Slashdot Mirror
Designers - Are You Influenced By What You Read?
Silent_E asks: "A student of mine is writing a paper on how Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_ offers a good educational model for distance learning. She has been asked by publishers to justify looking at fiction as a way of talking about 'the real world.' That dialogue made me wonder whether Slashdot folks currently or recently coding or doing hardware design are, or have been, directly inspired by what they've read in Science Fiction?"
I took a course that was mostly online and I found that participation and in depth discussion can be even better on IRC through text than in the classroom. That may be just my experience since I can express myself better in writing, but I think it's a great tool for education.
From 1984.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Not to assume or suggest that all fiction should have a point or a message/moral to it, but all fiction has the power to inspire us or make us question reality/society/etc.
if you take something away from a work of fiction (or film, or recording, or game) then you will be all the better for it.
My boss has definitely been influenced by the world of literature. Most of the things he promises people are straight from science fiction although the schedules are more of a pure fantasy.
And I've been influenced to take an axe to my neighbor's head and turn myself in when the mania wore off.
Yes, books can really put a spell on you.
I have been pwned because my
Hush.... I am currently working on a big project called... The METAVERSE.
because you can follow several independent threads at once. More than one person can "have the floor" at once, and no one feels jipped because they weren't able to voice their opinion or were interrupted by someone else's opinion.
The internet is great at stripping the physical characteristics of our world and leaving thought. Well, thought and conspiracy theories aboout evil cell phones, overbearing corporations, bribes of congress, and the like.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I make decisions every day based upon what I read on Slashdot!
I know one guy who claimed he was trying to decipher a morris code message from the HDD activity light but claimed it only worked if you used nasty font contrasts and coded in perl or something... We suspected drugs, but you would never see this kind of behavior in fiction. (grin)
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Whether it was building my first mock-phaser with "real flashing LED" or building the "Ultra-Sonic motion Sensing Alarm System" that I used to hear when my sister was getting into my room, there can be little doubt that Alan Dean Foster did more to inspire my love of technology than all the teachers in my highschool. Even today when I'm ohming out the different connections in my microwave to modify it so my CueCat sets the cooking time based on the barcode, it isn't because I can't turn the knob and press the button. It's because it's one step closer to a Replicator.
In a more practical mode, there is a great deal in software that is done by ignoring, "what will get the job done today" and paying attention to "what will bring me closer to an ultimate solution." This way of thinking is essential to good design and I can't think of a better way to inspire it than to give the designer several examples of near ideal systems, and the consequences that come from them.
A better question would be "who can deny having been (directly) influenced..." since literature is part of the makeup of who we are there is no way to deny it.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
I like to name variables after favorite characters. It actually helps me to renember thier purpose better then standard naming styles.
I mainly read fantasy novels and Heavy Metal magazine. Can't imagine what my code would look like if I got inspired...
cat /dev/urandom | /usr/games/morse > /dev/hda
Try it, it really works. You must be root of course.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
**Just a disclaimer: I really don't have much experience in the field**
Ok, anyway, it would seem that, sci-fi hobbists aside, most real world hardware and software design is based on what works in the real world and what can turn a profit and keep customers on your side. This is not to say that sci-fi and real world tech have not crossed paths in the past and won't cross again in the future. Many of todays devices have been featured in fiction of the past, and this trend is likely to continue, provided the number of decent sci fi writers doesn't dwindle in comming years.
I'd say SF provides the bulk of it's inspiration the same way the real world does. By demonstrating how *not* to do something, and inviting an inventive mind to find a better way.
I've had a few ideas I might try to implement someday inspired by books I've read, but for the most part I think SciFi is just a conduit to get people thinking about their own neat ideas, and general concepts. Most actual tech in scifi is either far-future pie in the sky stuff and incredibly huge projects or, more often these days, obvious (if sometimes flawed) extrapolations of the current bleeding edge of tech.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
How many robotics engineers haven't been influenced by Azimov?
Full text here.
Orson Scott Card wrote a book series with a "entity" which lived in the computer networks. Many of the ways in which he describes her mirror much of the current work in the agent-based AI field. I found the book extremely interesting and while I don't think it had any direct effect it surely set the stage for some amazing AI research.
No.
Did you just call my comment stupid!?
As the greatgrandparent of this post mentioned, many of us are better at expressing emotion and nuance through the written word than through facial expressions.
The lack of emotion involved keeps people from taking offense, and IMHO leads to less confusion. Flamewars aren't really arguments, but rather jokes.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Imagination is what drives fiction...
Imagination is also what drives invention...
Find Site -> Say Ahhh, Ooooo, Eeeee! -> View -> Source (Or Ctrl+U) -> Steal, erm Borrow Code -> Wahlah.
I guess by that, we're more inspired by "Non-Fiction". =)
======
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
This was after watching several episodes of Star Trek for the first time :o)
USA, AP - After reading a topic posted on the popular "news for nerds" website Slashdot, thousands of dejected fans of the show "Farscape" have decided to use the post as inspiration. After months of work, they themselves have come up with their own piece of Science Fiction: The Sci-Fi Show That Can't Be Cancled.
Thaddeus McGuirk, a 32 year old game beta tester who lives at 420 1/2 Microsoft Way (it's his mom's basement, who's he kidding with that 1/2 nonsense) read the post and immediately hit up his pro-Farscape friends on the alt.lostcauses.savefarscape newsgroup, and they began frantically drumming up ideas to save an otherwise mediocre sci-fi show.
"I mean, Farscape is the greatest show since the original Star Trek. When it was cancled, I ran up to my mommy's room and cried my eyes out for hours. And then she told me 'Tad, dear, why don't you do something about it? Like for starters, move out of my basement.' That's when inspiration hit me."
Jokko Douchebaag, a classmate and regular tormenter of McGuirk, had this to say:
"All that loser does is talk about Farscape. This, that, everything Farscape. This guy has no life! What he needs to do is watch some MTV. Now THERE'S where it's at."
After weeks of tedious testing, development, more testing, and thousands of high caffine mints and drinks, McGuirk had finally come up with his formula.
"It's pretty obvious. You take Gerri Ryan, Sarah Michelle Gellar, the Olson Twins, and put them on a ship with Wil Wheaton, Richard Dean Anderson, William Shatner, Justin Timberlake and Carrot Top. Send them out to the farthest reaches of the Galaxy, and make them fight interstellar vampires, the vicious Hangon Empire, and evildoers with terrible fashion sense. There's no way a show like that could be cancled. The ratings would be too high!"
Upon hearing of McGuirk's idea, the Slashdot community immediately blackballed him, laughed at him (and when a geek laughs at another geek, it's pretty darn bad) and told him to get a damned life.
Is the variable for the players name in many of my games.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I have a feeling that there is a silent minority of /. who actually reads things other than SF.
My current list:
A 100 Years of Japanese Film, Donald Richie
Play it as it Lays, Joan Didion
Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
The first is self-explanatory. The second is a minimalist post-modern classic dealing with late 1960's Hollywood's wasted class (and reference for Bret Easton Ellis' Less than Zero). And the last is a tragio-comedy tale of late Czarist Russia.
Hell, maybe I'm alone. And not to defecate on SF (before this I finished PKD's Our Friends from Frolix 8) but I read for other reasons than obtaining a singular focus on technology. Maybe I'm old-fashioned.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Well, it isn't a book, but I know that MCP has popped up as a variable name in quite a few of my coding projects. MCP for those who didn't see the movie was the Master Control Program in Tron.
Yes, sci-fi I have read has influenced how I think about programming and technology in general.
However, Neil Stephenson is the last person I would draw upon for inspiration.
William Gibson, Arthur C. Clark and Gene Roddenberry are much better examples.
I do virtual reality research with head-mounted displays. I mean real-world applications stuff. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, "You're wasting your time - the real way to do it is with direct neural connections to the optic nerve" (a la Gibson, et al) or even worse, "Just wait until they have holodecks!" These people aren't in touch with reality and IMO, their vocal view do more harm than good. Neural implants into something as enormously complex as the human visual system are way off (and imagine the problems we'll have in getting there - something goes wrong and you go blind)! The reality is that we first have to master the visual "interface" we have right now: the eye and the light entering it.
...and as for holodecks... They look great on TV, but the real-world implications of that Star Trek pipe dream are almost laughable. Pure fantasy that's even farther off (if not infinitely far off).
I am, every program that I write (they are usually programs which are used by me) is liscensed under the GPL and includes a parameter not seen in the --help menu which prints out the answer to life the universe and everything ;)
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
In all seriousness, yes. However, since I do concept art/3d models for video games, it's kind of an occupational requirement.
Does anybody else remember those cool 'Terran Trade Authority' artbooks from the 70's? 'Spacewreck' was the best. Book. Evar.
is an idea that goes back to John Brunner and 1970's Vernor Vinge.
Science fiction and engineering live in a cycle of mutual inspiration. Heinlein read about Goddard. The Apollo engineers grew up reading Heinlein. Then Heinlein got to reap the benefits -- he testified to Congress about looking around at the medical technology that saved his life after the stroke and recognizing all the space program spinoffs in it.
Miguel Alcubierre's paper about faster-than-light travel in general relativity was inspired by warp drives.
is that real? it seems like it was made up, BUT, i'm sure the general idea that Iraqi civilians HATE Saddam is very true.
a good read for anyone who's actually thinking.
So, if that's real, i'll pass that out to everyone i come into contact with.
Read Heinlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Haven't spoken whole sentence since.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
I design www.bananachan.com The site hosts a sci-fi anime story which I wrote, and I like to imagine the interface as LCARS-esque. Actually, I like to imagine the entire internet as LCARS-esque. I can't be the only nerd who's familiar with the term LCARS, can I?
is it me or do the trolls just really suck lately? we need to see some new innovative ways of trolling around here people ;)
What, no examples? What science fiction do we tend to reference? Oh, you mean like when coding a holographic matrix, make sure to add a watch-dog sub-routine to safeguard malfunctions? That sort of thing?
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Moderators-- Please mod the above post down. It contains a link to the nefarious goatse link. Thank you.
Actually, this is a fantastic point. I am quite influenced by what I read and therefore don't read much at all (slashdot and tech related material excluded)
Too many interesting fiction writers have a lot to say and it easily gets me off my current track spending time thinking about what they propose. I'd rather spend my time thinking about interesting solutions to work and tech problems as opposed to being diverted by fiction that bears no relevence to solving problems in my daily life.
So in short, yes.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Did you make that ASCII art yourself? If so, I'm modding you up no matter how much of a troll you are.
I read a bunch of Heinlein novels, and then I designed this great e-commerce website based on genetic engineering and a new religion. What I can't figure out is why all of the women I meet don't want to have sex with me immediately. Did I read it wrong?
Are those the Mother Of All Balls?
When I was in second year of university (and getting into programming in C), I read Robert J. Sawyer's "The Terminal Experiment". There's a section of the novel where he discusses a simple evolutionary algorithm that allows the computer to find a string starting with a random sequence of characters. I remember putting the book down and thinking, "I could write that!" So I did. It was really fun, and it opened me up to a new way of coding and thinking about algorithms.
If I book inspires you to write code you would have never written otherwise, go with it!
~ "When I'm of that age I'm just going to live up a tree."
I think it's common to think of sci-fi as a sort of garbage fiction, like romances, or cheezy mysteries. Sometimes it's perfectly valid to do so.
On the other hand, here are a whole group of intelligent and imaginative people streching their minds to try and encompass a possible future growing from modern conditions. Trying to imagine future tech, and things people could need in the future.
The Diamond Age is possibly the best book ever written regarding the possible outcomes of a successful nanotechnology. Coming off that, you get William Gibson, David Brin, Robert Heinlien, Arthur C. Clarke, Issac Asimov, et al, who have had a profound effect on the perception of modern tech, if not it's development. And who's to say they had nothing to do with development?
How much of doing something is knowing it can be done? I mean, its a common joke on Slashdot:
1) Idea
2) ????
3) Profit
But what about those people who can supply the ???? if someone else gives them the idea?
What about Carl Sagan or Colin McGinn? Academics who stray over into the realm of Sci-fi because they have an idea, an idea they can't express in an academic context.
Who's to say which way the cause and effect goes, every time? Why shouldn't an idea thought up by a professional dreamer get caught by someone who can put practice to theory?
As for me personally, I don't code from sci-fi (though I will admit having lifted part of a perl script from Stephenson's Cryptonomicon), but it does occasionally stimulate an idea. So who is to say?
Just my .0759800 Malaysian Ringgits worth
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Or at least, to me it is. Reallife tech always follows fiction. Reason being that something must be thought of before it can be implemented.
:) And I bet I'm not the only one.
And where do we get our ideas from? Fiction. It must be dreamt before it can be built.
Look at this for an eerily on-the-mark description of the desktop computer: an article called "As we may think", by Vannever Bush in a 1945 piece in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY. Look to Jules Verne, Gibson.
And you know what? Those aren't predictions. They're thoughts, which others have read, and because they read them those idea's have been implemented. Those books are the root cause for innovations to happen, not accurate predictions at all. Even now there's trekkies trying to figure out shields and beams and transporters, gibsonites who are trying to put together consensual hallucinations in the form of MMORPG's.
So not only would I say that fiction can be used to talk of real world change, I think it's the reason for real world change.
Me, even I'm doing my bit...damn, the whole reason for me to get into what I'm doing was 'cos science fiction made it look cool
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Sci-Fi sometimes influenced programmers in the way they named their products. For example it is probable that the "Hardware Abstraction Layer", a major part of microsoft windows NT's kernel, was named by reference to H.A.L., the computer in "2001 A space odyssey". It's quite funny that in the movie, HAL was named by reference to IBM (one letter before at each position, I -> H, B -> A, ...) so in fact the Microsoft "Hardware Abstraction Layer" is a kind of reference to IBM too ;)
Whfg nabgure EBG-13 unpxre...
Isn't this the point of text books? More to the point, think of William Gibson's Neuromancer. Back in the early days of the internet, the creators of VRML cited that important work as being the inspiration for developing a 3D standard for the net. Thats only one example of the impact that wonderful piece of literature has had. Go back a little earlier to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. For a time it literally became a model for how Los Angeles should be developed. Its a frightening thought I know, but do a little research, read some Mike Davis. http://www.rut.com/mdavis/aboutMikeDavis.html Many things end up in play at any given time in any given culture. We take bits and put them together. Literature and art have always played important roles in synthesising ideas.It always helps to go back to the source and see where the ideas originated from. I have the flu so I'll end now before I ramble.
I was once paid to basically build "sci-fi" technology in order to demonstrate new research technologies.
My experience has been that sci-fi inspired technology rarely 'works' as dramatized on TV. What I mean by 'works' is that even with a perfect system [as simulated by Wizard of Oz experiements], humans will not be impressed by, nor even tolerate, those technolgies.
Here is an example of sci-fi meets reality.
One system we built was similar to the house in "Minority Report". You could talk to the lights and query the room about various information, that sort of thing. In the end, the idea was hopelessly misguided.
The reasons this particular demo sucks is because of cognitive load, cognitive dissonance, and limited human bandwidth. Cognitive load means your brain has to think more to get a task done; cognitive dissonance means your brain is uncomfortable doing the task, and bandwidth means mainly that human speech is slow.
For example, a "lights on" command requires concious thought in order to get lights, and some linguistic processing. The alternative light switch technology is less so, even automatic [you might notice this when the power goes out you still hit switches]. Also, humans are pre-programmed to talk to humans, talking to the wall is an unpleasant experience for most people. Finally, speech is really quite slow. Flicking a light switch is much faster than saying the words.
The point is that the dramatization of this technology is done in the imagination with all factors tuned optimally for dramatic effect; but the reality falls short of the fantasy. Real world factors not taken into account by the imagination destroys the appeal of the technology.
So what is a better model for driving innovation than the fantasy scenarios of fiction? Quite simply, it is the time tested process of real-world problem solving. Find a problem, look for a solution [as contrasted to find a technology look for a use]!
U R ALL LEEET
dood
Oh wait. Reading this article made me post. Never mind.
One of the first books I read when I got over to Japan was Nabokov's Lolita. If ever there was a book that should be read by all writers, this was it. The story is well-paced, and there isn't a scene wasted. Unlike some books (All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren as a prime example) that never get to the point, Lolita didn't waste a single word.
:-)
I think I may be picking up two Russian authors next time I stop by the bookshop.
I have been pwned because my
you're a fucking moron dude
...certainly not.. or would I browse /. then?
It has the stink of war propaganda all over it. The type of people who would have gone to Baghdad as human shields might come out somewhat accepting the war but talking about the horrors of bombs, etc: They would NEVER talk like that.
or any Stephen King for that matter. I really loved the scene in the movie were the techies were using computer imaging to digitally change faces on the combatants and remove 'undesirable' images of blood and gore from the combat... Techniques that are now in common use throughout Hollywood despite being science fiction in the movie.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
What? Stephen King is dead?
I remember hearing that there are lots of engineers who were initially inspired by the work of Mr. Mongomery Scott.
go flap your wings someplace else!
movies (all types in general) have taught me one important lesson: if I ever defeat my nemesis, kill him while I have the chance. This is the one mistake that always comes back to bite heroes in the butt.
SIGFAULT
HOW CAN A NUTSAC BE A MOTHER.
DUMB FUCKER.
sldkflkdsjf;ljfdjfa ivuc9mrmvto;ihg;oksdc
...and it always begins with "Dear Penthouse Forum..." ..my girlfriend tells me they are fake, but I know in my heart they are real...
Good design is derived from user needs; software simulates something the user already knows to provide a seemingly instinctive interface.
The only place for science fiction in my design efforts has been to mislead clients into expecting magic rather than engineering.
I don't read sci-fi, and I'm an engineer-type person. (C programmer right now, actually.) I know it's shocking, but it's true. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one.
I didn't read the LOTR books, and I thought the first movie was pretty good and the second even better, but I'm not going to buy them on DVD. I think I saw some anime once, and the art looked like it was very well done and probably took an extreme amount of effort and talent, but I didn't want to watch the movie. I don't play computer games, except sometimes a little SimCity and driving games, but only if they have sort of vaguely realistic physics. I'd play PipeDream or Marble Madness if either were available.
I don't get User Friendly at all. I think Linux is a pretty good operating system, but I really would rather not have the penguin. (It tries too hard to be cute. Why does it need to be cute anyway? It's a male version of cutesy.)
I like music, but I don't have an MP3 collection. (Maybe one day I'll decide to cache my fully-legitimate CD collection on hard disk using FLAC. Faulting in 400 CDs will take a while, though.) I have a guitar, but it's an acoustic one. I have a keyboard too; it's a really cool technology based on wood, felt, leather, and metal. (I hear it took the engineers 100 years or more to perfect it.)
I have no desire to do a case mod (except for practical reasons, meaning finding a way to reduce noise). However, I have been thinking of refinishing some of my furniture, and just a few days ago, I planted some seeds that may eventually grow into flowers.
I don't own a Japanese sport bike and don't ever see myself being interested in riding. I am, however, interested in writing. I think it's almost as fun as coding. (It is coding, in a certain sense.)
And yet, I've been assured by many of the people I've known that I am, in fact, a big geek.
Not to assume or suggest that all fiction should have a point or a message/moral to it, but all fiction has the power to inspire us or make us question reality/society/etc.
if you take something away from a work of fiction (or film, or recording, or game) then you will be all the better for it.
Not necessarily. It depends a lot on what you take away from it.
If you take, for instance, the idea that Jews are subhuman and need to be exterminated, or blacks ditto and properly should be slaves, are you "the better for it"? The NAZIs would have thought so for the first case, the KKK for the second, wouldn't they?
Mainstream fiction is an art form directed at the masses by their masters (i.e. the art school establishment). The central message is that, no matter how bad things are, if you try to improve them (especially if you break the rules doing so), you will make them worse. So be a good little domestic animals. Obey your masters, don't break down the fence, and go quitely to the shearing and the slaughter.
(Classic) SF, on the other hand, is (mostly) by and for the people who design the tech and make it run. SF offers a rich toolset for speculating about both current situations and potential future changes - and for disconnecting them from the immediate problem so the reader can think about the core issues without biases from the current political situation or technical paradigm. The central message is that, by the application of intelligence and effort, you can make things better both for yourself and humanity at large. (It also includes the cautionary tale: If you break it THIS way you CAN'T fix it afterward, so apply your intelligence and effort up front, while it can still do some good.) It teaches the mindset that builds technologies and civilizations.
And of course that's why both SF in particular, and fiction in general, are held in contempt by the arts school types - which include historians, sociaologists, political scientists, and the like. Of COURSE you "can't" have a "valid" thought about the future based on fiction - THEIR fiction - because it's defeatist propaganda rather than valid speculation. (And SF doesn't obey their rules - when it's true to its own, so it is suppressed as "escapist trash" which must not be validated as a "serious" art form and thus must not be viewed by anyone "sophisticated".)
Notice that, even in the "golden age", there were a few authors and stories that obeyed the mainstream fiction rather than the SF rules. (_The Machine Stops_ springs to mind, as does virtually everything by Bradbury.) And (surprise!) only these stories and others like them are considered "valid" by arts types. (Of course they were pushed on the inmates of classrooms as examples of what SF is about, making the experience massively unpleasant and giving most of them an aversion to the whole art form.)
(I won't attempt to do modern SF justice, beyond mentioning that it includes both classic SF ruleset stories and stories from a number of other artforms, all lumped under one category. But thank GHOD the "new wave" has broken on the shore and sunk back into the depths. B-) )
But SF, in the classic sense, is EXACTLY the art form where the authors bring up real-world issues and speculate about possible outcomes, alternatives and their effects, and how to improve the human condition. They engage their readers in the sort of thinking that both inspries them and trains them to problem-solve and strive to bring about constructive change.
So of COURSE at least THIS kind of fiction is a vaild way to "talk about the real world". That's what it's FOR!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
My link did not contain goatse...whatever that is. Oh, you must mean goatsex -- yeah, there's tons-a-that...NOT! My point: why did you lie about my link? I don't even know I, or do I, Anonomous Coward. Your last name, Coward, says it all...you coward.
Yes - I've seen several movies featuring strong AI. I've pursued this goal and *mmph GAAGH*
We have assumed control.
I work as a software tester, a task I seem fair well suited for, and which I fair well enjoy. Perhaps it is because in my case I get to occupy some strange in-between world, where I get to do a lot of coding myself (I write programs that run, test, and torture other programs).
I remember reading Jurassic Park, and the programming flaw described in the novel that allowed an undercounting of the dinosaurs on Isle Nubar. Michael Crichton does an excellent job of describing a software system that works in theory, but not in practice. Faulty assumptions about what software will encounter in the field should always be a concern. As a tester or SQA specialist, should never rely on the assurances of coders and designers as to what is the important functioning of a system, and what is an unimportant glitch or missing functionality that will have no impact on end users. It isn't possible to make perfect (large) systems, but reliance on faulty assumptions can be the worst bugs of all, because they will not show up in things like compiler warnings.
Letter To Iran
There is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, The Libary of Babel, and it is a great illustration of an information theoretical point.
You're familiar with the idea that an infinite number of monkeys & typewriters would eventually compose the works of Shakespeare?
The Library of Babel contains every possible book of a certain length. The story is written from the point of view of a librarian in this library. This librarian has never seen a book of any meaning or interest, and has never met anyone who has. There are rumors, because the librarians have deduced that the library appears to have all possible books.
Finding the meaningful works in the huge search space will be much harder than composing them again intentionally, in fact humanly impossible unless you're starting from a very near point in the first place.
Extra credit question: See why an index or card catalog of the books would be of no real help?
Now, are you familiar with Searle's Chinese room experiment in AI? This is a room where you submit statements in Chinese and receive answers through a window. Supposedly the person inside doesn't understand Chinese at all, but only uses some set of rules to process the papers coming through the window. This set of rules allows him to compose an answer, possibly even passing a Turing test.
Does the system understand Chinese? Critics of AI would say not.
To me Borges' story illustrates a flaw with the Chinese room experiment itself. A sufficiently complex system can't be emulated without some kind of understanding.
It was a glorious feeling finding this for myself in Borges. I look at AI differently because of this story. I'm not coding AI, so maybe you aren't really interested in my opinion.
Extra credit answer: Any catalog or index that was sufficiently specific to be helpful would have to contain the needed information, and make reference to the library itself unneccessary. There is no Shakespeare finding algorithm that is perfectly accurate and doesn't already contain Shakespeare. See also pigeonhole problem.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I always thought the concept of a holodeck was a silly waste of space on a starship. I think the reality will be more along the lines of lying on your bunk in your quarters and hooking your nervous system up to a computer. The computer would simulate any reality you wanted, and you could be joined by your fellow crew members just like participating in a big online game of Quake. For that matter, that's probably what being on duty would be as well, for most crewmembers. All the stuff a holodeck has to do to simulate a larger space, water, fake humans, etc. is a whole lot of trouble you don't need if you can just input it directly to your senses.
A lot of my political attitudes and general philosophies of life come directly from Robert A. Heinlein. I read every book he wrote before I was out of Junior High (aka Middle School to you present day squirts) and they sort of seeped in.
Until i can goggle into the office, to play earth and talk to the librarian, while fully rendered as the baddest sword fighter on the net, i will not be happy. just give me reason.
or How Science Fiction Conquered the World, writen by Thomas M. Disch. From the blurb: T.M.D. analyzes science fiction's impact on technological innovation, fashion, lifestyle, military strategy, the media and much more. Published by Touchstone Books. It was a good read.
whether you wish or not.
If you read something and cannot manage to totally forget it, it will influence you. You can try to have it *not* influence you or your design, but that in itself is already an influence.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/744019.stm
Summary: Humbling news that NASA is prepared to keep watch on science fiction for ideas.
A nice example of a relationship between the two worlds of thinking, knowledge and association.
A blog I run for the wealth
I think I'd say Neuromancer did it for me. I'm not so sure if it was my natural geek tendencies that allowed me to enjoy that book so much, or if it affected to any great extent the course my life was to take.
I was in 5th or 6th grade when I read neuromancer. I believe it had been out in paperback four a couple years at the time. I had an apple, but I mostly played games with it, or used applelink (payed about $180 for that 1200 baud modem). After reading neuromancer I started getting into programming... while the book was/is great, it was Nueromancer the game that turned on my serious geek mode. It was the first game I "hacked" with a hex editor to get all the skill chips and super high level "microsofts" like Drill 7.0 and BlowTorch, etc...
I recently loaded neuromancer up in an emulator for nostalgia. It brought a tear to my eye, mostly from those awful graphics, and the sound made my ears bleed. But what a great game!
Both Chris Klaus (founder of ISS in 1994) and Robert Graham (founder of Network ICE in 1998) were inspired by "Neuromancer" in the creation of their companies, Robert event named "BlackICE" after the same word in the book. The companies merged in 2001, and is the leading vendor of "intrusion countermeasures" as described in William Gibson's books.
Hello, dumbshits? If you do what this guy says, it will overwrite your hard drive with random data.
I am more influenced by what I watch....
For the best videos ever, go to http://reuters.feedroom.com
Your 200 cable or satellite TV channels won't show you what the above mentioned site shows
(you will need a broadband connection to enjoy the videos)
Well just to address the issue if designers are ever influenced by what the see/read - I have one word for you: ANIME!
There was that one time my program kept killing people, singing something about Daisy and bicycles... :-)=
bits and peace
Nicholas Daley
I'll admit, I've taken inspiration from science fiction I've read. Mainly Stephen Baxter. And you know what it's inspired me to do? Write science fiction of my own. I've written many short stories and I'm working on getting one published.
I'm also looking at a career in astronomy/space exploration. Face it, without science fiction, NASA would die out in a generation. Science fiction is great in so many ways, and it's just sad that so many people dismiss it out of hand as trash.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Any Linux admin knows this will write dits and daws in ascii text to the primary hard disk.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
not informative!
/.ers would understand it, but no.
/me thanks goodness that bsdgames isn't installed in Mandrake by default.
This writes morse code out in ascii text directly onto the primary ide hard disk. I figured
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
if you say so, i guess i am.
BECAUSE YUO NAMED IT WRONG FUCKSTICK.
SUCK ON MY FOABS NIGLET.
dyhfghdnkujlumyiolnb rbdv dtv rg dgtyh7gb45e6y5 5rtd
WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!::
"it's been -149 seconds since you last successfully posted a comment"
FIX YOUR CODE SUCKA ASS BIATCHES.
dyhfghdnkujlumyiolnb rbdv dtv rg dgtyh7gb45e6y5 5rtdfdgfxdfv hht ghsretgh 54ety 546terg dfg dgdfgfdgfdsg swhy5txrtg y 5et
I've been trying to study the directions in technology required to make a book such as this happen.
:)
I'm not interested in teaching english as much as math, though. If I could tell my thin electronic math book to open to the "integrals" chapter and show me my class notes from last week, I'd be set.
Voice recognition isn't infeasible.
Do answers in the textbook, upload them to the teacher for electronic annotation; return the annotations to the student's textbook, they correct their work -- and the answer -- and the teacher approves the problem.
I can map out technological ways to build this, thanks to watching Slashdot for a couple years.
Given time, or an unexpected infusion of money, I'll be able to make something like this happen.
Is there somewhere I can contribute my help? I don't have the driving force myself to tear this problem apart and build it, yet.
I've many more, but not the time to index them here; requests via email, or look, in time, to a project I haven't yet described that tracks these
it's encrypted.
The light should stay solid-on if your system can keep up with your hard disk.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I'd consider William Gibson the most important living SF writer. I would not consider his intent to have anything to do with inspiring intelligence, the direction of technology, civilization, etc.
/. readers? I'd even call it "mainstream".
When SF is good (and it is often bad: the geek equivalent of a romance novel), it illustrates the present. Stranger in a Strange Land, for example, gives totally unique insight into human nature. That is its (way over-generalized) goal. Every Gibson novel is a perfect snap shot of the time it was written.
Also, there is no need whatsoever to malign "arts school types." First of all, you are focusing on a contrast that isn't there. Tell me what genres Pattern Recognition and Vineland belong to. Second, over the course of my college career, four different professors either referred to or recommended Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Two were in comp sci, one was in Middle Eastern studies, and one was in photography. If you think non-geeks naturally have some sort of antipathy towards SF, you're wrong.
Grandparent post didn't say that we should look away from SF, just that we should look everywhere. He's right. Note, when he says "all fiction" he does not say "mainstream fiction". Is The Hobbit SF? Does it inspire
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Necessity is the mother of invention
Imagination is required, but there must be a reason to apply that to the real world
The space program, and everything resulting, is only the result of the 'cold' war. Had that not happened, there would be no space program as we know it. Maybe a few satellites, but certainly not a man on the moon in '69.
Huge advances in everything from quantum physics to computers to improvements in industry were a result of ww1 and ww2.
Even some like Gutenberg, very imaginative on his part, but also there was a HUGE need for what his imagination had to offer. Without that need, at that time, we probably would have given credit to someone else later.
Imagination/creativity is a part of the equation, but to apply it to a real world need is much more important to make an 'invention'.
I suspect fiction is very good at supplying vocabulary for naming technology once it is instantiated, but on the whole the ideas come from almost entirely different directions to the fictional ideas (and thus it is unrealistic to claim the fictional idea as a precedent.)
A couple of 'near misses' I can think of are mobile phones and 3D virtual environments.
Mobile phones have similar functions to Star Trek communicators, but I seriously doubt Star Trek had much to do with the development of mobile phones. Instead technology made it possible to take baby steps that ended up with a teeny , robust, voice communication system. (Which still is nothing like a communicator if you look at it critically.)
The various fictional virutal environments (such as Neuromancer or Snow Crash) have yet to eventuate, and when they do are much more likely to come out of Ultima than some serious business drive. (Why? In part because they are actually really dumb interfaces, bringing across all the disadvantages of the physical world to the virual world. Yay!)
On the other hand when real developments eventually come along that have similar properties to fictional ideas it is really handy to steal terminology. Mostly because the words actually mean something as opposed to the newly invented word 'frozbidget' which is not obviously to do with- say- a virtual representation of yourself in an immersive 3-dimensional enviroment.
The other reason I don't think fiction is a strong guide is that Ideas are Cheap and Doing Stuff is Hard. In University we come to value Ideas, but once you hit the real world it turns out that there are lots more ideas than there is capability to do them. And most ideas are not really goers. In fact ideas in isolation don't really work- they need a supporting caste of thousands (of ideas) before they can even be called a technology.
And while a fiction author can easily gloss over the intermediate steps of how the idea became succesful, we can't in the real world. In practice the means often define the ends.
Finally there is an error of observation that often makes it seem like fiction has influenced technology. In reality there are just so many damn ideas in fiction that anything that pops up in reality probably has some kind of precedent in fiction- even if it actualy had no influence on the real devleopment of the technology.
Your "illustration" stating that a sufficiently complex system can't be emulated without some kind of understanding simply begs the question. It sits upon the foundation of it's own presumption.
Arguing the Chinese room is like arguing the truth value of the statement "I am lying". It contains a self referential loop (the definition of semantics) that evades logical analysis.
The extra credit problem is flawed: using data compression it is possible to build an algorithm that does not "already contain shakespeare" that is able to perfectly identify shakespeare.
I neither write nor type that fast, and it's difficult to write, listen, and digest at once. With chat you would just read and save the thread if useful.
I've never taken a class over the internet, but it would be nice to have a record of a class and digest the information during class.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Yes, it does seem obvious at first that you could customize the recognizer for any particular person's speech pattern and achieve an agreeable solution.
However, the lessons of the parent posts must be taken into account; that which one can imagine to be so is not necessarily so, and using a particular technology instead of solving a particular problem gets the cart before the horse.
The point then is that in almost every case there is another solution *not using speech* that is a better solution than the best speech solution. The cost of customization for each user strongly outweighs simpler solutions that work better for a majority of accessibility challenged users.
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Arthur C. Clarke and the geosynchronous satellite. Yessir, it was Clarke who proposed the idea of a satellite rotating in the equatorial plane with the same angular velocity of the earth so that it always remains above the same spot on the Earth's surface. Ok, so it was in a scientific paper and not a story, but still I'm sure he originally thought of it as a plot for one of his stories.
You can see his article here.
I have found a truly wonderful proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, but unfortunately this sig is too small to contain it.
I've seen far too many non-essential inventions to believe that necessity is the mother of (all) invention...unless you count "necessity" for something to do, for fun, for impressing someone...etc.
Imagination inspires fiction, fiction inspires imagination...a circle of life.
WE AREN'T MORONS.
WE KNOW WESTERN PROPOGANDA WHEN WE SEE IT.
ONLY AMERICANS WOULD BE STUPID ENOUGH TO FALL FOR THAT NONESENSE.
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It's also very good at removing nuances in speech or facial expressions that prevent listeners from taking offense, or not understanding the joke. It may leave thought, but it may not be the thought you thought you left.
:)
Well, thats what emoticons are for
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There's more opportunities for discussion on the 'net but the discussions you find quickly fall into the classical patterns of faulty reasoning. All the cheap debating tricks come out when you don't have to show your face.
Oh, maybe a round or two of civil commentary but then out come the strawmen, red herrings, regurgitated memes, other crap, and then the insults.
All science fiction is about social commentary, if it is intended seriously at all.
And yes, we used to watch Science Fiction movies for product ideas, at IBM. Pick a movie, go in the conference room for the Thursday night brainstorming session, and then write down everything you see that you think you can implement, and everything that comes to mind as a result of that. Then everyone reads their list, making no comments, and people write down what they think of as a result of hearing the lists read.
Quite effective, actually.
-- Terry
"Anything can happen..." That struck me. The other morning I was making eggs for the kids breakfast. I typically break 5-6 eggs, pour in some milk and scramble. As I poured the milk out, I was almost floored into some dreamlike state as I watched it go in slow motion. I watched the milk's first few droplets hit the surface of an unscrambled egg yolk, and watched it cascade over to the side in a purely random pattern. It struck me at that instant, the stunning, incredible randomness of existense, and the pure folly of humans attempting to exact a sence of order. I knew the action I had just witnessed could never be reproduced, exactly. Close approximations could be attempted, but even to the molecular level, the randomness would burst through. Sorry for the rant / tangent?
When I read a fictional concept of something I'm already interested in I'm inspired in the sense that I tend to take that fictional version and nit pick it... oh that parts great.. that part is silly.. done that already.
Example:
In Distraction (by Bruce Sterling) they have roaming bands of high-tech nomads. I happen to be a geek that likes to move around a lot and enjoys my freedom. I am interested in wireless computing and wearables. A lot of Sterlings described tech from this book was right down my alley. Based on his idea of decentralized wireless phones I designed and built my own that uses WiFi and a handheld Linux based system.
Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson also really push my buttons.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
A recent example of SciFi influencing (predicting?) world polity is the concept of Anglosphere , coined by Neal Stephenson in The Diamond Age. It refers to a "natural", cultural-political unity amongst Anglo-saxon countries. As the war against Iraq appears to illustrate this concept, the phrase has come into widespread use, serving as the title of a recent book apparently intended to rally Britons against the EU.
I've never taken a class on the Internet, but I did take a California Bar Exam review course from BarBri in a classroom watching videotapes. It was a non-interactive experience, and thus less likely to be of benefit than interactive distance learning.
But I did learn an important lesson about learning while taking this class. The stimulation that a student receives in class must be fine-tuned to each student, otherwise it's worthless. While watching videotapes of learned scholars talk about Contracts, Constiutional law and the like, I realized that a lot of it was very very boring.
So I brought my palm pilot and played Solitare over and over again during the lectures. This multitasking was enough to allow me to not spend too much of my attention on the lecture, and it kept me from being too bored to learn. It's important to pay full attention to something that you are being exposed to for the first time. But, if it's a review course, it's easy to sit their and think "Damn it, I know this already, I'm checking out", and then tune out completely.
Soltaire was, for me, just the right amount of mindless entertainment to allow me to listen to the lecture without losing my mind. And it worked - for me. I managed to pass the bar on the first time around, while studying on my own terms.
What's the point here? The point is that distance learning has to give students the proper amount of stimulation - or it's a waste of time. Students can do things (like what I did) to help focus themselves to the proper level of concentration, but too much stimulation causes overload (like my Differential Equations class). Too little stimulation, and the students will tune out and ignore the important points when the occur.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
I think you cannot involve distant learning by all means. Some educations, like mine, are focused on team collaboration, self-organising, user centred design (a lot of fieldwork) and modelling. Eventhough it seems to be a perfect solution to have distant education, it is not always very helpful. Many times we just need to meet personally to get inspiration or a "kick in our butt" in a process, and surely how can anyone survive without social relations (here I am thinking of cake and coffee, very popular in our country ;)
Theoretical studies, like economy, marketing, engineering (some part of it) and many others can surely be done from home, because most time at school is just wasted anyway (I took a bachelor degree in International Economy, but I could surely have got the same by reading the books at home and send some questions by email).
(yes this can be compared with sex)
My ideas about what the future will look like are strongly influenced by Gibson and Stephenson, and to a lesser extent by Sterling and Banks. Both my previous company (www.tryllian.com) and my current company (www.izecom.com) are based on ideas I formed after reading a lot of cyberpunk novels.
no, I don't have a sig
gkrellm (see bottom of that page), for example, has (at least for the name) been inspired by the movie Forbidden Planet.
Do you know any other SF-inspired software that /.ers use a lot?
... Bach's polyphonic works for inspiration when I design programs.
My colleagues are horrified. Have you ever tried to change a couple of notes in a Bach fugue, and preserve the integrity of the whole work?
I think one of the best known examples of literature (SF) influencing the direction of technology is the waterbed. It was described in a story by Robert A. Heinlein and then actually created by someone completely different, who read the story and then gave the first waterbed to Heinlein and became rich.
Heinlein, of course, was already rich.
I read a lot of Heinlein, and I'm not rich at all. Go figure.
Well... should I be?
When I first read the Neuromancer trilogy (ok, so Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive sucked) around 1991, I hadn't really gotten into the whole social side of the Internet yet. This is to say, I'd mainly dealt with the technology, and played a few games.
I re-read the whole thing about 3 years later, along with Snow Crash, and went "whoah! That's incredible!" Especially in the case of Neuromancer and some other books in its genre, once I had some inkling of what was possible with networked technology, I realized that these works outline the whole proverbial "brave new world".
Let's face it, think about the mind-numbing everyday crap that we do with computers, such as shop online or program or talk to a friend on IRC or play network games. Do you realize just how incredible it really is, when you stop to consider? Now read Neuromancer again, written anno 1984, and think about it. How could books like that not have massively influenced how people go about creating and using technology?
I notice that, in conversation with more luddite friends, I tend to go overboard a bit in preaching the benefits of technology to everyone in the long run. However, reading Neal Stevenson's Cryptonomicon gave me a pretty good, workable idea on how a cryptosphere could be built using today's technology, and its implications for a completely anonymous, secure marketplace.
In fact, a startup I worked for based a fair amount of its technology on this concept, and some of the things we worked on back then (albeit I'm not claiming we invented them) such as M-payments, peer-to-peer trust and reputation-based transaction networks, decentralized commercial exchange) is starting to find its way into the mainstream.
Let's face it, the future is now, and to a large degree because of a bunch of nerds who were inspired by some piece of sci fi they read at some point, and by the masses who were willing to believe it could be possible.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Yes, I have found various Science Fiction works (as well as other fiction) to be inspiring. But all of the discussion here up-to-now seems to emphasize the technology. I think that the larger influence is when good scifi forces me to rethink the social implications of alternate or future worlds.
Take the original question's reference to The Diamond Age as an example. I read it soon after it came out, enjoyed it, and put it on the shelf; I rarely re-read anything, but felt like I might enjoy it again some day. A year later, my son was diagnosed with autism. As I learned about the disorder and made plans for helping him, I kept finding that my thoughts returned to Nell and her Primer (from the book, if you haven't read it). For me, it didn't matter that the actual technology of the Primer was out-of-reach, but rather, I was inspired by the general idea of technology being used to reshape the education of an underprivileged child. I re-read the book again, and during this second reading, I developed several, specific ideas for helping my son. I cannot say my solutions were direct implementations of Stephenson's work, but they were certainly inspired by it.
Four years later, when I left my regular, paid engineering position to form a non-profit which develops technology for disabled children, I still found myself inspired by some of Stephenson's ideas. For example, I believe one of the interesting ramifications of The Diamond Age is that Nell was actually being raised by Miranda, with the Primer serving only as a conduit for their relationship. I've found that idea recurring in some of my designs which have emphasized the importance of a live mentor to augment the technology.
This is but one example among many. I call on ideas from fiction every day, at least to the degree that great fiction has shaped my personality, my aspirations, and my values, while (less-frequently) specific ideas from fiction seem to reinforce and inform my concrete designs.
There must be wider phenomena at work here, because all of the great engineers I have worked with have all been voracious readers.
you just can't logically think that such a "chinese room" is possible, because language is so contexual, and information can (and must) be passed and retained. something not possible with a book.
..." However you cannot map one phrase to multiple answers, if it was just an "if asked this, give back that" kind of book.
It's easy to thought-experiment "all possible I/O," but that's simply not possible, and you know it.
Let's say the person outside of the room continues to ask "how many sentences have I spoken to to you?" repeatedly; with other conversation stuff inter-mixed.
Logically speaking, the proper answer would be "0, 1, 2, 3, 4,
In real world, the answer is probably "what the heck is wrong with you" after about the third time the question is repeated.
However, let's assume that the book has instructions where it will say stuff like "if you have heard this many sentences by now, answer this." This has a few problems:
1) if it's a "simple" if-then, you would need an infinite number of listings;
2) if it's a if-then that requires the person to calculate the number, you can no longer ignore the person in the room's intelligence;
3) if the book achieves the correct answer in some other ways, then you can no longer say that the book is simple, because in reality the book UNDERSTANDS chinese, but in a complex way (similar to your brain)
I havn't even gotten to the point where a new word is coined outside of the room and fed into it ("the definition of the word "__" is such and such" followed by "what is the definition of the word ___?)
so, Searle can take her argument and shove it.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
most ceiling lights in japan all comes with remote controls.
no joke
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Have you ever read a book that's not pulp sci-fi?
20,000 leagues under the sea,
Voyage to the moon,
Certainly inspired people I think.
There's also this Steam Car appearing in one of his novells.
Oh, maybe we should go back to Leonardo Da Vinci?
Adriaan Renting.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
This kind of heads back to "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Either someone is influenced by the idea/invention that was in the story, or they were inrfluenced by it. Anything someone reads does, at some point, filter into their subconcious, the only question is whether or not the technology the Sci-Fi book shows was an impression left on the author in the first place.
Mine too. Only I think my boss reads Dilbert and is heavily influenced by the PHB character. :)
My journal has hot
Makes me insanely angry everytime I read it. I shake with rage at the stupidity of James Taggert and his Progressive sniveling. Reading it can read like furthest Left rags. As if they read the book and choose the worng side.
This
I talked to various people involved in developing VRML back in 1995 or so, and they told me that to understand what they were trying to do, I should go read _Snowcrash_... (which I did)... so I think in some cases there is direct inspiration at work in coding. When coding though, you soon find that the books don't give you anything more than the highest-level perspective. But they can give you that. Firsthand though, I haven't experienced sci-fi inspiration in my coding.
The Negaverse?
Wait, is that your wand of power?
Amusing. Goes nice with my morning espresso.
At least one company is developing a phaser, and we've seen articles on /. before about scientists transporting atoms (we've still got 300 years to catch up with star trek here)
Research suggesting that Einstein was wrong about the speed of light may mean that faster-than-light travel is a possibility.
Though I don't have any examples off the top of me head, it's not a big leap to think that the same thing happens with books, so I'd say fiction can inspire and influence real science.
I've had my philosophy ramatically altered by concepts such as the "simple systems theory" outlined by Stephen Wolfram in "A New Kind of Science," as well as some of the other cause and effect type sci-fi (Cat's Cradle comes to mind).
As a result, I've been reducing the size of my applications, to allow complexity to grow naturally on simple rules rather than insert it artificially.
The result is I'm doing more with less code, and typing less for grander apps.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
She has been asked by publishers to justify looking at fiction as a way of talking about 'the real world.'
This is one of the silliest demands I think I've ever heard. Any decent fiction should have direct application on the "real world". Fiction is, by nature, an argument, relevant to real problems--a discourse on reality. As soon as publishers become disabused of the notion that fiction is pure entertainment, they'll be in much better shape.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman
I guess my fate was sealed when as a kid, I cried when they shut down HAL in 2001...
I really wanted to study Computer Psychology, I wanted to be Dr. Chandra from 2001/2010/etc. Now I do SysAdmin and Security for Linux...yes, it's a letdown, but it still is fun!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
The thread here is about whether what we've read (and seen) in SciFi influences the design of the things we make in the real world. You're saying people are naive about the pie-in-the-sky technologies they want to work, and okay...
But don't I remember reading that, when they started refining their interfaces, people designing virtual reality applications gradually tended more and more toward something that looked like the holodeck from Star Trek: The Next Generation? With the grid lines, for one example?
The fictional world did on some level inspire the real world design, if that's true. I thought that was what this post was about -- not "science fiction comes true" but rather "science fiction shapes what developers produce."
(And the people who said that about Gibson and optic nerves were joking, weren't they? Please, tell me they aren't living in Michael Moore's fictional world...)
Hands down, Snowcrash.
I was highly inspired by "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". It led me to rethink the aim of the site I maintain and gave me enough pie-in-the-sky ideas to last me years!
honnold.org - sometimes-rock band, all the time awesome forum
I have read the diamond age, I quite enjoyed it. The book in the story teaches children, essentially raises them.
:<UL>
What i wonder is what would be required to create a book like this?
Off the top of my head things that would be required are:
<OL>
<LI>voice and face recognition.
<LI>enough memory to
<LI>remember everything ever said by the child
<LI>teach a lifetime of knowledge
<LI>answer every single 'why' question
</UL>
<LI>we would also need the computer to learn, the book would grow up with the child
<UL>
basicly, we need to wait another 40 or 50 years before all the technological requirements would be met.
But, in my opinion, i dont see why this couldnt be done. Instead of going to normal school you would essentially be homeschooled, with a book teaching you instead of your mom/dad.
I think its really a cool idea.
Kyle
I think it's wiser to look at the greats of SF the way one would look at the greats of any other literary mode. SF or not, I think the moral rallying power is universal across quality literature.
The lessons are, in many ways, universal. Indeed, there are strong motif types running through SF that can connect to early human myths and non-SF literature. Consider a bog-standard SF story about thinking machines that go amok. This well connects back to Frankenstein, which, depending on one's perspective, may or may not be SF, and also connects back to early myths about golems.
What it may be is that SF is really the new wrapper for old tale types. We live in an age of technology rather than gods and magic, and so the tales are now told with technology. In the end, the thematic messages are the same.
As for some sort of "art school" establishment telling people to fall in line, I'd be curious to see you make all of classic literature fall under this heading. Literature is far too varied to be painted with a brush that broad.
Disclaimer: I make no claim as to the quality of my fiction writing. Personally, I think it sucks.
I was (and successfully completed) an English major with a creative writing emphasis at a 4-year university in Nebraska. One of the required classes for my senior year involved the submission of a portfolio. This portfolio was to be comprised of the best of my undergraduate work in the creative program, "best" being whatever materials I chose to submit, and the portfolio would be assessed, handed back for revision and resubmitted for a final grade.
I have a tendency to use sci-fi/fantasy themes in my writing because those are the genres I read. For my portfolio, I submitted a short story and a poem. Both contained urban fantasy elements, the story being more blatant in their use than the poem. I handed the portfolio in expecting, as the poster in the parent thread did, to be snubbed because of my subject matter. My professor's assessment was, interestingly enough, a validation and rebuttal of my original expectations.
I was told that my subject matter was unworthy of my talents as a writer. My professor stated that the fantasy genre was shopworn, and that my talents would be better spent examining more "real world" topics. However, my portfolio required very little revision and I received an A for the class.
I hope my story helps to illustrate the idea that mainstream "literary" people snub fantasy and sci fi because those genres are stereotypically filled with cliches and "bad" writing. I think that this stereotype is at least partially true. There is a good deal of garbage out there, though I won't mention any specifics since "garbage" is a very subjective term. However, the same literary people who believe in the stereotypes are almost always capable of recognizing "good" writing from their perspective, regardless of what genre they happen to categorize the material as.
A rather informative book on the capabilities of nanotechology. The wonderful prose with which Neal Stephenson writes is incredible. The characers, namely Colonel Napier, Nell, and Dr. X are highly amusing.
Actually, i've been working on a light speed drive based on the warp core from star trek.. it's almost complete... alas, it's tough to find dylithium crystals.
slightly off topic, but strange and boss-related none the less.
I came into work today and noticed a bottle of holy water on my boss' desk. It kind of reminded me of those Skin so soft bottles from Avon, but with a cute little gold cross. Now this is strange because my boss was born Moslem in Iran and is now approximately an atheist. And I work in a cancer research lab. So I asked him about it and he's apparently decided that it was still worth it to try it out, whether or not he believes in that brand of religion or not. So he's already sprinkled it on one coworkers' bench, and since her experiments are going really well, he wants to know if I want some too.
This is the same guy who gets all freaked out by me running 13 lanes on a gel, and who knocks on wood so often that I know the location of the nearest wooden object in most parts of the lab.
Now I kind of want to bring in those candles you can get in the supermarket - like the Virgin de la Candelaria ones. I can only imagine what the radiation safety guys would think if they saw this.
But, as others have noted, when the switch isn't physically handy, the mental effort to give the command might balance the locomotion costs. It is equivalent to "hey honey, could you turn on the light" as your partner walks past the switch.
In Minority Report Anderton asked for overhead lights, that is to say, a change in the light configuration. I'd love that capability in the kitchen when my hands are covered with wet ingredients and I need more task light. (I'm particularly sensitive to this problem right now, as the sun seems to set as I'm cooking, taking the room from bright sunlight to darkness mid-process).
| I think the reality will be more along the lines of lying
| on your bunk in your quarters and hooking your nervous
| system up to a computer. The computer would simulate
| any reality you wanted, and you could be joined by your
| fellow crew members just like participating in a big
| online game of Quake. For that matter, that's probably
| what being on duty would be as well...
yes -- you'll be a BORG.
usually novels that describe the Future,
are really about the PRESENT.
but the sci-fi setting allows you to look at
the IDEA in a situation without all the culturally
biased baggage that would inhabit a novel
with the same ideas set in a present that
too much resembled our own.
cheers,
john.
Ahem...I think it's worth pointing out that what you say is true for only some SF literature. Truly, a lot of the works from Gibson, Stephenson, Herbert, Clarke, etc. have been the kinds of work that have shaped minds, but the works of these writers exist surrounded by a deluge of SF adventure tripe.
And it was a SF author - Theodor Sturgeon - who analyzed that phenomenon off-the-cuff in an incedent at a science fiction convention. Story goes:
Little old lady at the hotel has noticed that there's an SF convention going on. She recognizes Sturgeon as an author from his nametag and asks him something to the effect of "You're one of those Science Fiction authors, aren't you?". Thinking he's being admired, Ted answers "Why, yes, I am." She says "But 90% of that stuff is shit!" To which he replys "Madam, 90% of EVERYTHING is shit." This formulation is now known as "Sturgeon's Law."
(I've given the canonical number form the current oral tradition. But when I first heard that, in the late '60s from a Sturgeon fan, the percentage quoted was 98.)
This strikes me as extremely perceptive - and just the kind of insight that good SF produces. Think about it. Take classical music, for instance. There was no doubt a LOT of junk when it was current. But what survived is part of the cream of that crop: Bach, for instance. Of COURSE there's a lot of rocket westerns. But there are also what-if stories (change one rule and see where it leads). And puzzle stories. And technichal speculation.
And most of them are wrong. But so what?
To paraphrase the forward of an HP Lovecraft anthology I own, it's as if, at some point, all the pulp western writers started replacing Lazy X Ranch with Planet X...six-shooters with laser pistols
And American Indians with Martians. Yep, exactly that DID happen. (I recall a cover from an early pulp magazine with a guy and a gal in cowboy outfits riding astradle 6-foot long V2 knockoff missiles across a desert scene. B-) ) Also take "true crime" or "wartime sabotage" and replace the crook or evil spy with a bug-eyed monster or mad scientist. And so on.
It doesn't matter whether the junk is there, as long as the good stuff is also there. The good stuff does its job, while the junk does ITS job - entertain the reader and make some money for the author and publisher.
But "the good stuff" in SF is precicely the stuff that meets the original criterion of this thread's base article: "fiction as a way of talking about 'the real world.'". That's what classic SF IS, and HAS BEEN since at least Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.
Indeed, there are strong motif types running through SF that can connect to early human myths and non-SF literature. Consider a bog-standard SF story about thinking machines that go amok. This well connects back to Frankenstein, which, depending on one's perspective, may or may not be SF, and also connects back to early myths about golems.
And then Asimov got hold of it and stood it on its head, with the "Three Laws of Robotics" - and how THOSE could go wrong - or right. (Not to mention Jack Williamson's _With Folded Hands_ and _The Humanoids_.) There's a problem with creating beings. Let's see how we can solve it, and get the benefits without the disasters. Oops, that solution may have problems. Let's try another.
What it may be is that SF is really the new wrapper for old tale types. We live in an age of technology rather than gods and magic, and so the tales are now told with technology. In the end, the thematic messages are the same.
And there's nothing new under the sun? You have a good insight, but I think you're pushing it too far.
Yes, SF didn't arise fully formed from the forhead of John Campbell. It draws on a lot of previous forms - sometimes with admirable results, sometimes disasterous. Speculative fiction is an evolution on things that went before. Its roots can be traced back as far as the Gre
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I couldn't agree more geekoid.
"ignoring the problems of today" is a misquote from ebyrob that shows he missed the fundamental point at hand.
done by ignoring, "what will get the job done today" and paying attention to "what will bring me closer to an ultimate solution."
This statement is not about ignoring the responsibilities to your installed base of customers or slacking off at the office.
To use geekoid's Apple computer example: I cannot count the number of times I needed to get the X register into the Y or viceversa to do something on the 6502. I have no doubt that the soon-to-be-Apple designers also got tired of PHA, TXA, TAY, PLA every time they wanted to do this, when what the chip really needed was a TXY (and of course TYX) instruction (yes, a swap XY would be even cooler). Adding these two instructions would have saved rom, made more stack space available, increased execution speed, improved on their ability to write modular code by allowing them to specify two additional registers of input data to called functions with significantly decreased overhead for "arranging" them prior to the function call, and it would have increased the orthogonality of the instruction set.
Whoo Hoo! Do we have all our buzzwords accounted for? Steven and Woz didn't bother to lobby their manufacturer for this incremental though academically correct improvement. Their inspiration seemed to be, "If we add these X features, ten times as many people will be able to use these things." This is a process that repeated. Today they produce a computer, not only usable to children, but that children like to use. The creators of the LOGO language, and Xerox, and IBM can be credited for the most of the "patentable" advances, but Apple's products are inspired.
Free software existed before Linus released his kernel. Unix certainly predates it. I would argue Linus Torvalds is less the "inventor of the Kernel" than the Wright Brothers are the "inventors of aircraft." And yet it's easy to see as I type this in anti-aliased fonts, on a Wintel-free box that his small portion of the pursuit of a free operating system has changed the way the way we use computers. Whether any portion of his kernel is a patentable leap of technological savvy isn't really relevant to the question of whether it's inspired.
These two stories have in common hard working people who set goals that were nothing like "normal" at the time they set them. They were visionaries in the purest sense.
"Put the designer in a room with an existing implementation and let them watch the process to be improved unfold before them"
This is a great way to make a faster bread slicer, a more road hugging skateboard, or a better tooth pick. But these things are hardly the class of inspiration one gets from reading good SciFi. Whereas, friendly computers and the Free flow of information have been integral parts of SciFi for a very long time.
In Ebyrob's defense. The Replicator is quite a leap from the self-setting microwave, but it is certainly a step closer to that great scene in The Fifth Element where the beautiful LeeLoo who has almost no command of the language has just put a food disc in a large bowl, shoved it in something vaguely like a microwave, and a few seconds later she is walking away with a bowl, stuffed full of roasted bird, smiling wide, and practicing one of her new words: "Chiiiiiiikeeen."
Star Trak.
Their design was almost entirely based on Captain Kirk's communicator.
I personally try to be creative and come up with my own designs, but I do take inspiration from others, including sci-fi.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
One application decidedly inspired by science fiction is 3dmosmon it displays the status of your [open]mosix cluster in a 3d manner similliar to the 'shell' in the movie hackers. The version im working on even more so.
a few "warning" labels that could be attached?
I sure as hell hope no one ran that in Demo Linux on their grandmother's computer. That would suck.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
how to reformat a hard drive partition from this.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I hadn't realized it, but your right. Anyone stupid enough to run it will just be overwriting a sack of crap.
(I am a full-time Linux user because winshit2k fucked up its own partition table and lost a year's worth of source code. I've never been back to the dark side.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
DTMF tones for our sluttiest ex girlfriend's number.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
A signature is usually creative, and designed to be memorable. A name is any one of a finite number of character/digit sequences.
Are you more likely to remember someone as "Anne" or "Pregnant Teen Girl"? "Joe" or "Spiky Head Dude"? "SHEENmaster" or "Pimps His Latest Website Guy"?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Nah, I'm not suggesting Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science qualifies as science fiction, but rather noting the counterbalance provided by Greg Egan's Permutation City which I read as light relief while slowly working through NKS's copious notes ... all this is quest of some ideas for pushing the envelope with cellular automata development ... an area I keep returning to.
Egan posits the discovery of a cellular automata implementation, from which emerges, given limitless hardware, not just an analogue of biology but ultimately a (very) alien form of intelligence. There's not much in Egan's writings which could be seriously tackled during my life time. He presses fast forward way to hard for that. But at least he provides a gentler reminder than Wolfram that we have barely started exploring the possibilities.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
cf. Critique of Pure Reason
Ten years ago I was discussing Super Nintendo games on Prodigy, now that I think about it. Okay, okay, I guess I should have said "15 years ago", or "40 years ago my parents couldn't", or something accurate instead. I still stand by my point in the abstract, though.
I often teach science fiction in the classroom, especially when dealing with new media. In fact, Donna Haraway (someone might already have mentioned this) said we should look to our science fiction writers for strategies to organize the way we think and learn. I find sf valuable for beginning the discussion on the effects of new media on our perception of the world. My blog has many instances of this idea. I often use MOOs, bulletin boards, mailing lists, and web sites to extend the classroom outside its traditional institutional boundaries.
Perhaps the Prof couldn't be bothered to read it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I believe he did assess the piece. I took his comment to mean he thought the genre was overdone, but that my writing and the story were satisfactory.