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Engineering From Science Fiction
An anonymous reader writes "NASA's long planning horizon today details a history of science facts and their sci-fi roots. The study is based on a collaborative European Space Agency project, 'Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications.' More than 200 technical dossiers are described--from holodecks to terraforming comets--but one of the fundamental questions posed is: what is the best communication device to scale-up expert opinion itself? Other than some future, expert version of the internet itself, is that a a collaborative Matrix? Other such interesting collections are from: MIT Media Lab's ThinkCycle, Da Vinci Institute, and the unpretentious HalfBakery of ideas."
But this seems pretty stupid to me. I've never really understood the idea of science fiction authors as inventors. Asimov no more invented humanoid robots or neural networks than Da Vinci did helicopters. The job of science fiction writers is to speculate about what might happen and write an interesting story which supposes that it does. The job of inventors is to find useful things that no one has yet made but which are possible with current technology. It may sometimes happen that a science fiction writer imagines something and twenty years later an inventor creates it, but trying to make this process a matter of policy seems like foolishness of the highest kind.
lysergically yours
Has anyone read this book? The author describes a plan to colonise the oceans, space, the moon, mars, the Kuyper belt,... All this in a way that sounds 'doable'. An interesting read, I wonder if they read it and what they thought of it.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
So heres a silly question. If I'm a sci-fi writer, and I describe a non-existant device in such away that it CAN Be engineered from my description, could that count as prior art in a patent dispute?
.It's too early in the morning.
I mean, I know it seems silly. But if a sci-fi writer did come up with the idea first, should NASA get all the glory for making it real?
I don't know. . . Maybe that's a dumb thought. .
Or at least technology imitating art. It has always been the case. You need real free thinkers to come up with some ideas. These people are best not knowing the technical "boundaries" of the current state of the art. If the worried about these boundaries techology would never move on.
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I think anyone who has worked in the NASA environment (myself included) will agree with me that probably 95% of all employees and contractors at that agency love Sci Fi Novels and Movies. The study points out that NASA doesn't necessarily rule out far fetched ideas (Planet Colonization, Space Stations or Nuclear Interplanetary Vehicles) if they can forseeably become a reality when the technology and budget allows it. I think the US Space and Science Programs regardless of the criticism by the press and public is still one of the few places today where Science Fiction can become reality only if far reaching creativity and goal setting is allowed to flourish. There will be some mistakes along the way and all those participating in the various projects and missions realize that risk and accept those odds. To Err is Human.
The sleeper has awaken!
Did anyone read that one? While not completely related to the article, it is a story about a group of people who have a vehicle with the ability to hop between universes-- and interestingly enough they start hopping into universes that are actually based on the old stories they read... Oz, the world of John Carter, the warlord of Mars, etc. In the book it turns out the all these great universes either were created by the author who though them up, or the author that though that they had thought them up somehow "knew" about them without ever visting them.
In the end they ended up hooking up with Lazarus Long and his cohorts from Methuselah's Children.
If some scientist comes up with the device they came up with, think about how cool it would be-- Although I'm not sure if I would want to visit the Spawn universe, or a couple of the other nastier ones...
"Look! There! Evil, pure and simple from the Eighth Dimension!" --Buckaroo Banzai
Heh. Countless? No, not really. There's only been a few authors who've used it.
If you find some that you don't see mentioned on the Ansible page on Wikipedia, then please be sure to add them!