology itself. Under the Unix operating system, the graphics package (X11) easily allows for one computer to run a program, but for its windows to appear on another machine's display. This is often referred to as "Beaming the app over", based on terminology for the transporter.
--The basis of all love is respect
- First the obvious: "Cyberspace" was first made popular in William Gibson's Neuromancer, the first of the cyberpunk novels.
- Biotechnology, and the possibility of reviving extinct species with trans-species surrogate mothers or eggs is almost a commonplace concept now, but when Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton's book, not the movie) came out, it was path-breaking.
- Books to watch in future are Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age for nanotech and "replicators," and Snow Crash, for the
future evolution of virtual worlds as well as pizza delivery...
:-)
- The obscure: the concept of vacuum energy was actually propounded in a Physical Review Letters article by Robert L. Forward before Asimov borrowed it to power his spaceships (the starship "Forward") - I forget the book, but it might have been Friday.
- And the obvious once again: geosynchronous sattelites were predicted (but not patented) by Arthur Clarke - that's why they are called Clarke orbits. And watch for the Beanstalk to be built some day, on Mars if not Earth.
- Speaking of Mars: Robert Zubrin's book, The Case for Mars, pitches a serious plan for the manned exploration of Mars that has at least forced some re-thinking at NASA. The ideas were borrowed, reworked and expanded somewhat in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars: look for a future manned Mars mission to use many of those ideas.
- Of course, the Three Laws of Robotics have influenced AI researchers, if not AI research...
That's a smattering - I'm sure there are many many more that others will list."I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Philip K. Dick?
I've only read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but it seems like he was prolific and had a lot of interesting ideas about the future.
I beleive John Brunner coined the term 'web'
back in 1975 in his novel Shockwave Rider. I don't
know if he was the first to use it though.
This is like athe chicken and the egg. Which came first.
.02 cents
It will be hard to determine if any authour's ideas ever influenced the inventor.
I think the invention process is more evolutionary .
Just my
Technology is only a vehicle. People are the ones that drive it.
I know you said post-WWII, but still, when it comes to sci-fi and technology, it's hard to ignore the contributions of that lovable bearded Frenchman.
Take, for instance, his two space exploration books, _From the Earth to the Moon_ and _Round the Moon_. While it's uncertain whether he accurately predicted such things as the proper launch spot for a lunar craft (Cape Canaveral) or whether scientists based their space race developments off his writings, those two books certainly affected the Apollo missions and other subsequent space exploration.
And, of course, his famous Nautilus, with it's electric screw and incandescent lights (in 1860, I think) proved to be a remarkably accurate glimpse into the future. Not to mention the diving suits, electric charge rifles, etc.
I think it's important, in dealing with the history of sci-fi and it's effects on modern technology to at least touch on the creator of science fiction, even if you don't use it as a major focus of the course.
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
Written in 1952, It is a story based around a sustainable space station in one of the lagrange points. It (the fictional space station) used centrifugal force to simulate gravity (i.e. a spinning space station).
Can't remember much else about it seeing as how I read it about 20 years ago. I do remember that it was the book that got me started on reading SF (esp. hard SF).
Don't forget 1984 by Orwell for the depiction of an un-blinking eye of surveillance controlled by the government.
::cough:: carnivore, echelon, face recognition ::cough::
--
Scott Brady
of course. engineers, scientists, geeks -- these people never read sci-fi; they're never enchanted with visions of the future as young boys and girls, they are not so impressionable, and scientists as a result are never sci-fi reading dreamers. scientific discovery and innovation always result from practical necessity. isn't it obvious?
Heinlein first described those remote-controlled hands used to manipulate radioactive or otherwise dangerous materials from behind a thick window. They're called "waldoes" after the story he described them in, "Waldo".
He also described the moving sidewalk, and the waterbed. The waterbed was described so well that the first person to build one was unable to patent it.
He actually inspired the fellow who invented the waterbed after reading 'Stranger in a Strange Land' where a somewhat similar device is mentioned. The fellow sent Heinlein the first waterbed ever made as a thank-you present.
On a side note, Heinlein's influence goes beyond just the technological. I go to university in Kingston, Canada, at Queen's. We've got the same school bookstore as the boys at the Royal Military College so you can actually see what the future military leaders of Canada get to read.
Guess which Heinlein novel crops up as compulsory reading for first year cadets?
I'd include email, but that was already invented (although I doubt he knew about it)
From the _Rama_ series, the idea of inputting a specification for an arbitrary object, and having it produced by a machine is a more refined form of our current (and still fairly new) 3-D printers. I.e., you render your object in CAD and the printer creates a molten-plastic part as a result. (I've seen these printers demo'd at conferences and having a working gear assembly produced in plastic, on demand, is incredible.)
Clarke is also credited with the concept of geosynchronous telecommunications satellites. Does anyone know if the concept was originally described in his books or elsewhere?
Your class topic would be a fun paper.
I am showing how Dr. Strangelove by Kubrik broke the mold on thermonuclear war genre films. It was the first mainstream movie to cast a negative light (in a funny way of course) on the government policies and policy makers.
Check out Variety for listings of reviews for related movies.
There is also a reference book that I found in the Pop-Culture library: Film by Genre, Daniel Lopez, 1993 There are plenty of references to Sci-Fi, etc there.
Enjoy.
I thought the one clear prediction Star Trek made around e-books was their rejection. Starship captains always made such a big deal about having genuine leather-bound books for their pleasure reading. Sure, e-books are fine as a query interface to a computer system, or as a data capture device. But nobody wants to use them for reading. Thirty years later the e-book makers still don't get it. Just maybe there's more to "reading a book" than the viewing of text on a page-by-page basis?
I wish I had more info, but I seem to recall that the idea for the Sony Walkman came from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
A publicly traded company exists solely to make profits for shareholders.
Are there any stories of gods or creatures that could emit light from their eyes? I'm sure something like this exists. If they depicted narrow beams,which didn't exist in latern times (well they did play with mirrors), then you could suggest that such an idea gave birth to flashlights or laser beams? or is that too far fetched?
Marques Johansson
"Turn the Machine up to 10! Time for a staff meeting..."
Assuming Fantasy is relevant...
This includes
-GReg
First seen in Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
Are you saying that not a single invention in the last 50 years was made by some geek engineer watching ST and saying "Oh, I could make something like that!"...???
Not even 1 (one) engineer/researcher/inventor took a single, solitary idea from some form of science fiction, conciously or subconciously? Not one of them has ever seen or been exposed to film or literature that included some concept or device that they later used?
Not even one?
The Diamond Age has a bunch of very interesting technology - especially in the realm of nanotechnology and virtual presence/reality.
Then there is Snow Crash, with its metaverse, of course, and all of the associated online virtual reality as well.
Only one other thing I could think of as relating to real world but not by Neal Stephenson is Orson Scott Card's Ender's game series' ansible technology, which seems to be similar to some kind of quantum entanglement based (the closest thing I think it resembles) instantaneous communication over long distances (measured in light years).
Little endian vs big endian has nothing to do with Gulliver's travels. In a computer architecture the bits of a binary number can be read right to left or left to right. Understand that left to right is an extremely abstract (and culturally dependent) concept related to viewing increasing memory addresses being read from right to left. For example 123 one hundred twenty three in big endian and three hundred twenty one in little endian. This term came from which part of the binary number is on the left, either the most significant (big) or the least significant digit (little). Intel is the prime example of a little endian architecture. Most other computer manufacturers did use big endian including the internet.
When I was young, I had to rub sticks together to compute.
When the actual technology of self-replicating programs hit the web, a type of the programs was named "worm", from the name John Brunner used for the software in his novel Shockwave Rider.
Brunner's Shockwave Rider inspired the first worm program (in the mid-80's). The book When Harlie Was One by David Gerrold (wrote original Trek "Trouble with Tribbles episode) written years before PC's describes "virus" and "vaccine" programs.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I think the (possible myth?) is that his original description in his story was so good that years later when someone else came to try and patent satellites, they found they couldn't because of the story was such an accurate description that it was considered a sort of "prior art" on par with a scientific paper.I'm not entirely sure to what extent this is really true.
Considering what's happened to the patent office since then, though, I could probably waltz down to the patent office tomorrow, and they'd have no trouble handing me a patent on staellites. Or large orbiting mind control lasers for that matter.
You would also likely need to check out the pulp fiction era from the 30s and 40s - especially editors like John W. Campbell, who discovered authors like Asimov. They provided a market for people who talented in an age when work was hard to find (the late depression)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Depending on your definition of "science fiction" you could include the Tom Swift Jr. series of books. Victor Appleton (the catchall name for the authors) came up with a number of ideas that have been turned into real world devices. The one that comes to mind quickest is the "Little Idiot" - a hand held computing device. (unheard of back when the books were written..)
The "internet" was alive and well back then.
Clarke discussed the concept of putting artificial satellites into earth orbit and suggests that while that sounds fantastic it might not seem so far-fetched if the earth had more than one natural satellite. Reading that comment in the 1980s made me realize how much our thinking has changed in the 20th century.
He also discussed at least 2 options for escaping the enormous pull of earth's gravity. One option is to use a space station as a refueling platform. The other was to use a multistage spacecraft that jettisons empty fuel tanks to reduce its weight.
Another book to check out is Clarke's "Ascent to Orbit" (ASIN: 047187910X), his scientific autobiography.
These two books probably fall under the category of futurism rather than science fiction, but they give great appreciation for his genius as scientist, writer, and futurist.
Often overlooked is the Danny Dunn series from the 50's and 60's. This series had some far out stuff (anti-gravity paint, time travel, the "Honey I shrunk the kids" machine.)
However, some really spot-on predictions were:
-The Home Computer ("The Homework Machine")
-X10 (not the cameras, "The Automated House")
-Miniature Submarines (proper name for these? was in "On the Ocean Floor")
-Teleoperation / augmented reality (I can't remember which one, had a tele-operated machine that looked like a butterfly)
There was a book called "The Shockwave Rider" which described worm for the first time, I believe. It also featured a hacker hero who saves the world. That doesn't seem to have happened yet. ;-))
Then the trinity of SF:
Heinlein: wladoes, waterbeds, moving walkways etc
Asimov: robots and robotics (he invented the term)
Clarke: geosynchronous satellites, space towers using carbon nanotubes etc
Then there is Vinge who has the idea that the next phase of evolution is a sudden transcendence of the human race by artificial intelligence over a very short period (hours to days). There is even a project named "mind" on sourceforge based on this.
Lots more I am sure.
Right at the beginning of The Hitchhiker's Guide, Adams pretty nearly describes a Palm Pilot.
Of course, today's Palm does not quite have the information found in the Guide, but I'm sure that will be the next add-on.
.... that everyone relies on heavily are mentioned quite a bit in "The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle(sp). I think it was written in the late 70s or early 80s, certainly long before any such devices existed. I read a bunch of Niven's "Known Space" series, but not his more recent works. There's a bunch of stuff about how various technologies might effect society, such as teleportation, organ transplantation (without the rejection problems), room-temperature superconductors, youth drugs, sonic "stun guns" that knock you out but cause no damage, etc.
Murray Gell-Mann, the physicist, applied the name "quark" to the fundamental parts of the nucleon in 1963, taking the word from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Now, it's hard to categorize Finnegans Wake as sci-fi - but then it's hard to categorize Finnegans Wake as any branch of literature in particular. On every page there's the name of a river... so who knows?
I feel that Star Trek was the essence of "blueprint for the future" type stories as far as I am concerned. But its time has passed for the new blueprint check out any of Iain M. Banks' SF stories, especially "Use of Weapons" this guy is a visionary without equal! Glanding is the tech that I want the most, very cool!
slashdot shenanigans
Just the opposite of the requester, I'm a physicist whose minor concentration was English Literature (more specifically, drama including the works of GB Shaw.)
My interest was in how science infiltrated fiction, and how the public then got it so wrong.
Readers may find interesting a work from the early '60s, wherein the phrase "information science" was coined. It's by a fellow named Kenneth Craven, titled something like 'Information Personnel'. Ken then was hired by IBM as their guru for how to staff a corporation, and what its purpose should be in a coming "information age." He later charged ATT ~$50,000/hr. (Yes, that's hr) to advise how to to break up their $6B corp and remain players in the next future market. That's only a small part of his true history.
Salon had an article on him some time back. [ http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/04/05/vinge / ].
The internet ("True Names"), computer generated photo-realistic movies ("The Accomplice"), Human-Computer interfaces ("Bookworm, Run!" and his real time stories - "The Peace War" and others).
He wrote "The Accomplice" in the 60's and set it in '93 so he was almost right-on in that case.
His prediction of a coming Singularity are pretty interesting too. [ http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-s ing.html ].
To all these claims: These are things I heard someplace. I did not research any of these, so don't take these as fact.
It is claimed that the 1929 movie "Woman in the Moon" invented the launch count-down.
Star Trek PADD and today's PDAs. (I believe that the Newton actually has been designed with the show's device in mind.
IIRC, pressurized, needle-free vaccination devices have been designed after watching McCoy doing medical treatment on Trek. After a short web search, one of them appears to be the Gene Gun described here.
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I'm pretty sure Foutains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke was the first mention of the "space elevator" idea. Basically, a station in geosynchronous orbit with a giant anchor extended further out in space is connected to a spot near the equator (in Sri Lanka, I believe) by a diamond filament, and then one can simply ride an elevator into space. Research has been looking into this more and more in recent years as some exotic materials are beginning to show up which may be strong enough to support this endevour. I think I recall an article or a show on the Discovery channel recently about how carbon nanotubes might be able to fill this role, if they could be extruded to lengths longer than a few microns.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Spam spam spam!
term comes from Monty Python's Flying Circus skit.
the jargon file has other notes of etymological interest.
-f
www.blackant.net
Didn't he say something about hurtling ourselves into space on fantastic explosions?
Amazing what you learn from Back to the Future part 2
The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence M. Krauss with a foreword by Stephen Hawking. This book has been out since 1996. It looks at some of the made up science of Star Trek and then explains how some of these things could possibly happen in the future. The physics seemed pretty solid and it was pretty readable as I recall.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
How many scientists, engineers, and researchers were influenced by the books they read as kids? Asimov himself was one, though he ended up doing little research.
How much were the scientists who shot the moon influenced by Verne, Welles, and E. E. Doc Smith? If many of them were inspired by these authors' works, then the novels indeed had an impact and influence on technology.
Many authors directly and indirectly influenced our technosphere. Clarke calculated geosynchronous orbit; most satellites orbit in the belt named after him. Larry Niven's warnings about the effects of organ transplants has changed the way people approach the ethics of taking organs from executed criminals. (Incidently, the "Slashdot effect" is really nothing more than a virtual flash crowd, which Niven predicted as a result of easy teleportation.)
The early works about robots and sentient computers have influenced the direction of research in these fields. AI researchers talk earnestly about the three laws of robotics.
Terraforming was an idea first proposed in science fiction. The US First Contact Protocol is based on science fiction scenerios.
SF influences science and research because scientists tend to read science fiction. If that doesn't color our ideas of the world (which in turn influences our research), then our imagination has died.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Asimov did not invent the word robot. However, he is credited with "robotics" and "positronic", as in a robot's positronic brain, as opposed to electronic.
There was an article in Popular Mechanics a while back that held up the Jetsons as an example of sci-fi predicting future technology trends.
I had to laugh -- I remember an episode where George flies across town in his personal jet car to mail a letter. How much more wrong could you get predictions of email?
Of course, the same article also praised Star trek, which also often missed the technology prediction boat. The article is here As for literature, I'd go with Asimov as having the best predictions!
How can we forget:
The New Economy was powered by the Heart of Gold's Infinate Improbability Drive.
How else do you explain poop by mail.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
James Schmitz' ComWeb is a sort of Multimedia Internet. His stories are currently reprinted by Bean Books. The ComWeb system is used in Schmitz "Hub" Universe, which is covered in vol. one to four ("Telzey Amberdon", "TnT: Telzey and Trigger", "Trigger & Friends" and "The Hub: Dangerous Territory").
There's a web site covering Schmitz, as well as Randall Garrett and Howard L. Myers: . Don't miss Guy Gordon's essay "That certain something", to quote him: 'Here is Schmitz, in 1970, describing business being done "on internet time".'. In "TnT" there's an additional sentence, missing in the online essay: 'And his "ComWeb" may be the best presagement of the Internet in all of science fiction.'.
Those stories are a good read, even if you don't use them for your course;)
Robert
In terms of computer tech, I would have to suggest Vernor Vinge, an excellent hard Sci-Fi writer and UC San Diego Comp Sci emeritus who deals largely with the technological possibilities of distributed systems and their subsequent effects on civilization.
Specifically, he postulated cyberspace (long before Gibson) in a novella called True Names, and also speculates on the future of mankind as the rate of technological innovation continues to accelerate, perhaps towards some sort of singularity beyond which further human endeavor will be somewhat incomprehensible to us.
He has won several awards, in particular for A Fire Upon the Deep, which looks at the "silence in the sky" problem....as in, if life is so damned plentiful in this universe, where are all the visible-forty-lights-away Bussard Ramjet flares? He uses a solution to this question as a unique premise for the novel. Awesome.
The latest AC and Troll posts suck.
When I used to read slashdot, half of the fun was figuring out who was really posting true shit and who was making up information of the tops of his or her head. Now - look at what has happened - trolls can easily be separated from the normal post pretty damn easily.
Now, while I enjoy the random "how was the anal sex?" post, there needs to be a call to arms to all of us who read this horrid piece of elitist shit every day.
Examples of good trolls are:
1. Submit bullshit stories: cmdr taco and his faggot friends are usually so busy performing anal rape on their latest handheld Linux devices that they never check if a story is actually true. If you are lucky, they will turn around repost your story with their name on top.
2.Submit Bullshit Comments: Starting a post with "here at Microsoft" or "when I was at Hewlett Packard" gets these people's panties all in a bind and will be a sure that your post will get modded up.
And no, I'm not out trolling today.
The micro-sized cell phones today are an evolution. The first wave came from the idea of merging a phone with a radio, which would allow you to not have to run wires everywhere.
After that, the radio phones were made more portable. Then they were made small enough to carry around in cars. Then small enough to lug around occasionally (check out Danny Glover's cell phone in the first 'Lethal Weapon' movie). Then as small as normal radios. Then smaller.
Science Fiction gets to ignore all the problems and history of actually getting to the point in history where someone can use the gadget -- and Science Fiction has the option of ignoring reality -- which is something Engineers would love to be able to do (it'd make life sooo much easier). Sci-Fi ignores all the hard-won science and discovery that must occur before a magic device is even possible. Scientific discovery is evolutionary -- it builds heavily upon the work of all those previous, and can not exist without everything that came before it.
What we must seperate is the influence SciFi has upon an individual's decision to enter a field. The young engineer (proto-engineer?) finds that SciFi appeals to them, and that engineering sounds cool, and decides to pursue engineering. In that respect, SciFi influences the career choice of the engineer.
However, no engineer goes through college for the express purpose of making real an invention they read in a book when they were 14 years old.
The author, who needs a plot device, gets to ignore enough reality to make the device just plausible enough (to most people) to continue the story forward. To the engineers and researchers familiar with the subject matter, they can list for you reason after reason why it's impossible, or why it won't work.
Ohhhh, this is soooooo incorrect:
A snippet from a BBC News article, May 11 2000:
Science fiction powers space research
The European Space Agency (Esa) is studying science fiction for ideas and technologies that could be used in future missions.
A panel of readers is currently combing sci-fi novels and short stories published in the early decades of the last century to see if technology has caught up with ideas that were futuristic when first put into print.
Any good ideas turned up in the search will be assessed by scientists to see if they can help the agency in its ongoing mission to explore space.
Knowledgeable fans of science fiction are also being encouraged to send in suggestions to help Esa spot sources of good ideas.
(Follow link above for rest of article, interesting.)
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Firstly, all the Neal Stephenson books. Just good books and better written than most Sci Fi. His ideas also seem to me to be more like what we may actually see than William Gibson's.
... Blade Runner.
Secondly, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K. Dick, also probably already suggested. Good book which lead to a good movie
Don't read 2001. For once, the book is worse than the movie. Interesting ideas, but not well written. Movie is incredible.
Some people say Brave New World was written two years before it should have been. (It was written before WW2. I think it has had a large impact on the current world though. Imagine this large global society that puts other cultures into small "reservations" to be left alone. :)
And, as anyone who has ever stopped at a traffic light in Ohio or Michigan knows, I don't even need to explain the similarities of 1984.
To me, there's already a big source of this type of information. The members there would also help.
I'd like to think there's interesting analogies in some of the following most popular books:
Dick Tracey/Batman/Superman comics - compare that gear to today. Law enforcement isn't too far from it.
Brave New World - Tech advances versus the animalistic nature of mankind
1984 - modern homoginization of media and the "social herd" concept.
Day Of the Triffids - agricultural bioengineering driven by money, although quite a bit of B-movie sci-fi in there.
Foundation - psychohistory akin to reviewing patterns of internet usage and predicting outcomes
2001 et. al - Moon mining and the possibility of so-called precious metals becoming commonplace
Clarke, Asimov, Huxley - these were some of the earliest predictive sci-fi writers - even if they didn't know it at the time. There were TONS of pulp sci-fi books in the 50's though (giant radioactive _fill_in_blank_, etc)
Since the 80's there's been a bandwagon effect for writing like this.
mug
+-
rub continuously across screen until clear
Check out The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of by Theodore Sturgeon. It's a recent review of how SF has or may have influenced the world. It would be a good starting point for a central thesis.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
Predited many of todays technologies including the walkman, and real-time media. The book is particularly interesting because it correctly predicts the effects these technolgies would have on society. e.g. example walkmans have increased our social isolation.
-ShieldWolf
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
If you're looking for good science fiction reading, check out the product literature that accompanied the launch of Microsoft's Windows 95. In it, there were descriptions of a MS computer operating system that was reliable, fast, and easy.
These bold and exotic claims were so influential, consumers actually started to want a reliable and fast OS from the company, and today, 5 years later, they are starting to produce such an operating system. It still amazes me how fiction can someday turn into fact.
The Internet is generally stupid
I remember reading somewhere that Heinlein not only predicted the answering machine, but also predicted ghost screening (the practice of letting the answering machine pick up the phone before answering it yourself).
In that context, there was a quote from another sci-fi author (name forgotten): "A good science fiction writer predicts the automobile. A great science fiction writer predicts the traffic jam."
And othes like The Day of an American Journalist in 2889. Verne predicts, among other, colour photography, videophones and streaming audio news, sort of.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
If you want to ask yourself the really BIG questions about the future of science, there is the book Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer which seems to unite science and religion. I haven't finished it yet, so I'm not sure how it comes out, but it is really interesting so far.
George Orwell. It will make your skin crawl...
There was a literary movement in the mid to late 80's called The Mirrorshades Movement that included authors such as William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Walter Jon Williams that had a heavy influence.
They coined many of the terms used today, cyber, net, matrix, and even "predicted" a lot of things before they came to pass(a worldwide internet, rise of global corporation power, urbanization, etc). They even spun off their own genre of Hollywood television B-class shows and their share of movies.
If you've ever heard the word Cyberpunk, these are some of the authors that spawned the genre.
Stand On Zanzibar is a treasure-trove for future technology. While some parts of it are somewhat outdated (eg. there are only few computers), the rest describes inventions that I have not met elsewhere in literature. And it's not limited to technology either; the environment of "Zanzibar" is easily one of the most intriguing I've ever met in a sci-fi novel.
In 1968 Brunner presented Viagra (called 'stiffeners'), and in 1975 he foresaw the Internet (The Shockwave Rider). He seems like a sure bet for the reading list with Stand on Zanzibar, perhaps with The Shockwave Rider too.
[ Antti Rasinen ]
Look beyond just the technology Gibson guessed at. Look specifically to the sociological impact Gibson foresaw. Study the background characters and their attitudes towards technology. For example, look at Interpol's role in the book. They enforce a treaty concerning AI. Look at TA's ability to disassociate themselves from humanity. Look at the gangs. It is this kind of depth in the background and humanity's reaction to technology that really sets this book apart.
Neuromancer had the first use many now-cutting edge techs. Reading it now, it sounds _so_ incredibly cliched... until you remember that they weren't cliches until after this book was written.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
I remember reading an inverview circa 1980's with Isaac Asimov where he was talking about science fiction writers not predicting the rise of the personal computer. All the old sci-fi I've read (a lot) always had massive (some planet-sized) computers that were access through some sort of terminal device, hand-held (like Star Trek) or otherwise such as the ear-based terminals (?) in _Ender's Game_.
Would be interesting if someone knew of a pre-1970 sci-fi reference to the personal computer.
Bear coined the term "Nanotech" in this book I believe, as well as suggesting several uses for such technology, Blood Music was published in 1984, Also Queen of Angels and "/" have some interesting bits about "insect-mind" computing. Any of Bear's books are good reads with alot of hard science thrown in and a really good detail for current trends in science with a projection of where those trends may go in the future.
I recall reading that Nasa approached the writer for Babylon 5 about using his starfury (small fighter craft) design in the future, probably as a maintence vehicle for the space station.
If memory serves, he said yes, as long as they keep his name for it...
Sorry, I just looked around, but I couldn't find a link.
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
Here's a suggestion from a Ph.D. candidate in History of Science at Harvard (also my wife 8-):
"
...tell him to contact Mark Adams at Penn - he
has taught a course on science fiction for the last 30 years, and just gave
a talk at HSS on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here is a link about him.
"
I mean, even here, you can see people talking about inventions named for things/people in science fiction. Inventors & techies read SF. And technologies that inventors & techies make are usually the foundation for science fiction writers' ideas on how future technologies work. It's more of a self-feeding cycle - one person creates an idea based on a thing, another creates a thing based on the idea based on the thing.
Of course, that Connections marathon I went through might also be affecting me.
doones
Whatever you do... don't read this.
Check out the movie Trekkies. It is a movie about the fans of Star Trek. There is a section in the movie that talks about things people have actually made from the series including the robot from "The Changeling" and Capt. Pike's Life Support chair from "The Menagerie".
While this may not be mainstream science, it would definitely make for an interesting anecdote for the class.
Flash Gordon's fiancee (I guess her name was Dale Arden) used mini-skirts way before they appeared in the real world. Now, that may not be very scientific, but it's what I call a real contribution...
If you don't mind a bit of controversy, to put it mildly, you should include dianetics/Scientology.
Were Lafayette Ron Howard and Analog's Editor (Joseph?) Campbell pulling everyone's legs with a fake science and fake religion? Was it just a tax scam? Or was it a legitimate effort that went horribly wrong?
This isn't just an idle question - Scientologists have shut down web sites, even seized computer hardware and essentially destroyed it while the Federal courts did nothing, because they published religious "trade secrets" about the evil god Unix. I mean Xinu. I mean Xenu. (Hmm, makes you think....) They have flooded newsgroups with bogus posts to make it hard to find the on-topic posts. They have bought the top 40-odd places on search engines that provide "sponsored links," to make it hard for the casual browser to find critical sites. They have created "safe harbor" web browsers that protect their members from "objectionable" material.
You don't have to agree with my opinion of Scientologists to see how they're linked to many of the most controversial issues facing us on the 'net. And it all started with a science fiction writer and a magazine editor discussing psychology based on "science," not Freud.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
After all, it's one thing to come up with an 'arbitrary set of rules' for robot behavior; while it's quite another to then go and probe all the paradoxes and pretty much attempt to 'stress test' the ins and outs of said rules.
I'm certainly not involved in robotics or the development of AI myself, but I don't imagine there would be many researchers in those fields who would say the Three Laws have not affected 'professional thinking' in those fields, wether positively or negatively.
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
Similar to Snow Crash but written earlier (1984?). Deals with issuse like AI, Cybernetics, and Hacking as a government weapon.
- The auditors said to secure the server... hand me that duct-tape -
"The Dreams our Stuff is Made of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World" by Thomas M. Disch is probably exactly the kind of literary critisism that the poster is looking for. I did a similar independent study course, and I would consider this book *required* reading.
a sp ?theisbn=0684824051&vm=
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hardcover
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.
soft
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.
Man wakes up in the future, and finds that his life savings have grown to $500,000. He thinks he's rich; everyone else thinks he's quaint. Everyone is tied to a mobile data communication device, whose rental and service fees are ruinous. People expect to be paid for everything they do (they have to be, to afford those fees). Anyone not in the government's database is a non-person, unable to receive services or protection from the state.
From KITT to GM's On-Star service, who'da thunk that Knight Rider was so visionary???
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Greg Bear's 'Blood Music', a short story and later a novel, is about computers made from DNA.
So which prat came up with Windows then? And where do they live?
Anyway, this is a cagey subject. Take Clarke, the guy had a million ideas, and somethings bound to end up being useful. It's like saying Nostrodamus predicted something, well maybe if you make that many predictions something comes true. Also maybe it's like saying imagine a future where people have *smaller technology*. Hmmm, lot of thought there.
Don't get me wrong I think some of Clarke et al's work is visionary, and certainly some of it makes for incredible reading. But as for authors or writers who changed or influenced the world we live in? I think maybe you're not looking in the right place.
discreet*
I would say that the William Gibson's "Neuromancer" and its description of cyberspace had the biggest effect on the development of the culture of the internet as well as many conventions and actual inventions.
Although this book is arguably more the chicken than the egg, this is where the term cyberspace was coined and where many command line conventions were translated into a three dimensional internet. He described a "consentual hallucination" of end users interacting with AI agents, servers, and viruses in a powerful and haunting way. Many a dollar and many lines of code have been plunged into attempts to make a world that even comes close to Gibson's cyberspace.
"Neuromancer" is what got a lot of people interested in "cyberspace" engineering, including myself.
I think Adams also quite accurately describes the average constantly-troubled-but-still-smarter-than-the-res t-geek:
Marvin, can you pick up that piece of paper? ..."
Can I pick up that piece of paper! Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to
"Yeah, yeah," sympathized Zaphod hardly at all.
"But I'm quite used to being humiliated," droned Marvin, "I can even go and stick my head in a bucket of water if you like. Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket of water? I've got one ready. Wait a minute."
Now, replace Zaphod with Mr.Marketing or Mr.TheInterNetIsBrokenBoss...
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
This book is a collection of some of his finest "prophetic" shorts. It also contains several essays on his future predicitons, including revisiting several of his older ones to see how he feels he did.
Solution Unsatisfactory is one the standout stories that comes to mind from the book. I'm at work, so I don't have it handy.
He also had some very interesting perspectives on the old Soviet Union based on his trips there with his wife.
Geez, I really miss him. And Zelazny. Think I'll read some of my old favorites of theirs over the holiday, no matter how much it cuts into Civ3.
The holodeck color scheme used on the "Enterprise" (black with yellow lines) is used by Nasa as the background for vector mapping when information is not known or to convey the axes. The engineers specifically requested it.
Its a small, but notable influence.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Here's an interesting one (Disclaimer: It's been a while since I've read either of these books, so some of the specifics may not be 100% accurate). In Arthur C. Clarke's "Rendevous with Rama" he creates a fictional program called SpaceGUARD, the purpose being to keep an eye out for earth-impacting asteroids. Some time after the release of the book, NASA and others borrowed the name for a real network of telescopes and such being used for the same purpose, along with a report entitled "The SpaceGuard Survey".
And, to complete the circle... In his (much) more recent novel, "The Hammer of God", the real SpaceGUARD plays a role in discovering Kali, the earth-impacting comet-remnant. The amusing bit is that he refers to SpaceGUARD as "having taken its name from an obscure 20th century novel".. namely, his own!
End of lesson. You may press the button.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/21/208200 &mode=thread
Arthur' Clarke's space oddesey's have been more than a handbook for most the inventions/gadgets of the present century. The 86 yr old authour presently living in colombo, sri lanka, still continues to write to predict many more inventions of the future. he is considered by many as the nostradamus of our times. Michael Crichton, a pure fiction writer, who has a considerable part of sci-fi area, has definetaly had a impact on many gadgets that we use now
I wish I had seen this story earlier and posted so that more of you good readers could hear my most vocal opinion on this topic. I cannot stand it when people think that some guy is sitting in a lab at Motorola thinking, "Okay, how do we make Captain Kirk's communicator?".
This whole idea is complete bullshit. Just because some writers come up with some nifty ideas doesn't mean that they are in any-way-shape-or-form responsible for the development of such technology. Even if the Star Trek communicator (in the original) looked differently, we would still have Motorola flip phones, because it is a good way of making the design more compact.
SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS ARE JUST THAT! THEY ARE NOT INNOVATORS (unless you count Clarke...)
The parent post is an insidous TROLL.
The author wants to hoodwink you into believing that we don't need to wage holy war against heathen Arabs in order to ensure our access to precious oil. He probably also has some wacko libertarian scheme that he'll claim will make everybody richer than Bill Gates, and that you dont have to be a wage slave. Next, he'll be raving about flying cars and moon cities.
Don't listen to him, he's obviously deranged.
Neuromancer was definitely his crowning achievement, and tech lingo will forever be indebted to him.
However, one of his short stories you might find really fascinating, in that he illustrates the opposite of what you are asking. In his collection of short stories Burning Chrome he has a story named "The Gernsback Continuum" where he describes visions of the future that never quite came to pass... but what if they did? Things like flying cars from the 50's and huge single airwings with 100's of propellers. Think about 20's gothic architecture and those early visions of going to the moon. It would be a nice counterpoint in your work to what were "probable" visions of the future versus what was in the imagined future.
Burning Chrome is also a good basis, because little works like "Johnny Mnemonic" and "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" show him developing the ideas that later became the astounding Neuromancer.
TurtleBlue
ps - 62-36, nice - I was there.
In "Between Planets" answering machines are presented...and also used for screening phone calls.
That was written by Frederik Pohl.
The US "Star Wars" program was supposedly thought up by a panel of "hard" SF authors asked to come up with ways to fight the USSR.
Many people (myself included) think it's still SF, and will remain so for a very long time. It's the difference between the "big picture" thinker who comes up with a concept, and the "detailed" thinker who has to actually implement it. In concept, Star Wars is really neat. In practice, it's far too easy to introduce decoys, and by the time you can handle one decoyed MIRV your enemy has smuggled 100 warheads into the country by other means.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Of course, this info is from a rah-rah fan book, so take with the appropriate NaCL.
Ender's Game
In Ray Bardbury's Fahrenheit 451 he describes Guy Montag's wife a constantly having small sea-shell devices in her ears that allowed her to listen to public broadcasts. This reminded me of the ear-bud headphones that have been around for some time now (but ever more stylish and popular now).
On a side note these portions of the book also remind me of today's media addicts. Those people who become entranced with CNN, MSNBC, and other current events programming and watch tv in a zombie-like state for days on end.
The nights dawn trillogy describes something called "nanonics" witch is electronics that you controll with your brain (implants such as: boosted muscles, hi-res/infrared eye-sight, targeting systems for soldiers, AV storage for journalists, communication and so on).
It is also highly integrated into the urban environment. Pretty nifty. Think of it as bluetooth on steroids.
If you look carefully at some of the original poster art for the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", you'll see that one of the astronauts working on the moon is consulting what appears to be an oversized Palm Pilot (about the size of A4 paper). It has a large screen with a row of buttons along the bottom, in the exact same proportions as current Palms.
I haven't been able to find any graphics on the web that show it, but you can see it clearly on the back cover of the soundtrack album.
well, the first thing that definitely comes to mind is william gibson. not that we're scampering about information networks with electrode tiaras and viewing everything as three-dimensional constructs piped into our optic nerves, but that we probably will be in the next couple decades. of course, i suppose this isn't about what will be but what already is, in which case gibson will have had more of an impact on language with the word "cyberspace." read "neuromancer" (which i'm sure you have already, so read it again) or anything else in the cyberspace series; i feel that gibson has a good talent for thinking about natural extensions of modern technology (superconductiong quantum interference devices, anyone?). he also wrote about things like cybercrime, implants, and genetically designed "vat-grown" food and replacement body parts. read "burning chrome" (again) as well - his collection of short stories has some gems in it, too.
another is, of course, star trek - quintessential pop sci-fi. the past ten or so years has seen a new sector of the personal electronics market grow around watches-that-are-more-than-a-watch. barometers (and thus altimiters), compases, gps, temperature, depth gauges etc. all being packaged in something relatively tiny and man-portable - might not look like a tricorder but definitely follows it by providing at-hand sensory readings. ST: TNG's PADDs (those nifty portable flatscreen display devices, for the uninitiated) have surely affected the design of today's PDAs.
(alduos huxley's "brave new world" would be great for the class. genetic modification, a culture placated by drugs, cloning, and the moral ramifications thereof.)
i can think of a few other current technologies that seem to have come from sci-fi (although i couldn't provide you with a bibliography). stun guns/tasers and other nonlethal weapons (glue guns, net guns, emp, etc.), energy weapons (lasers, railguns, yadda yadda), and telemedicine (anne mccafferey's "the ship who searched", perhaps?).
good luck, and let us know how it went at the end of the semester!
- emilio
neurostyle dot net - it's all in your head
a little known gem of a series by james p hogan. 4 books based in the near future. 100% hard core sci fi. grab the first 3 of the 4 and be amazed! i have yet to read the 4th so i am not sure what it is like.
seems like everything hogan wrote was plausible even with the technology of today. he did giant's star in the 70's i think.
Some years ago now i was reading 2000AD, a british comic, and Judge Dredd was there using riot foam as a non-lethal way to control crowds
n e= thrill&page=dredduni)
p on s990510.html (picture here)
(a good description is here:
http://www.2000ad.nu/linksproject/index.php3?zo
and then, 10 or so years after i'd first read about it, the 'invention' of the exact same thing was all over the news.
(do a google search using "non-lethal weapons sticky foam")
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/wea
cheers
andy
In the old comic strip, Dick Tracy's 2-way communicator predated reality -- if not already available, surely wristwatch-sized 2-way video will be soon. related: Saturday slashdot article: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/24/034624 0&mode=thread
je ne suis pas un fou
I would say that Isaac Asimov's "robot" series of books probably had the biggest effect on both fiction AND science. Although the robots in existance today are nothing like the robots in his novels, the inspiration and the name "robot" came from him. Asimov's robots were a lot like Star Trek's character Data. They looked human, had positronic brains (dreamed up by Asimov, of course), and could think and act on their own. Most of our robots today are nothing like that. They are controlled by computers, which are programmed by humans. Robots are designed for specific purposes and carry out only that purpose. For example, a six axis robotic arm might be installed in an automotive assembly line and programmed to perform the same exact action thousands, tens of thousands (or even vastly more) times. The idea, however, stems from Asimov's dream of machines that could perform actions for humans.
Another great writer, Jules Verne, wrote science fiction novels that eventually became science fact. From the submarine in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, to the rocket in From the Earth to the Moon, to the trip Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne came up with some truly incredible ideas that soon became very credible indeed.
There are many others. I'm too busy to list them all, or I'd take the same kind of course. OH WELL
Why is there no refrence to William Gibson's Neuromancer above +2? That book defined the ideas of cyberspace so well that it reads just as well after the computer revolution as before. In about '98 when I saw the first talking heads DHTML/SGML site, I had an erie feeling I'd been there before.
I have confidence it will be considered up there with Verne in terms of prophetic nature.
Heinlein introduced the waterbed before it was available. In fact, his work put the idea in the public domain, and prevented the first company making one from getting a patent on the idea. :)
Personally, I think science fiction is at its best when it predicts the effect of technology on society rather than predicts the technology. 1984 is such a great novel not because it got scientists and engineers thinking about how surveilance technology would work. 1984 is great because it got everyone thinking about the ramifications of surveilance technology. With this novel, everyone has a common understanding of how far a government could go with pervasive surveilance of citizens, and we can argue new technology based on thise common understanding. Without it, privacy advocates would seem (even more) crazy to the common citizen.
Because technology is improving at exponential rates, we don't often have time to think about the ramifications of technology until we are using it. Good predictive science fiction gives us a little time beforehand, to think and prepare.
Personally, I'm not interested in this historical project of finding which guesses were right, or Tech TV style observations of "Gee Whiz, isn't this tech great!" I'm more interested with the dialog about future trends, and more of our society thinking about the future.
On a side note, it seems that predictive science fiction is drawing back its horizons more and more. It seems good predictive science fiction is concerned with the next few years, maybe a few generations at most, while hundreds to thousands of years in the future is the domain of fantastical science fiction and lite sci-fi shows. Is this because all the predictive science fiction writers are having a hard time thinking past the singularity?
This may be outside the range you're looking for, but in the "life imitating art" dept., there's Fritz Lang's 1928 movie "Woman in the Moon" which gave us the countdown.
Predict != Influence
But, I'll stick (stubbornly) by my original comments. The author thinks of what technology can do, and the engineer thinks of what to do with technology. A bit circular, and I'm feeling chatty....
The author throws the rules out the window, and does some What-If-ing.
The engineer, trained and bound by rules, but reporting to the demands of the Manager (who has read too much SciFi, and thus believes nothing is impossible), tries to find what technology can perform the task.
More simply, the author goes from task backward to technology, and the engineer goes from technology forward to task. In your post, they have the techology, and want to know what else to do with it. They are not trying to make SciFi come true. (am I nitpicking, here?)
I do think we need more dreamer-engineers, but the cirriculum and managers tend to conspire and weed them out.
Of course, his novels were written before World War II, but his books have been the inspiration for many scientific advances. One example that comes to mind is 20,000 Leagues under the sea, which describes in detail a nuclear powered submarine long before submarines or nuclear fission was ever used. In fact, if I recall correctly, the first U.S. submarine was named the Nautilus in tribute to Captain Nemo's ship.
In 1932, physicist Leo Szilard read an H.G. Wells novel, The World Set Free (1914) which described an imaginary world-war using atomic weapons. According to Szilard, this novel was responsible for his interest in in nuclear physics (despite Lord Rutherford's proclamation that atomic power was impossible). A year later, he realized how to set up a fission chain reaction and create atomic power.
>;k
From reading prior posts, I think people are taking the causality of sci-fi and invention a bit too literally. I don't think the idea is that some inventor/engineer says "Gee, this communicator thing on Star Trek looks really neat. I think I'll invent one!" Obviously, that's ludicrous. I think the point is that sci-fi authors may have introduced a general gestalt into either the mainstream or scientific community from which real ideas drew influence.
There is, of course, a chicken-and-the-egg situation here. Did Star Trek introduce the idea of a communicator, or did it simply formalize an idea that was already floating around in sci-fi circles?
George Jetson had items like a videophone, flying car, and a robot.
~ fact is not dependant upon your belief therein. ~ ~ Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?
that Leonardo da Vinci clearly describes the <\B> tag in one of his notebooks. I think it was in the one Bill Gates bought.
How about "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess. Using drugs to make a criminal adverse to violence--we see that now with moves to chemically "castrate" rapists and child molesters.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
It didn't really predict future technology, but is was/is certainly in the science fiction genre and is still, ~150 (?) years later, brought up in making arguments about genetic engineering, GM foods (FRANKENfoods!), and cloning, among other things.
I think the value of science fiction is not in predicting or suggesting technology, it's in analyzing our reaction to potential technologies. It forces us to consider the impact of certain devices or knowledges before they are directly in our faces. In fact, SF is invaluable in serving this purpose. And Frankenstein is probably the most successful science fiction book ever in this regard.
/bluesninja
He *invented* waldoes. They are called that after Waldo, the main character in the story and the title of the story as well. Not exactly a prediction. And before anyone else says it, the same goes for waterbeds. Invented, not predicted (in Stranger). Also the "generation ship".
However, I think it would be fair to say RAH predicted the Internet (he wasn't the only one and maybe not even the first, but so what). Check out the "public terminals" that have access to everything from lectures on science to live orchestral performances. These are throughout the "Future History" books, but especially so in Friday. It is interesting to note that revenue method Heinlein envisioned for this as well.
Of course he may have predicted several things that have yet to come to pass. For instance, in Harsh Mistress he mentions (actually the plot hinges on this) warfare between the Moon and Earth as well as induction ring launches from both locations.
324006
Don't get me started...
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Robert Heinlein has coined/foreshadowed many tech terms and acheivements. He coined the term "free fall" and, IIRC, was a NASA advisor as well.
The best stuff (that applys to your research) would be the collection of Future History books. It's the early stuff, mostly juvenile, and not the adult (not _Adult_) novels that cover Lazarus Long, etc.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
Apart from incidentals (such as Jules Verne's pretty good estimate of the escape velocity of earth's gravitational field - about 11 kps) which I put off as coincidents, I see SF-RL links in two categories:
SF -> RL:
naming, e.g. "cyberspace", "robots", "cyborgs", "beaming", etc. etc.
RL -> SF:
(and this is one of the aspects of SF which facinates me) interpretations of the world. For example: Douglas Adams' Hitch-Hiker trilogy (heh...) contains todays lay-man's interpretations of modern physics, as concerns faster-than-light travel, time travel, computing, and so on. In general: An SF author is called upon to paint a picture of a world which is different from the one which is accepted in the author's day - and the interesting thing is to see just where the author's imagination doesn't flex, especially in "older" SF. This touches not only on science, but also on sociology, psychology etc. For instance: some 50s 60s SF is good solid stuff, but all spaceship's crew are scrubbed clean & in white uniforms, like they just came off an super-modern ocean-going ship, and the society is, by today's standards, sexist & racist to a hairraising degree.
BTW: don't miss out on all the SF which is too litarary to be classified as SF, such as Hesse's "Das Glasperlenspiel", or Michel Houellebecq's "Les Particules Elementaires".
yes, we have no bananas
Asimov coined the term positron with his description of positronic nets, which were also a brilliant insight into the way in which neural nets and dynamical systems would develop.
However, most of the posts i have seen have been along the lines of authors predicting things that ended up actually happening. The intent of the original post appeared to be more interested in science fiction actually AFFECTING the paths of science.
In this regard, I would still point to Asimov. Asimov's three laws of robotics have become so embedded in our society, that some people don't even know that they originate in fiction. I can say it is reasonably certain that once we start to have stronger weak-AI devices(def'n; weak AI - systems made to imitate intelligence in order to achieve tasks. compare: strong AI - systems made to actually BE intelligent, to BE human) becoming extremely common and intereacting directly with people on a regular basis we will see either an industry standard, or more likely legislation, enforcing the hard-coding of something very similar to Asimov's laws.
Also the [Gibson ---> modern internet] connection is good.
lysergically yours
Clarke may not have predicted tightbeam, but Heinlein did mention it in a number of his stories - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress leaps to mind.
Also had compression of the data being sent to reduce transmit time...
There was that story about grafting brain cells onto circuits or whatever it was. The first I ever heard of that was in William Gibson's Neuromancer.
:wq
The word "robotics" comes from the short story "Runaround" (1942) by Isaac Asimov. Since there are actual businesses focusing on, and degrees in robotics, the Master deserves his props. He invented the Laws of Robotics too, but we're not in need of them as yet.
But wait there's more!
As any Foundation fan knows, the Prime Radiant was displayed in a way that we geeks know all too well, but didn't exist in even the most fertile minds of the forties, when Asimov described it: an overhead (or LCD) projector.
The formulae of the Prime Radiant (which can be argued sounds suspiciously like today's stock market) were seemingly magically "projected upon the walls, covering every inch with small numbers and symbols." While Edison had invented a photographic projector earlier, Asimov's was clearly an "edit while displaying" educational tool, which is precisely why the overhead projector was invented: as an editable display tool. If I was his heir, I'd claim the patent. B)
If I snoop through his books enough, I'll probably find Powerpoint as well. Hah.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
Douglas Adam's coolest invention, however, must be the elevators that can see into the future. You never have to press a button. It knows it needs to pick you up, and then knows where you're going. Brilliant!
internet and computer terminals with the functionality of modern computers in modern use
A few years back, I believe it was HBO that put on a mini-series about the Apollo space missions. In it, they made a big deal about the fact that Jules Vernes' _From the Earth to the Moon_ was one of the major motivating forces for many of the engineers in the project.
I recently read a book about _2001: A Space Odyssey_, and how the predictions about AI in it have or have not come true by the year 2001. I recall a number of comments in there about people being driven by the portrayal of what AI can and should be capable of.
I also recall an anecdote about the engineers at NASA making a heoric effort to have the first space shuttle named Enterprise, in honor of Roddenberry, though I don't recall the place I came across this tidbit.
As a side note, you will have a fair amount of work ahead of you trying to sort out causality from prediction. Post hoc, ergo proptor hoc. Clearly, the engineers that named the space shuttle Enterprise were inspired by Roddenberry, but are wearable computers really inspired by Stephenson's Gargoyles?
Science fiction gets it wrong far, far more often than it gets it right. The pages of SF are full of statements which have either become ridiculously outmoded (futuristic computers with vacuum tubes, futuristic engineers using slide rules, &c.) or claims for the future which just never came true (that we'd have colonized the solar system by now, that we'd have flying cars, &c.)
The plain fact of the matter is that the predictive value of SF just isn't there. SF writers don't make intelligent predictions; they take wild stabs in the dark, and their guesses are right probably about as often as a professional psychic's.
One might claim that Clarke's and Kubrick's 2001, say, or Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, somehow "predict" the advent of artificial intelligences which can pass the Turing Test, in the characters of Hal and Mycroft. Nonsense. Hal and Mycroft are simply human characters with the serial numbers filed off; it took no insight into technology to write those characters, only wishful thinking that some day computers will act like people.
A lot of science fiction tech stems from that sort of wishful thinking, the wistful hope that some day, a way can be found to contravene various inconvenient physical laws or technological barriers; hence SF has given us faster-than-light travel or communications, hand-held laser-like weapons capable of killing a man, shields, not to mention human colonies on just about every celestial body which might conceivably harbor us. Maybe, some day, there will be discovered ways to effect some of these things. But if they happen, they will happen at their own pace, in despite of the dreams of SF and not because of them. Science fiction writers since the early days of the genre have indulged the wistful hope that we'd be living on the Moon or Mars by now--look how influential _that_ dream has been!
The best SF keeps the wild dreams of futuristic tech in the background and concentrates rather on character. That's why C. J. Cherryh's CYTEEN is my favorite SF novel; the one claim for the future which makes the plot possible--that we'll eventually be able to clone humans and imprint desired behavior upon them--is eminently plausible; for the rest, Cherryh dwells upon the struggles of the characters, not on wowing readers with visions of futuristic toys.
hyacinthus.
Brave New World by Aldous (sp?) Huxley?
Often science fiction writers are scientists that use the vision inspired by their research to write science fiction that goes where current technology and art can't. These writers are part of what is sometimes called the "Hard Science Fiction" school. Many stories from these writers are short so they never make it into book length publications but are captured in the Pulp Fiction magazines Asimov and Analog. These magazines also mix hard science articals with their fiction offerings providing an environment for cross pollination.
Good thing that never happened, eh? Now, then... "what is the square root of 529"? D'oh!
They served as inspiration for some new urban fighting vehicles from the US armed forces.
One of the developers admitted it in an interview/article.
Caltrops, oil, smokescreen etc.
Zambozay! My brain must've been eatin' a sandwich!
i think that in 20000 leagues under the sea the idea of the periscope was first introduced
I believe the founders of USR were big Asimov fans and named their company US Robotics just because no such company existed.
Gung Gee Fook Fei Fu - Taming the Flabby Tiger
Actually, considering recent developments in human cloning, I think Treason (or A Planet Called Treason, depending on how old your copy is) makes an interesting read. It doesn't deal directly with cloning, but some of the issues it brings up re: use of 'extra' body parts makes some fun food for thought.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
through the miracle of compound interest, a man in a long coma wakes to find he owns the world.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
I'd certainly recommend reading "True Names" by Vernor Vinge -- a fine foreshadowing of the use of avatars in chat rooms, 3-D representations of such, and online interactions between people. A very early example of this sort of thinking and a fine book as well.
They are little more than lab curiosities, with no practical applications. The late 1980's gave us Cold Fusion, and the late 1990's gave us Bucky Balls and Nano-tubes. What will change the world, (and NOT for the better is the continual meddling in cloning and human genetics. The moral, ethical, legal, environmental, and biological problems are not being addressed by those who are doing the research. We are behaving like children with shiny, dangerous toys. One thing many Science Fiction writers have done over the years is examine these things, as they relate to technology.
George Lucas's first film, "THX-1138", introduced the concept of phone tech support based on obnoxious recorded messages. That was a very insightful film. Lucas later abandoned insight for popularity and became successful.
This novel is full of nifty ideas and deserves to be better known. If you like "out there" writers like Dick, Varley or Egan pick it up.
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
Not necessarily the traditional science fiction, but if you're looking for writing that has been influential on real world writing, I can't think of anything more appropriate than As We May Think, written by Vannevar Bush. This was written for the Atlantic in 1945, and among other things described a system called the Memex which was very much like today's concepts of computers and the Internet.
p ut er/bushf.htm
Among other things, this article was read by Douglas C. Engelbert, and was the inspiration for his invention of early networked prototypes, the mouse, early windowing systems, etc.
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/com
The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of, by Thomas Disch. A nice coverage of classic sci-fi and the products, culture, philosophies it has influenced.
Childhood's End by Clarke, written in the 50's.
Foresaw space flight and the space race, the Pill, DNA paternity testing, FAX machines, and several other things.. It's been a while since I've read it.
It's definitelly one for the reading list though.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
While we're talking about Brave New World...
Okay where are the references to now? Well IX is a good place to start, if you're not from IX every thing is Black box technology. Aside from the readers here who really understand what's going on in the box on your desk?
Then we have the Orange Catholic Bible and the backlash against technology and "thinking machines"
Throw in a little slavery and oppression, some economically motiviated warfare and you're almost there.
When someone yells "Stop" or goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.
Robert Heinlen suggested the water bed in 'tranger in a Strange Land' I think
I know a little sig that's just ten words long
The automatic doors on the original Star Trek series - the ones that open automagically
whenever a crew member approaches it - so intrigued the US Navy that they had their tech
people talk with Roddenberry. Unfortunately, the
doors were not operated by tech, but by stage
hands. Now, they are common place in super
markets.
Or some such latin quote.
Seems to me like this has really similar footing to the claim that a manager might make that she is responsible for the company's product because she had the idea for it in the first place. Could be totally reasonable, I'm not arguing it's an invalid claim.
Similarly, if you were to get to a place (the moon?) first and stake the ground, then when others get there and implement the infrastructure (deep core mines?) then you can take all the credit. Why not? See, the Oklahoma Sooners.
Although then again perhaps people taking these stances might just be worried about getting their fare share of the credit, certainly not *all* the credit.
Goddammit People get it right!!!
== is for comparison only!
Stop saying "A==B" in an attempt to be G33k k001.If you want to say A=B, say A=B. Please spare us the needless comparison operator!
Argh! Fucking annoys me every time I see it!
Wanna B3 Lamer C kod3rs.
This implies that ESA scientists have already run out of ideas of things to do in space. Which in turn implies that they think they've already done everything...
;-)
Although... it's a good excuse to use tax money to buy some enjoyable reading...
1938) in his play R.U.R. ('Rossum's Universal Robots') (1920).
Just my $0.02.
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
On a side note, it seems that predictive science fiction is drawing back its horizons more and more. It seems good predictive science fiction is concerned with the next few years, maybe a few generations at most, while hundreds to thousands of years in the future is the domain of fantastical science fiction and lite sci-fi shows. Is this because all the predictive science fiction writers are having a hard time thinking past the singularity?
Well, take a look at what these former sci-fi authors -wrote- about. In those days, there was a space program that actually had strong funding (gotta love the Cold War...) and strong public backing. Mankind was going into space, and dammit, it was a BIG THING. Now, I have a hard time finding out from mainstream media that a US Space Shuttle has either launched, landed, or has done something in space besides working with some X million dollar experiment that: a. has been faulty on the ground, b. has been faulty in deployment, c. is the pet project of politician Y who the media happens to like at the time, d. has to deal with some 'controversial' experimentation, or e. deals with something that is 'trully innovative' in the eyes of media.
Look at the writings of people like Asimov, or Herbert. Now be brutally honest: how many of the events with dates attached to them, or short 'windows of time' from when they were written (anything less than 40 years, pretty much), have actually happened? Look at sci-fi now. Just how many authors actually put dates on events, or write of events in that short 'window of time' of 40 years or less from now? By 2001, Arthur Clarke had us sending a manned exploration mission to Jupiter. Now 2001 is almost over, and we can barely keep a handful of people up in a severely under-funded tin-can called the ISS.
I think authors currently writing have seen what has happened with such 'predictions' to date, and have taken a lesson from it all. It's easy to write about events 'X hundred/thousand years/generations' from now, but it's damned hard to write about things in just 10 to 20 years from now...
-and actually get it right.
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
The first commerically successful "cyberspace" novel was "Neuromancer," by William Gibson. There are two worlds in Neuromancer: the corporeal world, run by corporations, and the cyberworld, which one "Jacks in" to via a computer hookup. IN cyberspace, data passes freely, but a lot work goes into protecting data from hackers. The protagonist is a hacker how specializes in stealing data. Sound familiar?
Gibson was so spot on that several commercial products use names from the book, eg BlackICE.
If you can find it, there is this great interview with William Gibson in which he discussed watching two kids playing pong (the original commercial video game, back in the 70s). Gibson realized that, for the players, the world behind the screen was just a real as a tennis court is to a tennis player. So Gibson pursued this "world behind the screen" metaphor and produced a striking, immersive world based an ubiquitous computers communicated via a world-wide standard network. This vision drove a lot of researchers, and still does. Many of us crave the fully, head mounted, immersive 3-D displays used in the book. But I'll take a pass on the Texas Catheter.
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
Just my opinion, but it seems like there should be a seperate area for questions to the slashdot community instead of the front page. I expect to see more "news" type stuff on the front page. -K
Stephenson wrote an "eco-thriller" titled Zodiac in 1988 that centers around the use of bacteria to clean up chemical spills (in this case, organic chlorene), much like we are starting to do today with oil spills.
Definitely not computer related. *grin*
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
I bet you left arm hurts like a bitch, doesn't it fattie?
(damn, at this rate, I'll be IP banned before troll Tueday!)
Everyone is taking the easy stuff. How about some lesser known sources?
;)
Here's mine. The very first "Buck Rogers" story in 1928 - called Armageddon-2419. It was originally published in Amazing Stories, and then published as a Novella shortly after.
The book, written by Philip Francis Nowlan, accurately predicted the bazooka, the jet plane, walkie-talkie for warfare, the infra-red ray gun for fighting at night, as well as dozens of other advances that are not here yet but are on their way.
It was interesting in that their ships were anti-gravity ships powered by a mineral called "Upsium" or something like that in which the mineral was antigravity because it was drawn to the nearest perfect vacuum (Hoover hadn't been invented yet I guess
I think the story author is missing the boat about books after WWII. By WWII, most theoretical science was well known. It's the stuff prior to WWII that is the most prescient.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
What about "smartguns" and other computerized soldier assistance? I think this comes from Gibson, but was also in several bad movies, ie: Universal Soldier.
A sub that sinks and doesn't rise again is hardly a submarine, is it? Lots of airplanes were invented, but never flew, so they don't quite qualify either.
Infuriate left and right
I don't have a link or any firm citation, but since I haven't seen any notes talking about it already, I thought I'd mention that I've heard that the diagnostic beds in the Enterprise's sick bay have served as inspiration for real world devices.
-- dR.fuZZo
Joseph Keller's novel Catch-22 seems to have nicely predicted our current system of government, especially as it relates to intellectual property laws and vehicle registration.
With the same novel, he also predicted the clarity and usability of Microsoft technical documentation, and did so before computers were ever invented...utterly amazing...
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
By James Joyce.. Seriously.. Anyone who has tried to read it knows, all they did was try to read it.. And anyone who says they did, just tried.
But, the word Quark came from it.. The scientist that discovered them had been looking at his data trying to make sence, went home and to relax got out Finnigans Wake(sp) and read a line that went something like "3 Quarks in a Nark" or something.. The answer then hit him and he named them Quarks..
Also it described TV's long before they existed.
In Ender's Game (1985) there's a worldwide computer network that allows access to news, research information, travel schedules [in the book Peter studied Russian troop movements analyzing movement of freight trains based on information from the Net], and discussion forums. It's true that in 1985 there was already a big IP-based network growing, but the books shows a Net that is a part of everyday's life for everyone, much like today's Internet.
Don't tell me Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land had no effect on society. It was widely read among students of the mid to late 60s, and helped to inspire (note that I did not say created) free-love and the growing search for personal enlightenment that some say helped crash the hippies' political movement (if you spend more and more time trying to find a place for yourself spiritually, will you have the time and energy required to build a place for yourself through political means?).
I can't personally recall any books that have had as significant an effect on the popular culture, although many (and I mean MANY) have tapped into that culture to amplify undercurrents already present. Childhood's End is one. Dhalgren is another. Dune. Those books and many others were directly targeted at major themes of the times they were created in, and helped to codify those themes within the people who read them. Stranger was no different, really, but it was more influencial on a personal level to those who read it, and it came early in the period, while being very much a book of its time and the time shortly to come, while breaking free from what came before, which was in and of itself one of the main themes of the book and the journey its characters went on. And I think it continues to speak to those who can't quite accept what propriety suggests for us. It was certainly very well recieved among the neo-hippies at my high school when I suggested that it be taught to the seniors. I think Dhalgren is a better book, but it is very difficult reading, as it completely eschews many of the traditions of science fiction and of modern storytelling in general, and is a very literary book. Rather than use metaphor in description of events, it describes events that are metaphors themselves. Parable would be an adequate word. But rather unlike a book like Stranger, in which the book can be taken as a parable, or small variety of parables, Dhalgren cannot. And yet its little events and what the character sees could be called parables. The latter section of the book has a very strong narrative. In general, you can tell from reading that the author is trying to say something, but he doesn't make it easy to figure out what, which helps generate a mirrored feeling (when you are forced to draw conclusions about what something means, which your mind will do automatically, and there is not enough evidence to determine thought, but only to guide and shape it, you will tend to project your own concerns and feelings and hot-topics, as shaped by the book. The aimlessness this generates is also a theme of the book). Basically it is thus: an amnesiac goes to a partially burning, nearly deserted city with streets that randomly move themselves on occasion. Some weird shit goes down all the time. That's all. It's a character study of an amnesiac. Anything more and you'll have preconceptions which will be ultimately destroyed. Dark City is obviously a Hollywood rip-off (imagine Dark City with only a couple hundred people living in pure anarchy, with cloudy days in addition to the night, with no overseers, and without as pronounced a memory changing effect if at all, with barely noticeably changes to the landscape and without ever finding out what's going on. Then put it in the mid 70s, and populate it with degenerate youths and weird adults and let things go however they might for 800 pages)
Oh yes, the entire idea of non intrusive
diagnosis and medicine came about because
of all of that. MRI and Ultrasonice imaging
and mapping devices are some of that, but
imagine being able to apply medicine or
heal someone without having to splay them
open on a table in front of you...
Gene having been in the military (Navy I believe) drew alot from his
knowledge of it as well as making many contacts for obtaining more and
ongoing information.
It is more likely that Roddenberry (sp?) created fiction based upon fact
and genuine science theory than the other way around. Though at some point
there is bound to be the creative license use.
One such example of technology existing prior to use in the show is what
many would recognize as the newer type of communicators, the combadges.
As it turns out, the technology these combadges are based on has existed
since before the original Star Trek show. That technology is what you can
do a google search on "neurophone".
And having been one who got a chance to play around with a prototype, I
can say that it does in fact work and what you read about it being better
for the high end of the hearing range is correct.
But this doesn't much support the imagination to reality direction, for
Roddenberry wanted to make his show as realistice in information as he
could and often would bug NASA for technical info (and they were glad to
help because in turn the show helped gain public interest in the space
program) while incorporating current social issues into the plot of each
show.
However, there were a few shows that Roddenberry did in fact write the
plot around the concepts of moving imagination into reality. In fact "Q"
was such a character capable of such power.
The reality is that there is a truth to it. In the process of creating
anything, we must first be able to imagine it. Take the general picture
and begin filling in the details. Really not so unlike the process of
creating software.
There is even an identified formula for it:
T1 (I + E) = v T2 (k)
T1 = non-mystical thought, T2 = things in physical reality,
k = the active constant, I = degree of Intent, E = degree of Effort,
v = velocity of conversion
A formula that like any math equation, makes two statements.
Here it is: All things in physical reality can be comprehended and
all things that can be comprehended in non-mystical thought can be
created.
But it really does all begin with imagination and the application of consciousness (see concepts)
.
Ya, I would agree with what you say, scientiests dont scan sci-fi novels looking for the "next big thing".
It is pretty interesting though to think that 30 years ago, this author came up with this idea, and back then everyone thought it was very much sci-fi, but we now have something today that is pretty close to it.
All these posts though have sparked my interest in jules verne, ill probably go do some reading tonight on the subject =).
For the color-changing fabric which was discussed here on Slashdot about two weeks ago. And the computerized dating service in Stars in my Pocket, also by Delaney.
IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL  KICK YOUR ASS!
Ironically science fiction is not so much about inventing new science, but rather predicting the consequences of extrapolating what comes about from predictable developments. Many dystopian worlds may have been prevented because someone thought through the consequences and penned them as science fiction novels -- Soylant Green comes to mind.
Science Fiction's main effect is on how we use technology, and in many cases what we name technological items. The experimental Shuttle that never made it to orbit was named the "Enterprise" in homage to Star Trek's vessel of the same name.
Letter To Iran
wrote an ee doc smith-like series of stories of men running a communications satellite relaying between the Earth, Venus and either Mercury or Mars. You can find the space opera stories collected as _The Complete Venus Equilateral_.
well you got the shoe phone from get smart (the series wasn't sci-fi, but i guess you could use it) ==> cell phones.
the radio watch in dick tracy, (which in the later version came with a camera and screen) ==> recent developments by ibm and co.
counless examples in robotics (lost in space, buck rogers, starwars, etc)
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
There are three things which are scary about this short... First that it was written in 1885 (over 100 years ago). Second, how accurate his predictions are. And finally (and perhaps most scarily) that his predictions were off by a factor of 10 - 100 years in the future instead of 1000.
Definately a must read in this type of study.
I think there is a big mix up between cause and effect here. (a). Inventions are the effect of the following causes: (i) a problem, (ii) a technology, (iii) the knowledge to take a technology and apply it to a problem to make a solution. (b). (Good) Science fiction inventions are the effect of the following causes: (i) an imagined problem, (ii) an imagined technology, (iii) an imagined solution. Where (a).(i-ii) and (b).(i-ii) have a relatively close match then (a).(iii) and (b).(iii) will inevitably be a close match (think about the shape of the shark and the dolphin), but establishing a causal link between (b) and (a) is going to be difficult as (a) is going to be much more heavily influenced by it's (i) and (ii) than by anything in (b) When (a).(i-ii) and (b).(i-ii) are wildly different, then any relationship between the technologies produced is purely in the imagination of the of the person suggesting it. Ergo... anyone suggesting that Science Fiction has influenced technology/inventions has been asked the wrong question (Science Fiction can anticipate inventions, but it's much better at extrapolating existing ones and predicting their impact on society).
-- At rest in the information super layby.
There's an excellent resource at NASA: The Space Educators' Handbook
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/seh.html
They have a section on science fiction predictions translated into hard science as far as space travel is concerned (rockets, space stations, shuttles).
Noted earlier in this thread, but deserves a more pointed mention. It was written in 1975 and hits alot of points regarding technology 20 years forward. Couple of serious misses, as well. I used to think the cultural commentary of the book was off the mark. but can anyone say "Survivor" or "Fear Factor" and their ilk don't bear a resemblance to "Circus Bocconi?"
-----
"Melt the ice; eat the moose; drill the oil; get it over with." -Max Boot
Adolscence of P1", by Thomas Ryan, in 1977 described software that would reside on a single computer (IBM mainframe) and use a straightforward AI algorithm to go across computer networks and attempted to break into the next computer, copy itself onto that next computer, and "root" itself (actually hijack the PSW - these were IBM mainframes) on that next machine. Eventually, P1 infects most of the mainframes in America, giving the programmer the ability to (among other things) avoid payment on his credit card. Unfortunatley, P1 gets widespread enough to start hogging noticeable resources and piss off the sys ops and other powers that be.
In short, Ryan mapped out both the structure and effect and an efficient internet virus in 1977. Given that P1 was
widely read by com. sci types, and some friends and I actually toyed with writing a P1 style virus in the early 80's (we were too lazy/lame to figure out how to hijack the PSW), I assume there are computer viruses now that are the direct descendant of P1.
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
Hey, cool! (I'm a CU alum as well...) Some ideas for your project:
:) I can't think of any writers that made a huge impact in this regard between Asimov and the other golden age writers and Gibson in the mid-80's. And at that point it gets rather hard to tell what had historical significance, if only because it's so recent.
* Robotics is an obvious one -- the term itself was coined by Asimov, and the term "robot" by Capek. Asimov's collected works are definitely the most influential on this subject, to the extent that his "laws of robotics" are in fact quoted at the opening of one of the standard reference works on the subject.
* For computers in the most modern era, Gibson's _Neuromancer_ had a surprisingly deep impact; a large fraction of modern terminology (even the general usage of the word "Net") stems from there, as do many of the ways in which programmers visualized what they were trying to achieve.
* One thing that might not be so obvious is nuclear everything. There was actually a series of short stories published by various authors in the early 1940's (pre-Hiroshima!) which were remarkably technically accurate and which were being read at places like Los Alamos. Some stories on this thread:
"Nerves" by Lester del Rey -- this appeared orignally as a short story and was then expanded into a novella. The former is better written and more historically significant; you can find it in "My Favorite Science Fiction Story," edited by Greenberg.
"Solution Unsatisfactory" by Robert Heinlein, in his anthology "Expanded Universe." "Blowups Happen," by the same author and in "The Past Through Tomorrow," is about nuclear power.
OK, really this is such a broad topic that it's impossible to generate even a basic list; science fiction was so influential because the scientists read it, as children and as adults, and their notions of what sort of projects ought to be attacked were deeply shaped by this. If you go from a historical perspective, things to go for might be
* Hugo Gernsback was the first of the "great editors;" he edited some of the chief science fiction pubs back in the 20's and 30's, and was largely responsible for a vision of a technological utopia. He wrote some books of his own as well; this was all tied in heavily with things ranging from the Art Deco movement in architecture to the technological movement in Fascism. His books can be good refs. "The Jetsons" is a direct descendant of this line of writing, to give you an idea...
* There's a huge amount of "golden age" (40's-50's) SF which really shaped ideas about space travel, robotics, and nuclear energy. For this it might be best to go to anthologies from the period; the one edited by Greenberg mentioned above is good, as are any edited by John W. Campbell. (The second of the "great editors")
* The modern discussion of computers really started around the 60's, but I don't know this era as well. But from the perspective of a computer programmer, (and thus the receiving end of this cultural influx
Hope some of this helps, and good luck on your course!
Seriously, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is the first bonafide science fiction novel. The horror aspects of it are just window dressing for a much deeper discussion of bioengineering and bioethics, written during the height of the Scientific/Industrial Revolution when all the old "divine miracles" were becoming less divine and less miraculous every day.
Asimov may not have invented the word "robot" as he's often credited for, and perhaps the "three laws" aren't his either, i don't know.
What i do know, is that Asimov was one of the first writers who wrote about personal computers as we use them now. And that was back in the 1940s.
Don't worry, it's all just 1's and 0's anyway...
This was, in turn, based on "Shockwave", by Alvin Toffler.
It's the first mention that I've seen of computer worms. He assumed that people would use their telephones to access centralized and interconnected mainframe systems, and that both legitimate and malicious users would unleash worms through the systems to do their bidding. It also has a really interesting subplot about universal ID numbers.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
I think this overstates the seminal importance of Neuromancer. Gibson is a fine writer, but in my view, the most vivid tropes in his book were taken from the movie Blade Runner, and I see that movie as the primordial genesis of today's cyberculture, such as it is. Gibson cheerfully admits that he knew next to nothing about computers when he wrote Neuromancer, though certainly that didn't keep him from coming up with an engaging visual metaphor for data systems.
Getting back to technology and sf, the stories written by Cordwainer Smith back in the (I believe) 50s concern genesplicing. His best-known theme concerns animals elevated to sentience via genetic engineering, to serve as slaves to the fully-human. This is only a small step, in conceptual terms) from tomatoes with flounder genes, which already exist.
I recommend "The Ballad of Lost C'mell" as a start.
In at least one science fiction story, I've read of an elevator to outer space. It was "anchored" in outer space by placing some sort of counterweight in a geosynchronous orbit and was built using something like carbon fibers. Although not yet realized, contemporary architects have proposed just such a thing.
2 books by John Brunner Shockwave Rider- (Early 1970's)Uses the word Web to descibe an electronic public opinion bulletin board system. A generally prophetic book. The Sheep Look Up- (Early 1970's)Deals with global pollution. Predicts things like acid rain and pesticide resistant bugs.
Arthur C. Clarke - The geosynchronous communication satellite [Don't know the title...]
;)
Heinlein - Nanotech [in his short story 'Waldo', that also explores a few other foresighted inventions]
Heinlein - CAD/CAM ['The door into summer']
Karel Capek - Robots [in his play R.U.R, the word is derived from the Czech word 'robota', meaning 'work' or possibly 'forced workers / slaves']
Jules Verne - Helicopter ['Propellor Island']
Jules Verne - Submarine ['20000 leagues under the sea']
H.G Wells - Suspended animation ['The sleeper awakes']... hrrm perhaps reanimation is not feasible yet, but at least some people have done the suspend part.
Lucian of Samosata - Moon travel ['True history' 2000 years ago!]
William Gibson - Cyberspace, wetware, etc ['Neuromancer']
Asimov - Did not really invent anything that I am aware of, but his 'I, robot' inspires AI-researchers to this day.
It is a shame that my favourite SF author, Greg Egan, wrote all his stuff so recently, so that none of it have had the chance to come true yet. If Egan's or Vernor Vinge's fantasies ever become reality, things will be very different... far out...
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Predicted (in 1941) the development of atomic weapons, and the order of magnitude difference between conventional and nuclear warfare.
The weapons predicted in the story, however, were dust made from radioactive isotopes and then spread by conventional means to render a city uninhabitable. That part's not science fact yet, but it is one of our biggest fears from terrorists who probably can get their hands on nuclear materials but probably can't construct a working fission bomb.
Don't forget William Gibson. These days we get annoyed when we hear the cliche "cyberspace", but when he first used it to describe the "consensual hallucination of data", a WWW didn't really exist yet.
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
Don't give too much credit to Douglas Adams. Actually Babel fish was already in the Bible.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think he invented/envisioned prozac, zoloft, and a myriad of other government sponsored drugs to escape reality. See: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich and A Scanner Darkly.
As someone else has already pointed out, Asimov did NOT invent the term "robot". He DID, however, coin the term "robotics" to describe the field of study. And, I probably need not tell you, U.S. Robotics (the real communications company purchased by 3COM) is named for U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Men from Asimov's stories.
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
See Friday, 1982. Heinlein's view of the Web wasn't fully-immersive cyberspace; it was just the simple--and brutally addictive--joy of clicking from one subject to another and going wherever you wanted.
The Japanese borrowed arbeit to form their word arubaito, for part time work or labor.
GPL Deconstructed
(I'm thulldud, posting AC because I don't have my
Asimov's Foundation was published in the early 1950's. When I read it 20 years later, the HP-35 was the geek calculator of choice. In Foundation, the mathematician Hari Seldon kept his calculator in a pouch on his belt, and "red symbols glowed out from the gray".
The red symbols had to be a coincidence, because LED technology drove the color of the display. But each HP-35 was shipped with a leather belt pouch -- which became the ultimate geek symbol. It would be easy to believe that someone in HP borrowed the belt pouch idea from Foundation.
Sadly, pocket calculators and computers in general have not approached the power of Seldon's handheld, which could do symbolic mathematics at a level beyond current understanding. But that's what SF is about.
Some folks here have actually attempted to answer the original question, like the guy who suggested the Navy adopted the use of key tactical stations in the same vein as the Enterprise. Others, however, seem to confuse the mere mention of some "futuristic" concept as "having an effect" on the realization of the concept.
I've read Verne, and I find it hard to believe his ideas (futuristic as they were) had any influence on modern nuclear technology. I think Selanit has taken on a formidable task: How does one prove a cause-effect relationship between sci-fi and reality? I've seen little evidence here I would consider "proof" in this regard.
Maybe Selanit would be so kind as to publish a link of his/her work on
The US Army was using needle-free compressed air
vaccinations not later than 1968. I was on the
receiving end.
Fail-safe [imdb.com] came out around the same time, with the same message, portrayed in a much more gripping fashion. In fact if it were not for copyright issues, it might have even beaten it to theaters.
Not to belittle Strangelove of course, I think it's a great movie also, but I think Fail-safe conveys the message more convincingly.
-SablKnight
No sig yet
I have seen a lot of people on here pointing to Hienlien and Arthur C Clarke as well as Azimov. They all have done well with predictions on future technology and such. So to get a little more fun in your study though, you might like to read the more 'near' furture stories that come out.
An interesting one might be Earth by David Brin. There are some others. Just do a search for such books and read over the ones that are about 20 to 10 years old. 80s and 70s... most of the 60s stuff was to heavy into peace love and drugs.
You might also like to look at some of the more fantastic fiction. Like EE Doc Smith... he has laser weapons in his writings. Though he didn't call them that. Light beam guns. 1920s or somewhere in there.
Another writer that did some interesting things was H Beam Piper. The Cosmic computer and other such things.
You get some really interesting ideas out of some of Simak's (sp?) work. City, and the cities in flight books.
Thare are probable a ton more that I can't remember off the top of my head just yet.
Oh... The Postman by David Brin... not really the tech... but the leftover tech after a war that happened in the 'near' future. Forget the movie... that sucked megadonkey...
Anyway...
There you go!
Of course this is self-aggrandizement to some degree, but Niven&Pournelle's Footfall features a military threat-assessment team for alien invasion composed of **VERY** recognizable caricatures of well-known SF writers, including the authors themselves.
What person who has entered the field of AI hasen't been a devout fan of Asimov. His writings on the positronic mind have changed teh way we look at AI Look at the Cyc project Half of the ppl that work there are philosophers.
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
He predicted portable phones (cell phones), and is generally recognized as one of the first sci-fi authors to recognize the great potential in computers.
Word processors have been seen in his works ("The Moon is s Harsh Mistress" and "I Will Fear No Evil" are great examples).
Fission reactors were allready around when he began writing about them, but he took the idea of a "super reactor" and put it in space (I forget the name of that short story).
In terms of real world computer science Heinlein is second only to Aasimov's writings IMHO.
He took some ideas (escalators) and extended them into often copied devices (moving sidewalks "The Roads Will Roll").
I think the powered armor suits in "Starship Troopers" (the novel was so much better than that film) are an outstanding example of science being inspired by fiction.
Well, laugh all you want but read Analog. it's 7 to 20 years ahead of it's time. The possible stuff written becomes reality about on average 12 -14 years from publishing.
Sad thing is that in 1987 to 90 analog was writing alot about cloning. Things are comming true.
my collection stems from 1980. I now fear the laws about cloning.
-onepoint
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Star Trek Tricorders are the inspiration for every handheld computer we have. They have communications and storage capabilities....How long before someone can build a scanner into it?
Fear is the enemy; the one true enemy. {Sun Tzu-The Art of War}
See here
or here
To summarize the articles, the idea of something that could hang in a fixed location above the earth is an old one (early indian mythology). However, it was generally considered impossible, impractical etc. Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short (nonficiton) article in which he asserted that geosynchronous satellites would revolutionize communication. Permitting a link between any two points on the globe. Based upon that article people went out and built such satellites. Now the modern international infrasturctre (long distance telecommunications, broadcast networks, etc.), Governments (Spy Satellites, star wars (if its ever built)), and hikers (GPS) all depend upon the technology.
Strictly speaking its not an example of pure science fiction as Clarke's article appeard in a nonfiction publication. But he was a specialist in Science fiction, and what he did was assert the effect such things would have if they existed not how to make them.
Last weekend at Fry's I saw that they were selling wristwatch FRS radios -- that seemed like a rather cool toy.
Doesn't somebody make a wrist cellphone?
Yes, I think Chester Gould's Dick Tracy was rather lame, and the wrist is kind of a natural homing point for this sort of gewgaw, but this serves as an excellent illustration of how technology can meet, surpass, and leave in the dust the futuristic visions of the past.
It might not be immediately obvious, but it pretty much describes what's happening right now.
Well, not quite. However, I read an article he wrote in the early 1970s that described a world wide web built of hypertext pages.
in this book he talks about having a computer connected to a network where the user can search for anything and find out information about it. in this way he suggests that people can educate themselves in any way the person desires. it's alot like the net, and the net is getting more and more like this.
-- john
The second book in the series, Speaker For The Dead, included an artificial intelligence that existed in the fluctuations produced by the use of "subspace" communications. (The name currently escapes me and I don't have the books handy, but it started with an "a").
They're no comparison for the original Star Trek for all the new technological concepts introduced, but I liked how those things were included as a part of regular, everyday life. Ender's Game is worth a read, regardless of whether you're looking for hints of the future or not.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -Ghandi
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
Isaac Asimov wrote several essays about the influence his stories and ideas had over the modern scientific and industrial thought - including industrial robotics, the Big Bang theory, and what he felt were his own embarassing oversights. They are collected in Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection.
Asimov Credits Capek, by the way ...
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
Thanks for a great response to my question! I've read many of the comments already, and liked a lot of the suggestions.
The reading list is not likely to include Neuromancer. Why? Because I read that one this term in a different course, with the same professor. We've already decided not to allow any overlap on the reading lists between the two courses. We are likely to be reading some early Heinlein, possibly Waldo Inc. Many people have suggested reading Jules Verne, and that is certainly a possibility; I was hoping to do more twentieth century stuff, but we'll certainly consider starting with some older material.
Tonight (or possibly tomorrow night) I will read each and every post which has been submitted (even the -1 posts). I may contact some of you via email for further discussion on some of the more interesting points raised.
Thanks again for all the terrific comments!
A common thread in most recent future fiction is the idea of monolithic governments slowly becoming irrelevent to our lives. They are replaced in importance by communities or tribes that reflect the lifestyle choices of its members. These tribes are sometimes megacorporations which are an extended family to their employees, providing everything they need to live productive lives. Sometimes they are special interest groups such as religions, philosophies, pop culture groups, hacker clans, etc.
For years I've felt like this was slowly becoming true. I think Card's vision of a future Democracy powered by highly sophisticated online discussion groups is the most likely form of government that would rise to manage such tribes.
Take the society described in Sterling's "Distraction" and add the tribal ideas in Stephenson's "Diamond Age" and then the government from Card's "Ender's Game". I think together that is an excellent picture of what the western world will look like 20 years from now. Read Copland's "Microserfs" to see a good current example... or just realize how powerful Slashdot is in organizing (un)productive energy in the young tech community.
Also, I recommend that you seek out authors who genuinely come from scientific backgrounds or clearly take these subjects very seriously. David Brin, Vernor Vinge, Bruce Sterling are brilliant people who spend a lot of time thinking about these ideas.
Others (Gibson) are more interested in the pop culture metaphorical aspects and are in my opinion highly overrated. Gibson did not in any way "invent" virtual reality. Famously he refused to use e-mail for years. Not long ago he wrote for Wired about finally discovering the appeal of the Internet when he began shopping for antique watches on eBay. Whatever.
If you're interested in good idea sci-fi from the last few decades, find the authors who helped build The Well, or were writing stories inspired by the precursors to the Usenet in the 70s.
- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card -- the idea of a global networked community is pervasive.
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick -- there are sociological implications of technology explored seem truer as time grows. (also the basis for the awesome flick Bladerunner)
- Neuromancer by William Gibson -- "oh look, the web (kinda)! - besides, Molly is hot and we have hot chicks now. Its fiction come true.
- Foundation by Isaac Asimov -- the great digital library in the sky
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein -- is this the future of the mars project? (minus slinging rocks at earth)
I'm sure there are several more, but these are the ones that stood out in my mind...Secondly, I believe that your choice of Star Trek's communicator isn't actually a good example.
Specially because there is a much better model of mobile phone from the previous year (1965): Agent 86 and his shoe-phone.
See stories and works by Tsiolkovsky - considered to be the "Father of Rocketry and Astronautics" He has also written several early science fiction stories. Worth reading - beautiful ... These stories contain a lot of stuff related to rocketry/astronautics which are fact now ...
because of a massive write-in campaign from Star Trek fans. Look here for more info.
Though it is often stated that science fiction never anticipated the World Wide Web, Murray Leinster's early-50's short story "A Logic Named Joe" describes a distributed network of audio-video computing devices ("logics") which are used for information, entertainment, household control, etc. -- essentially taking the place of television, radio, and the public library. (Sound familiar?) I know I've seen this story in more than one anthology, but I can't say where off the top of my head. Shouldn't be too hard to find, though, and well worth seeking out.
Just about any book by Robert L. Forward, he is the one that first talked seriously about ion drives and light sails. He also had some interesting ideas about self-building robots/computers for manipulating objects.
Heinlein's Starship Troopers. His view of the modern foot soldier being a technological powerhouse looks better every time I see those techno-warfare specials on the Discovery Channel.
:)
oh yeah. There's also Dr Who and the robotic household pet (K9==Aibo)!
well, thank you for the most offensive thing I've seen today.
"The Turing Option" by Harry Harrison and Marvin Minksy featured a watch which you could hold up to your monitor and download the day's appointments.
A year or two after that book came out, Microsoft and (I think) Timex came out with just such a watch.
Read John Brunner's _Shockwave_Rider_. It's a really good read.
Brunner had this idea in the 70s that, in the future, we would hook lots of computers together, and make a sort of connected network of data-sharing. This web of computers would be able to collect buyer information, and provide a global information age.
The guy invented the internet. Pretty cool. Definitely worth a read. You should read his _Stand_On_Zanzibar_, too. Very good projection of advertising and culture in a connected time.
Isaac Asimov. Any book by him.
And of late, the bigtime great: neuromancer by William Gibson. Launched the official "cyberpunk" generation.
Which has yet to truly materialize except in the luscious nipples of angelina jolie in hollywood's hackers.
Give it 20-30 more years before we enter a neuromancing era.
Long live the foundation!!!!
Now, do written predictions of technology influence its development? My guess is that yes, they do, if for no other reason than that people are more likely to consider a given technology seriously if they've already heard of it in print (even if the print is fiction).
Hell, there are a LOT of people out there who think that the science of the Star Trek universe is already an open book to us, just because they've seen it on TV so much.
There way well be earlier ones, these are just the random ones I've run into in my reading.
The cake is a pie
The mood drugs described in "Do androids dream of electric sheeps are almost realized (Not DOD yet, but soon I guess.)
Dick also described something he called "Homeopages" which are quite close to what we call "Homepages" today. Don't recall exactly which books these are mentioned.
I would have to agree with several of my fellow geeks. Damn near anything Gibson. From coining the term 'Cyberspace', to predicting direct neural computer interfaces(?)... Not to mention spawning an entire culture.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
How about 1984?
Check out Shockwave Rider, by John Brummer. He had some amazing insights into the internet, computer viruses, network appliances, and laser printers, before any of these things were.
Cheers,
Waldo, Inc., Robert Heinlein. It's been mentioned several times that this book mentioned waterbeds and "waldos", remote handling devices, in this book.
Star Trek, with the automatic sliding door with out pressure mats to make contact. (I still think those worked best, you never got hit in the ass with one of those doors.)
Those are only the three I can think of off hand. Hope that helps.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Most of the SF "predictions" here are like that. SF writers taking things discussed by scientists and running with them. Stephanson's books are practically a roadmap of the scitech news articles that were published around the time they were written. For example, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" had a lot to do with parts of both "Snow Crash" and "The Big U".
The cake is a pie
In addition to his 1945 idea about communications satellites, Arthur C. Clarke was probably also the first to describe something like a PDA. Imperial Earth has a quite detailed description of a hand-held device for voice, mail, and video communications, appointments, etc. Where it differs significantly from present-day devices, I suspect the technology is just not there yet. I'm not sure about the publication date but IIRC I read it in the 70's.
Just because he came up with an idea in a book doesn't mean he "invented" anything. The guy who invented the waldoe was the guy charged with manipulating nuclear material, but decided if he did it with his hands, he'd die.
Science fiction writers are not scientists. Some scientists write science fiction.
IRC in the development of the moon lander there was a disagreement amongst the engineers about whether the module should have a slight positive pressure or slight negative pressure (relative to the TINY atmosphere of the moon). Some wanted to prevent 'contaminating' the moon with microbes or dust from earth, while the other camp was afraid of an 'Andromeda Strain'. And again IIRC the positive pressure camp won. This was partly b/c of social pressure to avoid events similar to those in Chrighton's book. This is a clear case of the social implications of SF on technology.
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
Kip became so intrigued with the idea of a wormhole that he began working out the mathematics of how to open and traverse a wormhole. Eventually, he discovered mathematics describing how to build a time machine out of a wormhole. When he published these findings, it touched off a round of scientific investigation on the possibility of creating a wormhole and the mechanics of a real time machine.
The entire story is written up at the end of Thorne's book Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy.
Vinge's depictions of hacker culture were far more accurate, though.
The cake is a pie
I can't believe no one brought up HG Wells yet, so I'll make an esoteric reference.
In "The New Accelerator", a short story, Wells proposes an elixer that speeds up metabolism to the point where people see the world around them slow to a crawl (bees' wings flapping, pitch of marching band slowing down, etc.)
See the parallels to modern drugs like crystal which didn't exist then.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
One could ask the inverse question: what technology was most unpredicted by scifi writers? The I would vote for the personal computer. Until the early 1970s, computers seemed to be going the direction of becoming larger and more central. We had stories about wayward supercomputers like the Forbin Project, 2001 HAL, and the story that spawned the Terminator movies ("I have no mouth and I must scream!") The idea that everyone would own a computer, or hundred or more hidden in cars and appliances, seemed outlandish when they cost a hundred years' salary or more. And whole new segments of human culture- computer stores, software writing companies, games, geekdom, etc.
If anyone came close to predicting this, it may have been Asimov. I recall a short story (in Nine Tomorrows?) about a society entirely dependent on PDA devices. When a savant comes along who can do arithmetic in his head, then that society goes into chaos.
Another close Asimov prediction are his robot plantations where armies of robots do all kinds of labor. In some sense the all of embedded CPUs are like this army.
I'll wait until I can get a calculator implanted into my brain.
You're right, it's Thomas Disch. Still fairly recent: 1998. Amazon has it here.
Orson Scott Card in Ender's Game describes (in 1977) a very realistic laptop computer/PDA with a touchscreen and wireless network. Ender enjoys instant messaging and email with his friends, and plays a 3D-animated RPG similar to EverQuest on the machine.
This book was genius. Before the internet existed, he conceptualized a version strikingly similar to what we have today. "Newsnets" are exactly like USENET is. Email. Instant Messaging. Anonymous monikers divorced from your real name.
The tablet-computer "desks" in the book had a great deal of functionality we take for granted today, and given that the book was written FAR before these technologies became popular, I think Orson Scott Card was really a visionary.
There is a direct and long tradition of back-and-forth feedback between Martian science fiction and fact : Mars has long held the popular imagination, since Schiaprelli's phrase "canali" was mistranslated as "channels" and led to the classic H.G. Wells novel (and later radio broadcast) War of the Worlds.
The science fiction tradition continued from Edgar Rice Borroughs' pulp science fiction Martian novels to Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles to Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars novels. This continuous thread of Martian fiction, which feeds upon the most recent science information, and in turn inspires future generations of scientists to pick up the investigation. For instance, Carl Sagan noted his fascination with the Borroughs novels as a youth with the Borroughs novels. Later he became a project scientist at JPL working on the Viking missions, whose data were used extensively in Robinson's novels.
With the recent discoveries suggesting the presence of liquid water on the Martian surface in the past, as well as the possibility of life on Mars, this theme is more relevant today than ever. Robinson's novels will likely fuel the imagination of the next generation of astronomers and astronauts...
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
the Asimov story about "graphitics"
John Brunner coined the phrase "worm" long before there was an "internet" and "internet worms".
I believe he also foretold of the "facsimile" machine to transmit paper documents over the phone in the mid 50s to early 60s.
Star Trek and 2001 A Space Odyssey were developed at the same time- the mid sixties, a couple years before the moon landing. Star Trek was clearly fictional, yet fun entertainment. However, 2001 technology was so believable, with its references to corporations like Pan Am and ATT that it made us taste space and desire it. It made many of believe that could really happen in the new millennium (except for the alien stuff).
Ray Bradybury's short story, "The Veldt," is about parents who worry that their children are spending too much time in a holodeck-style entertainment room. (OK, the holodeck is still science fiction, but Bradbury aptly defines the anti-videogames suburban hysteria that crops up in the media from time to time.)
His 1953 novel _Fahrenheit 451_ features interactive talk shows and soap operas, projected on wall-sized TV screens. It describe the protagonist's wife obsessing about upgrading her equipment (buying an attachment that will make it look like characters in the TV shows are speaking her name, thus including her in the experience). He also predicted O.J.-style helocopter chases. From a Salon interview with Bradbury:
The day after news helicopters pursued O.J. Simpson fleeing in a Ford Bronco, a New York Times columnist noted that the chase was the "real-life fulfillment" of "Fahrenheit 451."
I'm saving the best for last...
E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" describes a future civilization in which all but the lowest classes associate with each other chiefly via long-distance communications devices, rather than in person. In this passage, a woman has just spent three minutes disconnected from the network in order to speak privately to her son. She logs back on (so to speak), and is assaulted by a flood of incoming messages.
To most of these questions she replied with irritation - a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries through press of engagements. That she had no ideas of her own but had just been told one-that four stars and three in the middle were like a man: she doubted there was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music.
The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned; neither Vashti nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous account of music in the pre Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and primæval as were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she yet felt (she said) that study of them might repay the musicians of today: they had freshness; they had, above all, ideas. Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received, and at its conclusion she and many of her audience listened to a lecture on the sea; there were ideas to be got from the sea; the speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed.
Bear in mind, Forster was writing in 1909! Here's one online copy of the text:
http://brighton.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~prajlich/forster.h
Literacy Weblog http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog
Written in 1946, the story referenced in this article was very similar to modern conceptions of the Internet
Orson Scott Card wrote about posting on the 'nets' way back in 77. I think it's the earliest, and most amazing, reference to our current usage of forums on the internet.
I recall hearing that several "futuristic" themes used in Fritz Lang's 1927 movie Metropolis (co-released with the book by Thea von Harbou) have since come true. The main item that I recall from the movie is video phones.
-mrv
Despite your post-WWI and hard-tech parameters, I'd advise looking at Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World.' The social engineering themes in the novel tend to get the most attention, but he also had some early visions of biotech -- bottle babies, pre-'birth' physical manipulation of embryos for intelligence, character and physical attributes -- and the widespread use of approved mood-altering drugs. It's a short line of descent from those ideas to birth technologies now in use -- and from Soma to Prozac. [TM]
BNW was also much closer than Orwell's 1984 at predicting the future, IMO. Like the best of Gibson's and John Brunner's dystopic novels, BNW has both the social and technical threads needed to weave the believable fabric of a future world.
-Patrick
"We haven't any use for old things here." - Aldous Huxley, ibid.
very wet of you . . . as in blanket.
The reason Scientology still exists today is because they prey on the poor, downtrodden, and the very weak minded(eg. John Travolta, listen to him talk sometime, he's a real dumbfuck).
The day of the Sept. 11 attacks they got a "help line" broadcasted on television on a couple stations by duping the stations into thinking they were a non-profit charity. When the stations found out it was Scientology they were pulled.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Does anyone know who first used the term in the Reagan administration? It was certainly inspired by the first two Star Wars movies (1977 & 1980).
Edward Teller (who has a new autobiography) and Ronald Reagan touted it in the 1980s, and every president thereafter to some degree. The proximate cause was the first working X-ray laser by Peter Hagelstein in the last 1979s. It has become one of the most expensive, long-run military projects, with dubious results.
it approached the topic in a different fashion. It had too much serousness for me. I think Kubrick came out w/a far better flick.
So apparently he went and had somebody invent automatic pocket doors that worked.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I think there is some confusion by the guy seeking the books or stories with first references to ideas of invention.
Just because they thought of the idea first, doesn't mean that the scientists or engineers who implemented that idea, ever read or were influenced by the writer.
I think what the student is attempting to research is based on faulty logic.
boo. you're either misreading Borges or you're so damn genius that obscure connections are too below you to describe to the rest of us. I'm guessing the former.
... Please elaborate.
I can see a case being made for GPS units -- but MapQuest???
fxxx.
It doesn't fit perfectly within your course description, as all three are recently published, but their premise of elementary particles as being original sin is facinating. And they have fantastic communications and other tools that I would love to see develop in the future -- the althiometer, the lodestone reasonator....
These books are also chock full of complex allusions and interesting nuances English majors live for -- think of them as Narnia stories for the modern humanist. Totally readable as stories, but more complex should the reader care to dig in more deeply.
Liza
These opinions are my own. My employer is not aware of them, does not endorse them, and is not responsible for them.
It is widely acknowledged that Jonathan Swift predicted the existance of the two Mars satellites: Phobos and Deimos. Although the two moons were not discovered until 1877, Jonathan Swift had written in 1720 (in Gulliver's Travels, chapter 3) that the inhabitants of Laputa had made important astronomical observations of 10 000 fixed stars and of the two satellites of Mars, one orbiting with a period 10 hours and the other with a period of 21 hours. This is pretty spooky for a prediction!
Also, Sir Arthur Clarke is considered the inventor of the geostationary satellites.
Actually, Science Fiction may have negative impact on scientific progress. Doing real science is almost always hard meticulous work. You set up a hypothesis, you then spend a lot of time gathering data to support your hypothesis.
'Science Fiction' teaches kids that it's all flashy fun, sort of a space western.
An analogy would be the way modern computers and console games discourage kids from getting into programming. What's the use in a 7 year old firing up a Basic interpreter (or a C compiler) when there is no chance in hell that he'll do anything with it nearly as exciting as he can do by plugging a disc into his console?
You right.
The sci-fi fans are the fat Cheeto munching dorks who read too much SF and comix and flunk out of Geometry in eighth grade. The kids with motivation are taking math and science courses.
It's much the same with hacking code. Only the burnouts spend their summer in mom's basement pounding away at code. The fun kids are out discovering girls, or skateboards, or both.
The 'dreamers' reading all the SF are the future pot smokers. The janitors, the sysadmins and computer operators. The telephone sanitizers.
There is a common misunderstanding of the relationship between science and technology that your title so nicely displays. This story is about science fiction affecting technology, but you titled it "Science Fiction into Scientific Fact." This is not what the story is about.
:) but I don't want to find technology in the science section!
Technology is not science. Technology is the application of science. Strangely enough, the New York Times seems to be one of the only places that gets this right by publishing the Science Times on Tuesdays and Circuits on Thursdays.
I'm not trying to be a troll (although I forsee a -1 troll in my future
Writing in the Princess of Mars series he describes flying craft equipped with a directional needle that can be set to point to a desired destination -- then it's just follow the needle, guys. Any pilot will recognize this as a description of the NDB which has saved thousands of planes and lives over the decades. This is the same Burroughs who invented Tarzan, writing in the early part of last century. The NDB came into wide-spread use in the 40's and 50's of the same century. Notes: NDB confusingly stands for Non-Directional Beacon which refers to the radio station it gets tuned to. This also differentiates it from the VOR which gives a different sort of indication -- to make sense out of that one, you have to know were the radio beacon is located.
Here, here! Finally, a logical voice in this cloud of idiocy!
There are three authors I would find to be amazingly good at the development of technology, and I'm sure that everyone else here would have three *other* choices. But these are mine, and I like them :)
1) William Gibson. Neuromancer. Although he really didn't (and apparently still doesn't) know much at all about computers, he has a crystalline method of prose that stands out. His descriptions of the technology are vivid, but in a protagonist-situation sense. He doesn't describe the computers in detail, but as tools being used in a societal environment. Awesome.
2) David Drake. Hammer's Slammers books. Some of the best military science fiction around. David Drake was a commander I believe in the only tank regiment in Vietnam, and writes from some experience. His descriptions of where military hardware can go, and more importantly, how it can be used, anregreat. You get drawn right in to the "of course this is what warfare will/can look like".
3) Best for last, but probably too much for a course. Peter F. Hamilton. The Night's Dawn trilogy. Actually 6 books in the US. This set has it all - Neurotech, biotech, genetic engineering, high-tech. And it pretty much all seems like it really could happen. The first book takes a while to get into, but then you can't put them down. The universe, and the technology that makes it all work, are described in a very cool seamless way, and it all seems to make sense. A very black/white choice here. Some people loved the books, others can't stand them. But then, that makes it interesting, doesn't it ?
94TT
The Apollo LEM was originally designed with spikes on the tips of the landing legs. In response to Arthur C. Clarke's novel "A Fall of Moondust" those spikes were (frantically, at the last minute) redesigned to become the familiar mushroom-like pads.
You must independently verify this if you wish to follow the scientific method. Don't worry, it's not hard to do.
Therefore, a novel (ACC's aFoM) has had an effect on a scientific development (the creation of a viable moon lander), therefore, your statement (Novels have no effect upon scientific development) is incorrect.
Another way to disprove your premise is to call NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. JPL has a friendly public relations group who will probably be quite willing to share with you the details of their collaborations with science fiction authors. I believe Niven, Clarke, and Pournelle have all been guests of JPL at times.
Here's a clip from a NASA site for you:
Read _Expanded Universe_, pages 516 - 517. Heinlein says the first guy to build a waterbed sent him one, free, courtesy of the "Share Water Bed Company." Seems the builder of the first waterbed knew exactly where the invention came from.... Drew
Oh, I dunno. Tom Clancy predicted using a hijacked plane loaded with fuel as a bomb years before it was put into production. That's got to be worth something.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I have read several comments extolling neuromancer and snow crash. While I highly enjoyed those novels, and in the case of neuromancer, the old C-64 game, I think that the most prophetic work on the sociological impact of modern networking is from John Brunner. His novel Shockwave Rider far predates Neuromancer, yet is seldom recognized.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
I've got an original one:
'Survivor' is nothing more than Niven/Pournelle's Dream Park series...
wooo-haa
I know a little sig that's just ten words long
Imm not sure his PhD was honorary. Several biographies state that he was awarded a PhD in 1948 from Columbia University.
Additionally, he was a professor of Biochemistry at Boston University - it's unlikely that he was given a research position for his fund-raising abilities.
...specifically, the Second Law. Email me, kjvt@hotmail.com, if you want credit. (What's a little more spam?)
The Physics of Star Trek, by Lawrence Krauss, a Physics professor at CWRU.
Cheers,
J.J.
I thought that science fiction was about predicting the future, sci-fi usually has gadgets, the best work is originall work , volla, original gadgets...!!! hehe!!!
--
Burt "Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"
References?
The man who gave us Robotics, Androids, and the three immutable Laws of Robotics.
Amusing stuff, really, but he did coin the term Robot, if I recall correctly.
There are a couple of other greats, such as Buckminster Fuller, but I guess he isn't really sci-fi. He gave us shopping mall doors (the automatic kind), and ATM machines.
According to a friend attached to NASA, the countdown from 10 is attributed to Flash Gordon.
And, lest we forget, Philip K Dick, author of such things as "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (done in the movie Bladerunner).
Also, Arthur C. Clarke invented the HAL9000, which gave us a computer that was capable of handling a space mission, while most computers were still just figuring out how to add up large number sets. Many current scientific endeavours are named after HAL.
Just a few more bits.
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
E. M. Forrester's (rather bitter) short story "The Machine Stops" has clear descriptions of a device later called "television." The story was written in 1909.
http://www.plexus.org/forster/
Okay!
-Dylan
Let's not forget his shoe answering machine, in "The Nude Bomb". That one was of the funniest little bits I recall from my childhood.
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
In "Foundation" Asimov describes the rise of religious power as scientific knowledge is lost, and the use of religion to control
ignorant populations. I see a striking parallel with Afghanistan and other religious extremist societies, regardless of nationality or
religious denomination. But Asimov failed to predict the change in the
role of women in modern society, limiting himself to an all-male cast
better suited to a Raymond Chandler novel. So, nobody's perfect.
To what extent Asimov's views on religion influenced the Taliban in
outlawing T.V. is difficult to say. Even though the Taliban leadership
may not have read Foundation, the series has had an undeniable
influence on so many people that the second order effects could be
considerable. Could it just be prediction, without any influence on
that which it predicts, or has quantum mechanics raised its hand? We
ought to consider a world in which increasing numbers of people turn
their back on technology and resort to faith.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
Try reading just about everything by Arthur C Clarke. A lot of it has not come true (yet), but almost all of it is in the works by NASA, the US government, and other governments worldwide.
You get some really interesting ideas out of some of Simak's (sp?) work. City, and the cities in flight books.
Are you sure you're not talking about James Blish?
Amazon link
Or are we still boycotting them over the one click thing?
I have a friend I love dearly, but who is not too bright... One day, he was telling me all about this great book he was reading called Neuromancer. I perked up instantly, thinking that maybe he'd decided to read something influencial (or at least a non-gaming book) for once. He goes on and one about all the cool stuff in it, and how much it's influenced everything... like Shadowrun and Cyberpunk. To him, it's fiction influencing gaming. I tried to explain to him that it influenced a good deal more than some role-playing games, but no, in his world, that's all that matters.
For the purpose of the research, oh esteemed article poster, you might want to consider a thesis more along the lines of what has already been suggested: How SF writers' works compare with what actually occured following the advent of a certain technology. Or, alternately, explore not the influence of SF in science, but in culture. That seems like it might be more fruitful, given all the posts about robots and waterbeds and things.
And to all those out there who think SF never inspires engineers or other people... I can vouch that it does. If I wasn't so terrible at engineering, I would seriously consider a bio-engineering career for the express purpose of putting mirrored insets over my eyes that give me readouts and to install a simstim rig in my head. :) As it is a lot of the things I'd like to make are inspired by something I've read. I've also known a lot of people who decide that something in Star Trek or what have you looks really, really cool, and sit around trying to build it. Most of the time it doesn't work, but sometimes, they end up with some very intersting toys! The point is, you'll never know someone's influences unless you ask them. If you are going to continue with your original project, you might want to try actually contacting inventors of certain technologies or reading old notes to see what did influence them. And don't forget, it's perfectly acceptable to write a thesis where the research disproves your original assumption, as long as you can give conclusive proof either way.
And one final note... I'm curious if anyone knows this... Which came first? Gibson's Idoru and Rei Toei or the actual Japanese pop idol construct/software program Kyoko Date? The publishing date on Idoru is 1996, and I'm fairly certain Kyoko Date wasn't around until after that - but I can't find a date for Date anywhere :)
Congratulate me on my first Slashdot post ever ^_^ I'm now one of you... I feel dirty ;p
"Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to machines; it's more sanitary." - Robert Heinlein
My award for the winner in that category is... Donald Duck.
In 1964 the freighter Al-Kuwait sunk to the floor of the Persian Gulf. Because the Persian Gulf is Kuwait's main water supply and because the freighter had 6,000 rotting sheep carcasses aboard this constituted a big problem. They had to get that freighter raised quickly.
Engineer Karl Kroyer remembered reading a Donald Duck comic in which the quacky heroes raised a sunken boat by stuffing it full of ping pong balls. He thought was a pretty nifty idea, so he arranged to stuff the freighter with 27 million polystyrene bubbles... not quite ping pong balls but close enough. It worked like a charm: the freighter rose to the surface.
Donald Duck: King of Science Fiction Makes Reality
E.g., if you were writing a story in 1870, descrbing how everyone would be driving around in cars in the future is amusing, but not important. How the automobile will change society by giving people a much greater range of movement is what is important.
I'd say the biggest influence of SF on future technology has been inspirational. A lot of people involved in the space program in the 60's and 70's got hooked by reading SF, especially Heinlein's works, for example.
A guy named Elf Sternberg wrote a bunch of stories, called the "Journal Entries". I really think his vision of the future is useful. When we have true AI, I suspect that we will use it in our society in similar ways to how his characters use AI, for example.
:-P I did find an archive with some at least of the stories:
His stories are primarily sex stories, with some science fiction in the background. However, I found most of them more interesting for the SF than for the sex.
In these stories, AI computer people are valued members of society. There is an etiquette of not asking computers to do things you could easily do yourself, but it isn't rude to ask computers to remind you of appointments and such. Some of the tech is interesting, such as the powered armor made of "StarkCloth"; I have recently read that something like StarkCloth might be possible within a few years, but I doubt Elf knew that when he made it up. Also, some of the descriptions of what it is like to be immortal through advanced medical technology, and what happens if only some people have it and others don't, are worth reading. And for that matter, what it's like living in a society where there are "stepping disks" (straight out of Larry Niven) everywhere; people walk everywhere, and don't use vehicles other than just for fun.
The broad outline of the story arc is that an entity called Fawn appeared one day to a guy named Ken Shardik; she told Shardik that she had nearly unlimited powers, and she was willing to do things for him. He chose to create a ringworld (he named it "Pendor") and populate it with life. Fawn created a pocket universe, and the ringworld Pendor spent several billion years evolving creatures. Using the time-travel abilities of Fawn, they went back to the time of Rome and rescued a being called Oenone, who the Romans considered a goddess. Oenone used her powers to help along the evolution of life on Pendor. Once all was ready, Shardik used equipment provided by Fawn to produce intelligent people of various races: human, centaur, cat-human, wolf-human, skunk-human, etc. Finally, after a few decades, the ringworld's pocket universe collapsed and the ringworld and its star appeared in the same universe as Earth, and only a few light-years away. Fawn then left, and the stories after that don't have any Fawn deus-ex-machina, but are more straight SF.
Because these are mostly sex stories, every story has explicit sexual activity: straight, gay, S&M, etc. etc. If you don't like such things, stay away. My personal favorite stories, as stories and as SF, are the two "Travellogue" series. You might want to start with those if you think you are not sure you want to read these.
The stories appear sporadically on USENET, but you can read them from Elf's web site:
http://www.halcyon.com/elf/journals
Naturally this page is down right now!
http://at.nifty.org/nifty/journal-entries/
Although they haven't been created yet, there was a story here a couple years ago about a "transporter" beam that IBM had built. It wasn't the real deal, but it was based on a similar idea, but it only did a single particle. As I recall, it used entangled pairs to accomplish its task and the original had to be destroyed as part of the process.
I wish I still had a link to the site. It was really cool stuff.
There's also been a great deal of science fiction leaking into stuff like the SETI programs. I think the people in SETI research picked up some good ideas about what kinds of things to look for. Again, don't have any links.
It is astonishing and frightening to watch how fast things like Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's "Brave New World" are coming true. The USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, among other things (like an utterly submissive Congress) are making this happen at a record pace. Let's hope that promoters of Open Source aren't dubbed "terrorists" and tried in secret court -- which is now possible under the latest residential order...
-- haaz.
i gather from the topic of your proposed work that what you're looking for doesn't necessarily have to be written works of science fiction. hence, i propose that emphasis be made on the more popular mediums of stimulus at present - for instance, the good old tube. i believe recent students of science have been more motivated from movies such as 'space odyssey 2001' than the actual book. and it's often sad that the motivational importance of theatrical work such as 'virtuosity', 'hackers' (yes, even a pitiful teen-gala such as that makes it's point), 'star wars', 'dune', and even 'space balls' (humor often carries weight) are downplayed by the nonchalance of movie critics. movies aside, what about the importance of music? everytime i listen to joe satriani's 'surfing with the alien' i miss the plane of reality and my mind goes into hyperdrive. not to mention anaema and their masterpieces such as 'H'. excellent for coding! (isn't computer science part of the bigger whole that is science?) games! all sorts of games play crucial roles in molding or motivating a young (or even a mature and 'scientific') mind. the rail guns, the plasma rifles, the translocators and what-nots. how about simulation of real space-flight? the world has changed. let's not think of literature as the main motivational force anymore. this 'brave new world' (PBU iron maiden) has a lot more to offer.
Doggone, you are correct. Guess I'm getting senile.
10,000 leagues under the sea. == Modern submarining
According to the manufacturer's site:
They have an FAQ, and the tech is covered by US Patent #5,675,103.I play Nerd-Folk!
In "Stranger in a Strange Land," in the early section where the protagonist is being held prisoner in the hospital, Heinlein describes a woman recovering in some special kind of bed, I believe designed to reduce stress on the bodies of recovering patients lying in bed for long periods of time. I've read somewhere that this was the direct origin of the concept of the waterbed. Two minutes of research later, I say this: check the link in this post. More Google searching for "heinlein waterbed" suggests that people were actually denied patents by the USPTO for waterbeds because Heinlein had put the idea in the public domain first.
Well, for starters there's neuromancer by William Gibson, where he describes the Net as 'a concensual hallucination'. Only difference is, you can jack in directly to the net. Interesting social development too, as well as multinational corps, law enforcement, etc. that deal with advancing computer/AI technology.
In a similar vien, you can check out the Cyberpunk 2020 role-playing game books. Aside from cybernetic implants (and lots of em) there are also items/ides involving biological manipulation/modification (natural gills, tails, claws, etc.), Full cybernetic body replacement where the brain and a few organs are transplanted into a mechanical body, as well as small scale mecha/exoskeltal suits.
Starship troopers makes some mention of power armor, but warhammer 40k may be a better source...Starship Troopers had a more sociologic focus.
Hell, that's all I can think of off the top of my head...good luck!
when all is said and done, all a man has left are his blades and his honor.
When I started reading this thread I was excited to see what other pieces of literature were deemed influential on technology. Damned if most poeple didn't get off subject by confusing "first wrote about" with "influenced" Just because John McObsurity first published a book 200 years ago about the possiblity of a submarine wouldn't detract from the fact the Joules Verne's book was the influencial work, because of popularity.
To sum up:
Joules Verne
Arthur C. Clark
William Gibson
others??
All very very influencial in contributing to technological advancement.
Try
"The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of" by
Thomas M. Disch, It's a good read and really covers almost the entire spectrum of Sci-Fi and most of the important authors/novels etc. Well referenced and labeled. Maybe a good companion book for the course to go along with the regular readings.
...I guess we should just take it at face value.
It seems obvious to me that his project is actually "find a bunch of scifi predictions that came true" and he's wrapped his fake assignment around that in a simple ploy that would only fool an idiot. Fortunately for him, that's all he needed.
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Just Like to make a point. Babble was not a term coined by Douglus Adams. Babble is actaully reference from the Bible as in the Tower of Babble. Don't ask me the actual biblical reference as I do not know it. G
George Orwell's 1984 would be a great one to read. It contains the first reference to credit cards, as well as Big Brother, which became a buzzword with anti-government protestors and hackers alike.
This story (and the 1936 movie) are amazing in the number of devices that are described well before their time.
This includes global war, helecopters, space craft, and a lot of other intresting things.
Are you paranoid if you know that they just want to know everything you say and do?
There was a birth notice for her in the Sydney Morning Herald on the appropriate day in 1980, one of the doctors thanked for helping with her delivery was ``Asimov.''
Susan Calvin is a character from Asimov's ``Robots'' series who is a whiz-bang robot, uh, psychologist.
Asimov spent much more time being loud and assertive than inventing stuff like Heinlen and Clarke did, and he missed some very significant points of chemistry and physics in his non-fiction-ish works like ``The Left Hand of the Electron.'' He did, however, write a *lot* of words!
The invention that I'm waiting to see implemented is skyhooks AKA inside-out orbiting bridges, as in ``The Fountains of Paradise.''
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A. C. Clarke has had many interesting ideas. His book, "July 20, 2019" contains many interesting theories aboutwhat might be happening on that date in the future. In "Childhood's End", Clarke mentions the use of a "facsimile machine" that the Overlords use to communicate wih the aliens. During his time spent as an officer in the Royal Air Force, he was in charge of the first radar talk-down equipment experiments. The procedure, known as "Ground Controlled Approach," was the subject of A. C. C.'s nonfiction book "Glide Path." There are many other instances of "prediction" in Clarke's 100+ books. The Rama series of books is a great read, I highly recommend them. Hope this helps. Oh, yeah, I believe that in "2001," he described a deceleration technique using a planet's atmosphere that has actually been used in a few space missions. Any extra info on this (or correction) would be great.
ubi dubium ibi libertas.
I believe Mary Shelly's doctor was the first to perform transplant operations. Am I wrong?
To go further back, Vulcan, the roman god of metalurgy, had a bevvy of solid gold slaves long before RUR was ever written.
I am a Karma Library.
Even though PDAs were already around when Niven and Pournelle wrote this book they described their use in a wireless network to take attendance in meetings and to conduct them. At the time when the book was written PDAs were just glorified address books.
"Looking Backward: 2000-1887" is a classic predictive SF novel. It is a Rip Van Winkle type story where a man in the 1800's sleeps in his basement and wakes in the year 2000. There are more reference to existing modern technologies here than all of the other works mentioned so far put together.
"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific." -- Jane Wagner
The TV series "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." (pre Star Trek) used transceivers in both cigarette case and pen and pen form factors.
The old Dick Tracy newspaper cartoon featured a two-way wrist radio (succeeded in later years by the two-way wrist TV).
Gene Spafford's Rob Morris FAQ
It was alleged by unscrupulous journalists that Mr. Clarke molested or raped boys. They were forced to rescind their allegations when it was found they had no evidence. If anyone does in fact have evidence, ie. pictures, affidavits, a confession from Mr. Clarke, I would challenge them to come forward with it. Until such a time, I will consider you charlatans and trolls of the lowest order. This should make you feel very special.
ubi dubium ibi libertas.
The web site www.Everything2.com seems just like how Douglas Adams described the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: full of information about everything, but often silly and informal.
Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner was published in (I beleive) 1978. Anticipated the worldwide information network and many other technologies.
Door Into Summer, by Heinlein, would be a good source - the main character is an inventor who founds a company that markets robotic household devices. I'm sure some of them have been developed.
Thanks for catching it.
-- MarkusQ
A definite must-read for someone of your professed interests is
Future Perfect : American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century by Howard Bruce Franklin
It's sort of a history of the genre with a great selection of the early, influential works that really inspired the whole SF thing. Great commentary too.
Your University library should have it.
If they don't... transfer.
Just my $0.02.
Try "Waldo and Magic inc" by Henlin
The main character used "Mechanical, remote hands" to manipulate large things at a distance.... Hence the name for "Waldos" used in industry today.
The book was first published in 1940 or so.
These are not sci-fi, but they should provide great insight for your subject area: Open Sky, by Paul Virilio The Illusion of the End, by Jean Baudrillard Digital Delirium, by Arthur and Marilousi Kroker
Just wondering if Neal Stephenson coined the term "avatar" to refer to a person's representation in virtual reality. I note when browsing around www.activeworlds.com that a lot of the virtual reality technology and interface used on the site (which is probably the largest currently in existence) has been lifted directly out of his books. Note that they even have a "metaverse" world based quite directly on his book.
The World of Science Fiction, by (science fiction author) Lester Del Rey. It gets a little dry in places, but does a good job in defining and detailing the early years of science fiction. Rey divides the subject into 5 eras spanning from 1926 to the mid-seventies. I read this book years and years ago, but if I recall correctly there are countless examples of the subject at hand.
For some reason I thought Friday was from the 50's or 60's. If it was 1984 he was doing a good job, but not visionary on the Internet.
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...But I was watching the Cartoon Network late at night (yes, I am that much of a loser), and they just happened to be showing some ancient cartoon (created around the 50s, perhaps). The cartoon was one of those cheesy "in the future, you'll be able to..." dealies. In there, they mocked the idea of a small stove (which basically looks like an empty box with dials on the front) that magically cooks any kind of food in minutes. That magic stove, which the cartoon uses to demonstrate how ridiculous all these future predictions are, looks and functions exactly like the modern microwave oven.
>|<*:=
A more interesting topic, IMHO, would be a summary of some major, society-altering technologies that have completely blindsided the science fiction writers. For example, someone once said (*) "The future turned out completely differently from how we envisioned it. You can't have a conversation with a computer, but you can fit it in your pocket". It's true - when "electronic brains" first became known to the popular culture, most sci-fi authors were imagining computers of the future in the same form factor, but possessing superhuman intelligence (f.ex., see the original Star Trek). The reality turned out to be quite different - small, cheap and portable computers (or microcontrollers) have revolutionized our society in a way that very few people were even able to imagine. I am sure there are more examples like that...
(*) Sorry, I cannot remember the source... Does anyone recall the exact quote and the author ?
>|<*:=
just a few:
automotive air bags (sorta) in "Safe at Any Speed" (1967)
today's thriving organ transplant market fueled by Chinese prison "donors" and poor people selling kidneys was fortold in "The Jigsaw Man" (also 1967 for Harlan Ellison's "Dangerous Visions" anthology)
The obsolescence of that same organ transplant market by the ability to produce vat-greown organs (stem cell research's future?) is dealt with pretty well in his "Known Space" series (circa 1970's)
And today's robotic surgeons are the clear beginnings of his "autodocs".
John Brunner's 1975 novel "The Shockwave Rider" predicts a network of linked computers available from any point which talented users can use to change identities etc by sending programs to do their bidding ... even cleaning up their old identities with "tapeworms" ... from which we now get the term "worm".
Remarkably prescient vision. Though not in a vacuum of course.
Bitter and proud of it.
Getting onto details I am not so sure of, I don't recall that he ever tried to patent the idea, and seem to recall that he said later that he didn't expect the technology to make it possible soon enough for a patent to be worthwhile. The equipment he was familiar with of course required high power and continuous maintenance, meaning that manned stations and frequent flights to bring up spare valves/vacuum tubes would be needed. Like three ISS, but in geostationary orbit instead of LEO. The shuttle wouldn't quite make it up there.
Stanislaw Lem has predicted many computer technologies in his books (The Cyberiad, other books whose English names I do not know). For example, he predicted computer networks, EMP weapons, "smart dust" and nanotech in general, genetic algorithms, etc. He also predicted most of the controversy that surrounds computers to this day (especially AI), and their effect on society.
>|<*:=
Or the positively ancient Dick Tracy wrist phone/TV.
Bitter and proud of it.
Was published in the late eighties. It sort of took off where the holodeck left off in terms of how S&M sexuality would get played out in virtual reality. It hasn't been much of an influence on technology yet, but it definitely probled issues about extremely violent and sexually explicit immersive entertainment as a form of therapy and how that might influence society.
I haven't read anything like it since. I forgot the name of the publisher. My own English professor at SDSU, Larry McCaffery recommended it to me at the time.
"The Terminal Man" (1972) -- implanted electronic circuits (I believe this preceded the term "microprocessors") used to control/manage disorders in the brain. Compare this to recent news stories about electronic cerebral implants being used to manage a variety of brain ailments.
As a pop sci-fi reader, I call novels like "Neuromancer" and "Snow Crash" Near-Future-Fi - like Max Headroom's "20 minutes into the future..." - stories that blend the present with technological and social visions of the future that're rapidly morphing into reality, more or less, as time goes by.
"London Fields", by kinda literary Brit author, Martin Amis, falls clearly into the Near-Future-Fi category. It's not classified as science fiction, and it doesn't really point to technological innovation. It's more of an extrapolation of the effects of the digitally-networked, media-blitzed world we're living in now. Eerily near-normal...
Frontline conflict journalism is dead - journalists are the first targets in regional wars; living war correspondents are more often than not multiple amputees.
The news is the weather. With no war to report on, but some sort of bizarre ecological evolution going on, extreme weather is front page violence. Weather leads the news.
With general weirdness the order of the day, one tabloid has found a new niche - print Prozac - by covering only the cheeriest of good news.
Turning the corner of a city block into glaring sunlight, one may be startled by the unsettling postion of the sun - was it always at that angle?
And still, the must mundane, "normal" things are carry on. Darts, as in, the popular British pub game, are as popular as bowling is on American TV. Championship darts is just another path to fame and fortune in a modern electronic world...
It's been a while since I've read "London Fields", and maybe my memory is putting more emphasis on the parts that struck me. And it's definitely a bit of a read, especially compared to the easy film treatment style of a lot of pop sci-fi.
But it's definitely worth a look.
Of course EVERYTHING that has ever happened was predicted in the writings of either Nostradamus or [INSERT YOUR FAVORITE RELIGIOUS TEXT HERE]. :-) :-)
[Insert pithy quote here]
In his novel "The Door into Summer", Heinlein describes an automatic drawing machine that can be used to automate a lot of the boring tasks associated with mechanical drawing. It is a draftman's dream.
It turns out that a modern parametric CAD (Computer Assisted Design) software has a lot of the functions dreamed up by Heinlein. As for the form, RAH envisioned circuits within the body of a drawing table and some actuators for printing on paper, much like a full size blueprint plotter, instead of our modern computer with a totally non-paper work space.
However, this idea was there. So RAH gets credit for that one too.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
David Kyle, an **early** fan (contemporary and friend of Asimov, Clarke, Piper, Leiber, ...) and founder of a small but influential early SF publishing house (Gnome Press), wrote some beautiful coffee-table books just chock full of details and gorgeous graphics. Out of print now, but if you're lucky enough to find his "A Pictorial History of Science Fiction" you will **not** be disappointed. You'll have to dig for details pertinent to your project, but you should find this to be joyous work!
... and what he said (and especially didn't say) when the Feds came to talk to him about it.
... particularly their interest in science and technology. You may come across some columns discussing the relationship between the fiction in the magazine and the discoveries of the day. The MIT SF Club has quite a collection of early magazines. IIRC, so does the Michigan State University library. I'm sure there are others. There are also some histories of fandom (the original geek culture). You might find some details in them.
Many of the fans and authors consciously saw themselves as ushers of a new era. Hugo Gernsback was very into innovative gadgetry; John Campbell wanted to publish serious speculative stuff. If you haven't heard of it already, be sure to track down the tale of what happened when Campbell, during WW II, planned to publish a story in his magazine about an atom bomb
Also check out some of H.G. Wells' lesser-known stories. There's a short called "The Egg" (IIRC) that's a prequel to War of the Worlds, in which the Martians send remote-viewing devices to Earth in preparation for their in-person landing. The H.G. Wells film "Things to Come" (you can rent it at from a good video store) envisions, in 1936, the importance of air power.
Don't forget those early years ('30s and '40s) in which authors and artists forsaw the rise of the megalopolis: skyscrapers; enormous stadiums and vast pedestrian malls; entire indoor communities; air shuttles to building tops. These visions became part of the '50s zeitgeist of Progress.
You should also look around for books speaking directly to your topic. I can't think of any right now (getting late), but IIRC I've come across several. If there's a good used book store with a heavy SF collection nearby, go there and strike up a conversation with whoever manages their SF. If you can get your hands on copies of old SF magazines, read some to get a handle on the minds of the readers
Post your request on SF newsgroups. See if you can find sites related to first fandom, and see if you can ask your question there: those guys watched (and sometimes made) SF history happen.
Good luck. You've got some of the most enjoyable homework I've ever heard of!
And no, I'm not joking. Just look at the Norditrack or the AbsMeister 3575 or your choice of ridiculously named excercise machines that do the work for you.
Or, on what is periodically considered visionary, and then ridiculous, but has certainly been influential if only to waste money: Max Headroom and the omnipresence of pseudo-interactive television (although I guess the original credit might lie somewhere else).
Running Man also reminds one of Survivor and some japanese shows.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
HG Well predicted the atomic bomb in "The World Set Free", another fellow named Wigner read the story, and later heard that a chain reaction was possible. He put two and two together, decided he should warn someone and passed the message on to Einstein who in turn passed the message on to President Roosevelt. Google cached page. I'm sure you can find another reference to support this if you look around.
I'd rather be parsing. --Jive5
I don't think literature controls what technology is made or else asimovs repeated reference to mass drivers might have resulted in one by now.
Rather, consider looking at books like "Brave New World" which influence people's reactions to technology. The greatest influence that a book has on technology is through the consumer/marketplace
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
That should be Wells, with an S. I don't know how I missed that twice.
I'd rather be parsing. --Jive5
from "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov writen in 1942
Go ahead and mod me up. I dare you!
I'll grant that Gibson didn't know much about computers or networks when he wrote Neuromancer. I'll also grant that other novels have been far more prophetic and accurate.
But let's give Gibson his due. His "Sprawl" fiction (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome) had more "surface area" than any of those other novels. He sold oodles of those books, and they entered the collective consciousness like a mainline heroin shot. He folded in MTV sensibilities that ensured his books would break the "geek" stigma which plagued SF to that point.
Gibson's prose, and his understanding of human nature, are unrivaled in the annals of SF. To read Neuromancer is to become one of his hapless characters, strugging to stay afloat in a Tofflerian Future Shock of sensory and technological overload.
The other great thing about Gibson's novels is what I call the "Lure of the TechnoGoddess": that is, he portrayed a technology (cyberspace) so sexy that hordes of computer-science geeks were compelled to labor to bring it about -- despite Gibson's relative naivete concerning all things computational. And this despite the fact Gibson saw his own work as both humorous and dystopian.
There is no spoon.
"Snow Crash" has, I believe, been a source of inspiration to various folks at Maxis. Will Wright, IIRC, has read it and one of the other higher-up folks over there (I believe it was the General Manager, Lucy Bradshaw) told me she's read it and was inspired by it.
I remember watching a show about a search for a US navy ship that had been sunk in the days before the end of the 2nd world war (the 'Pennsylvania', I think.. it was the ship that'd brought the a-bomb to Hawa'ii) on the discovery channel. Anyway, the pointed out during the show that the 'fire-control' systems were on the bridge of the ship.
Written in 1881, predicted streaming music over telephone lines. It's online, do a 'find in page' on chapter 11 for the word telephone. (Hmmm. chapter 11 (bankruptcy), streaming media, riaa, theres some irony in here somewhere. i can feel it.)
Of course he also established most 20th century sci-fi themes. See "The Time Machine"
What did that predict? Precious Moments people?
let's see... several centuries before 802701, ant people from another planet land on Earth and find the Precious Moments people (who call themselves "Eloi") living there to be easy pickings, especially compared to what happened about 800,000 years in iD4. The "Morlocks," as the ant people come to be known, set up shop underground. They begin to slaughter Eloi who have already reproduced several times.
Then in 802701, a traveler from the past reintroduces "fire" and related technologies into the Eloi culture. After he leaves, the Eloi begin to awaken. One of them (named Colin) is the first to find out that all the food is coated with drugs to keep the Eloi people stupid ("raised to be stupid, taught to be nothing at all, I don't like the drugs but the drugs like me" -- M. Manson). While fasting, he finds that he learns much more quickly. Thus, he becomes the leader of the revolution...
Anybody want to help me write the sequel?
Will I retire or break 10K?
In the Diamond Age nanotech shredders, bombs that enter humans, invade cells and explode are introduced. Behold the nanotech smart bombs that invade "cancer cells" and explode destroying them. www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/11/15/cancer.smart.bomb.ap /index.html Where's the mop when you need it?
"Thou art God", So you might as well start acting like it
There are tons of paper cover the exact topic you are exploring. A Comparative literature professor is an expert in the field and has managed to build the largest scholastic collection of science fiction. In 1997, the second closest collection had half the number of books.
Everyone seems to be mentioning the big names, but there are a lot of smaller authors who influenced the science fiction genre. There are a lot of science fiction experts in the Comparative Literature field, so consider looking there for really specific information with citations. I won't bother trying to remember the essays I've read in those topics. The material is numerous and the field of study is about 20 years old.
I served as an officer on the USS Hoel (DDG-13), a Guided Missile Destroyer, from 1987 to 1990.
Navy warships have a bridge, where you'll find the helmsman, the lee helmsman (transmits orders to the engine room) and the Officer of the Deck ("OOD") (who's in charge) and the Junior Officer of the Deck ("JOOD") who "has the Conn" and gives orders to the helm and lee helm. There's a nice big chair for the Captain to sit in whenever he wants.
There's also a "Combat Information Center" or "CIC" which is usually close by the bridge. This is a darkened room full of radar repeaters and various weapon control systems. There's also a nice big chair for the Captain to sit in whenever he wants. There is also a "Combat Information Center Officer" on watch, and at times of heightened alerts, there is also a "Tactical Action Officer" or "TAO" who runs the ship and tells the OOD what to do
Where does the Captain sit? Wherever he damn well wants, which is usually on the bridge.
I suppose you could argue that modern Combat Information Centers are based on the Star Trek model, but the helm and lee helm and the OOD are still on the bridge where the OOD can see outside.
I once took a tour of the USS Ticonderoga, the first Aegis class Cruiser. There was a portion of the CIC set aside for the Captain and maybe a flag officer (Admiral) if one was on board. This area had big projection screens, etc. But it sure didn't remind me of Star Trek, not at all.
So, I don't buy it. Star Trek has been on TV, off and on, from the 1960's. The US Navy has been doing its job since the Revolutionary War. The design of Navy warships has been the result of a centuries long evolutionary process and is not the result of the vision of Gene Roddenberry.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Asimov - is credited with approaching robotics from a logical, scientific point of view. (machines don't have emotions). Heinlein - In "Waldo, Inc." actually describes Waldoes, mechanical hands for remote work for a person with degerative muscle disease who lives in orbit. Vernor Vinge - True Names and Other Lies- Describes a typcal Internet MUD years before anyone else. Some French Guy - wrote a story "By The Rivers of Babylon" about a member of a primitive tribe from upstate NY who visits the bombed-out city, has a vision of back when "...they turned the night into day for their pleasure." A typical post-atomic apocalype novel? Except this was written in 1938! There's also the famous story of the FBI visiting the offices of Astounding (now Analog) magazine in 1942 or 43 to ask about a science fiction story describing atomic bombs. Here they are trying to maintain the strictest secrecy and some guy is dreaming this up and describing it in the public media.
Asimove didn't invent the term "robot," but he was the first person to use the word "robotics" in writing.
byroniverse
I was amused to read a passage in "Galactic Pot Healer", by Philip K Dick, where office employees play a game of taking a well known phrase and passing it through the translation computer to turn it into another language and then through another to turn it back into English, then making your opponent guess what the original was.
Ever played this game by yourself or with others using altavista/babelfish??
Keith Duddy : dud at dstc.edu.au : http://www.dstc.edu.au/AU/staff/dud
He has written some funky books, but it's more a futuristic style (no laserguns, but space-stations orbiting the earth/moon). Maybe this'll do?
The automated medical bed as a diagnostic and treatmen
tool was described and used much earlier in the
great novel with the crappy name by H. Beam Piper,
"Space Viking".
Trolls are not part of humanity
In Fahrenheit 451 it presents the idea of a portable music player. When I first studied it in school they said it was the idea that lead to walkmans, but it ressembles an mp3 player more than a walkman...of course they didn't have mp3 players back then. I would read the book '1984' as well. I'm sure there are tons of ideas in that one too.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
Mechanical Exoskeletons as a way for soldiers to lift and carry much more equipment that humanly possible.
H.G. Wells seems only to be mentioned once in the other posts. He's known for The Time Machine. The Sleeper Awakes has a description of an aerial dogfight between aircraft using vectored thrust.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
by Kim Stanley Robinson, and various supporting books (The Martians, etc).
I was stunned by detail of his technology and deductions/application of Mars research. My brother is an astronomer whom I convinced to read the books and he was very impressed, esp as they were all written before the Mars Polar Lander, Pathfinder, Global Surveyor missions got there/blew up. KSR seems to have been on target with his geological and meterological ideas, and most of the technology seems very feasible too (space elevators, load bearing structures from vegetable fibres, slingshot meteorites, longevity, etc. Oh, and meta-national corporations).
Also Titan by Stephen Someone. they bent a space shuttle to get it out to Titan. Bloody marvellous.
"Someday, I have reason to believe, I will die", but I'm a bit busy at the moment.
The original post does imply that the real world adopts ideas from literature. If this is the case, is it a conscious choice? If it is a conscious choice, why not choose the strong points and discard the weak and malevalent?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I think I remember reading somewhere that the no-needle injection was invented after someone with a fear of needles saw the hypo on startrek.
J.G. Ballard's "Vermillion Sands" - there's a story there about an author who has his computer/typewriter working for him - it's an IBM of some sort or other. And there's a house that's getting ill.
X10, anybody? And as for computer doing the writing for you, all you do is hook up emacs on "Meta X dissociated-press" to some incoming text, feed the resultant text through a grammar checker, and a style checker, etc, and you have the computer writing for you. Doesn't have to mean much, or even anything at all!
"I his bow, and spun and wove, likes you." Vere de Vere out of my mould's mouth dragged me of the voluntary apes.
This is the case with most good science fiction books: they tell of a future that we don't want. Hopefully we'll get scared, and try to avoid it. This is something you need to focus on in addition to your other efforts.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Well, IIRC Stranger in a Strange Land introduced the word "grok" (meaning to understand something completely). This is actually being used, mainly in geek-communities of course, but it's use can also be found in other situations.
Does anyone have any good examples of this?
I've learned all I know about politics from
with 600+ comments, I don't know if these have been mentioned yet, but:
"Snow Crash", for a pre-internet vision of the 'net'. Also predicts the sort of cult-icon hipness attached to programmers that happens nowadays.
"Islands in the Net", which relies on the fax machine for much of its plot, before those objects existed.
"Ender's Game", which presents the interesting idea of fighting a war remotely, in a format that mimics a computer game.
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
Blish (and many others) have the ansible, and use it.. One of his novels has an early version of it.
But LeGuin also has an ansible (and her inventor is Shevek - a good geek if there ever was one).
But which author (maybe others) actually invented the ansible?
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solar sails
geosyncronous orbits
propoganda
world wide networks
many other examples
Robert Heinlein
waterbeds
Issac Asimov
robotics
and for the many other sci-fi writers that gave inspiration to the first nasa engineers that got man to the moon
- Paul
I seem to remember an old story in Donald Duck (probably from the days of Carl Barks) when they brought a sunken ship to surface with ping-pong balls - today the technic is to use styrofoam I have also heard Watersking first was thought of in a comic strip of the thirties.
The original question asking about how scfi-fi *influenced* contemporary life, not necessarily about what inventions were accurately predicted. With that in mind, I'm somewhat depressed to admit its the more popular fare like Star Trek that have had the biggest influence due to their popularity rather much in the way of writers actually predicting stuff. The communicator / mobile phone link was mentioned by the original poster. How about voice control for computers ? Come to that what about multimedia in general ? Computers that could understand and respond in spoken English were pretty far out there in the early 60s. Take a look at some of the literature the show has spawned, there are (quasi) serious works examing the physics of Star Trek. Touch screen technology first came to the mass public awareness via the bridge of the Enterprise. There is now a "contactless" taser gun on sale in France that acts and looks like a phaser. Douglas Adams' HHGTTG has inspired at least two web based projects I know of to emulate the great book itself, and if you access their pages via a GSM enabled PDA how far away are you from Adams' vision ? And what about dear old 007 ? All those gadget watches Q issued him seem to have inspired an entire generation of designers at Casio. Although Dick Tracy has to take credit for inspiring the watch / two-way radio (read mobile phone) trend. Finally, dear old Isaac Asmiov, in his early robot stories the company that built most of the positronic pals was called US Robotics a name we more readily associate with modems these days. Draxen
Arthur C Clarke, William Gibson, Isaac Asimov (and Douglas Adams)all have inspired some sort of invention or term that I can think of, I wonder if Phillip K.Dicks artificial animals ("do androids dream of electric sheep") inspired Sony to make Aibo ?
In his autobiographic book "surely you'r joking mr. Feynman" he recalls how one day a guy came round when he did his research on the atomic bomb in Palo Alto. This clerk wanted to know what else could be done with nuclear power. Seeing it as a kind of silly question since he gathered anything that requeres power could benifit from it, he ranted a whole list, including a submarine. To his amazement he ended up with the patent on it.
I havent seen this posted by anyone else so I thought I would add it to the list. Tacked onto the end of on of their later books (might be Lucifers Hammer or Footfall) Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle cover a story about how the Berlin wall came down.
I'll try to recap the main points:
They (and a lot of sci-fi writers) werent happy with the way that NASA was heading after the end of the Apollo missions.
Niven and Pournelle decided to get a bunch of sci-fi writers together to come up with ideas that they could present to the US government.
They had their brain storming session and produced a set of ideas that they presented to the Reagan administration.
Reagan had his science advisors check them out. They said they would work.
This led directly into SDI (StarWar project).
Russia could not afford to follow suit and announce their own project. And from that point Russia had to find a new way to live with the US.
Part of this new way included the fall of the Berlin wall.
Since this is all from memory I have probably got a few points wrong. But it was well worth reading as it showed that a few people in the right place at the right time can achieve what they sent out to.
Is it time to go home yet?
ORA:CLE by Kevin O'Donnell predicts Internet based expert communities, like slashdot.
The only link I could find is this french one, but English translations are available.
http://www.cinefantastico.com/nexus7/literatura
Don't lie. You're project consists of watching homosexual related films and spewing your cum on your monitor to see the trajectory of the sperm. Don't be fooling us Billlllllllllllllly.
Dick sucker!!! Dick Sucker!!! dick sucker!!! dick sucker!!!!!!!!
I had a similar approach in my graduate work in English ... my professor, Tom Remington (one of the most brilliant people I've ever known), was exploring not how science fiction became science fact, but how science and literature prefigure each other, anticipating developments. The general idea is that in a literate society, the free flow of ideas cross disciplines. This was particularly true before the advent of specializations in the last 150 years or so.
Some of the reading we did included "Gulliver's Travels" (gravity), "Frankenstein" (electricity), and from the other direction, "Theory of Relativity" (deconstruction).
This is a great topic to explore. Enjoy!
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."
Since your thesis seems to be looking for a cause-and-effect relationship, I suggest you read the non-fiction literature first. Find some books that describe the history of a given technology, or biographies of the principal people involved, and look for references to the science fiction stories they read in their youth. I think you'll find lots of leads which you can then follow up by reading the stories themselves.
... seems to have predicted the current political/religious climate in the U.S. with unnerving accuracy.
U.S. Democracy: born 7/4/1776, died 12/12/2000 R.I.P.
According to a lot of folks in the early days of Virtual Reality, the Vernor Vinge novella "True Names" had a more profound effect on their thinking than the later (and more renowned) "Neuromancer". "True Names and the Cyberspace Frontier" is being released in December by TOR Books, with a set of essays from scientists & thinkers about how the novella influenced their own thinking about virtual reality, cyberspace, and whatnot...
pournelle and niven drew a lot from his work.
his little fuzzy books are worth finding.
aloha,
dave
Here's one that most folks won't know: the music video is quite convincingly portrayed (as are random cases of people going amok in public, and media portals - well, television commercials - that provide the viewer with a generic personality tailored to their own specifications - Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere - also biological terrorism attacks, and jails that look better than apartment buildings, etc.) in Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar.
His Sheep Look Up also has a few gotchas in it.
Some of the psychology can be found in:
Lee, D.N. (1980). Visuo-Motor Coordination in Space-Time. In G.E. Stelmach & J. Requin (Eds.), Tutorials In Motor Behaviour.
CS Lewis published That Hideous Strength in 1.945; in it you have a nice description of a real-time-updated hypertext system which name I can't remember... besides a threatening description of big, idealistic, powerful bureaucracy!
It's the third book in Lewis' so-called Space Trilogy, which begins with Out of the Silent Planet.
He is also one of the first authors to describe good aliens.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I'll focus on Robert A. Heinlein (RAH)
RAH was visited by Men from the Government during WWII due to the story he submitted (to Campbell?) on a super-weapon based on Fission. He had extrapolated from the same, pre-war unclassified, a priori first principles that had been used to persuade Einstein to write to Roosevelt -- but the Feds feared he had been informed by a leak from the Manhatan Project, he so clearly foresaw what they were building. Sorry, I don't recall the story.
Many other 1930's / 1940's stories have space-farers using the familiar Slide Rule to do their orbital calculations.
For seminal inspiration, Verne's Earth to the Moon is considered the first of its kind, although it was contemporaneous with speculation in debating societies of what was possible.
RAH's book antecedent of the same name for the 1948ish Voyage to the Moon film (awarded the Retro-Hugo for Film at WorldCon 2001) was surely not the first to use magnetic boots, and maybe not even the first to use an oxygen cylinder as an emergency orbital maneuvering unit ... but updated the
Verne and 1920's/1930's fantasy's to the immediate-post-war declassified
rocket age's possibilities. Verner von Braun's team didn't need to be
told it was possible (they had read the 1920's SciFi and were more
interested in developing manned flight than in shelling Britain with
their V2 rockets), but the new generation of American people who'd pay
for the program had to be told that it was now possible, not just a
wonder story.
Thanks in part to the memories of my wonderful wife and librarian Pam and my old pal Mike. Mike Padlipski's earliest recorded work was his MIT Bachelor's Thesis entitle "More than Pulp: Science Fiction and the problem of Literary value", possibly the earliest academic thesis on Science Fiction as Literature (or SciFi as LitCrit). It "featured an extended 'close reading' of [Theodore Sturgeon]'s More than Human [and] shorter readings of another 4-5 s.f. pieces, and sundry scholarly stuffings." (We know of at most one earlier such thesis.) No, it's not on the Web (yet?). His witty technicoaesthetic criticism of internetworking protocols is in the RFCs on-line and in print in expanded form as The Elements of Networking Style. As always, the faults (and some of the cherished favorite memories) are mine. -- Bill
The word "terraforming" to mean transforming a world to be more hospitable to humans was coined by the SF writer Jack Williamson, who has published SF in every one of the last seven decades.