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SF Author Robert J. Sawyer Looks at 2014
Alex writes "Canadian science fiction author Robert J Sawyer takes a positive look at a typical day in 2014 for Backbone Magazine, looking at where both scientific and sociological advances of the next decade will take us. Sawyer is a multi-Aurora, Hugo, and Nebula award winner, and was one of the first major authors to use a website to promote his work. Readers might associate some of these innovations and ideas from his fiction."
"robokitchen will have an entire hot (but low carb!) breakfast waiting for you"
Sorry, but my prediction for the next few years is the quick demise of the Atkins diet. Nothing that has you excluding entire parts of your diet can be healthy. I can't wait for this idiotic craze to go away.
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
I happen to enjoy Sawyer's novels, so I can only conclude that this is a cleverly subtle satire of pollyanna-ish amateur futurology.
I thought the job of a science fiction writer was to author stories that are of a certain genre, generally, but not exclusivly dealing with speculations about the future.
That is very much different than predicting the future.
Science Fiction can be good even if the predictions are "wrong".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Sounds just like the stuff predicted in the '30's that would be in place by the '70s. Except they had flying cars to look forward to. We don't even get that any more.
BC
Maybe it's just because it's a projection just 10 years in the future...
But I think it's more because everything is based on computing, microchips, faster computers and resultant automation. He's not thinking "out of the box".
I bet if people from the 1920's see the world today, they would be alarmed by the technology and hitech gadgets (simple automatic doors for that matter) around them. I want to feel like that when I think of the future - not just some old computer capable of working really really fast.
I want us to live up to the Arthur C. Clarke's vision ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."). I think we've done pretty well upto this point (except ofcourse for all the -ve uses of technology (weapons) that we've figured out, but we need to get off our asses if we are to avoid Stagnation and other pitfalls that this "corporate society" averse to innovation, selfless contribution and *real* art is imposing upon us.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
There is no way that we are going to see some of the major infrastructure changes this guy envisions in only 10 years. He talks about roads with chips embedded in them allowing self driving cars. Will the technology be availabale? sure, it already is, will it be deployed in 10 years? no way. it takes governements 20-30 years to replace roads. He also talks about a lot of other things like smart toilets and smart kitchens, that may become available in new houses, but 95% of the houses out there will still not have them in only 10 years. I could go on, but I feel what this guy is showing, may be how bill gates lives in 10 years, but not your average citizen of Canada or the US.
My prediction that what we will actually do is make cell phones gaudier, some current technologies will get "streamlined", the cars will stay on the ground, and we'll remain technologically stagnant, using old technologies with more marketing annoyances like always.
(think about what's in our day to day lives that's actually new in the last 10 years or so. The more I learn about computer science, the more I realize that most of the time we are re-discoving solutions to problems that were solved decades ago)
At least, not to me. Maybe for the well-to-do, they'll have the fancy alarm system that monitors your brainwaves... but people like me will refuse to spend $5000 for such a system and prefer to rely on a $10 alarm from Target no matter what it does to our REM cycle. Besides, the cure for getting up cranky has been around for years, we call it "coffee"...
Electric cars that drive themselves- yeah, sure that'll happen. I can see all those angry SUV owners just thrilled about driving along *with* traffic. What about those who can't afford such cars? It'll be at least 10 years after such cars are introduced before the less affluent can buy them 2nd hand.
The flatscreen in your office... reminds me of "Spaceballs" and the bathroom monitor. "Sorry you cant see me boss, my video feed's broken. Yes, again..."
A humaniod robot to cook and clean... what are they giving them away free? Sigh... maybe Bill Gates will live like this in 10 years... but not me.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Anyway, I'm not trying to beat this guy's ideas to death. After all, if these predictions of the future that show up all the time have taught us anything, it's that we have absolutely no clue what the future is going to be like. But it's still fun to guess.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I'm not sure I like this. I mean, where is the data going? To my doctor? I think that would overload him, getting three piss tests per day from all of his patients. Or is the toilet so smart that it can do its own diagnosis?
How does the toilet know it's me? Do I have to swipe a smart card before I pee? (There's a joke here about "logging in" but I'm not going to make it.)
What happens when the dog drinks from the toilet?
What about someone who's been convicted of a drunk driving offense; would these become mandatory? What if they pissed in the sink instead?
Would I get a lecture from my toilet after a night of hard drinking? Would it complain if I ate too many jalapenos?
Seriously, I don't think we'll have self-cleaning toilets by 2014, much less Tommy the Talking Toilet.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
it seems to be that this guy is just talking out of his ass. he basically threw in a bunch of buzzwords and did no research at all in giving his (clearly uninformed, imho) opinions. while undoubtedly some of these predictions will occur to some degree, to assume, for example, that the (basically nonexistent at present) nanomedicine field will be so ripe as to allow "clearing plaque out of your arteries, and getting rid of dangerous chemicals" is laughable The contact lenses feeding you Terminator-esque telemetry also strikes me as a bit silly. Now don't color me luddite just yet - i agree that many of his predictions will come eventually true, and wish for them as much as the next guy (nanotechnology could very well hold the key to "curing" aging, for example) - had this article been labeled "2054", i might have been a bit more on board. basically, you could pick any joe on slashdot and he would give you an equally accurate, or more so, prediction of near-future society in line with current technological trends (ew i sound like roland piquepaille). so if predicting the future is your day job, its a good thing you have that whole sci-fi writer thing to back you up :)
Do you really want soccer moms in Expeditions (which will probably be upwards of sixty feet long in ten years) talking on their 'wristbands', putting on makeup, and screaming at their children while driving in THREE dimensions?
Every paragraph should have ended with, "and the government will be wacthing you."
I like Mr. Sawyer (he's an enthusiastic attender of conventions, willing to discuss his work with quite small rooms of readers) but this article made me shake my head. I read it the other day and tried to hit on Backbone's web site to respond. (Uh-uh. No forums.)
Virtually every single prediction is well over 10 years away, and not just because of politics. Self-driving cars interfacing with millions of chips buried in the road? Even if made workable tomorrow, and tested and proven six-sigma safe the day after (try 20 years for each) we only repave *major* roads once every 20 years. Accelerating the schedule would double local taxes! Sheesh.
And the rest of them run like that. I think I read this same stuff in 1994 at the height of the machines-of-loving-grace-will-run-the-world burbling from WIRED in its heyday. And always, always, this stuff is prefaced with Moore's Law. Because of Moore's Law, any prediction involving intelligence in machines is "OK", no matter how outlandish.
But we've had over 30 years of Moore's Law since the first microchips and we still have computers that are dumb as rocks, just 1M times faster at being dumb as rocks. They barely can parse words reliably, have no idea what a sentence means, and definitely can't *see*. So, sorry, no low-carb-cooking, kitchen wash-up robots in a lousy 10 years.
Some of it was at least techically possible; the "every TV show ever available" is obviously a political problem, if they can solve that, they can do the appliances and the networking. But anything involving, say, fiber to the home - i.e. more than ONE custom-download HDTV show at a time - will require over 10 years just to get the fiber strung.
Shit takes TIME.
I was around in 84. I was around in 94. And now I'm still around in 2004. And guess what? Not a god damn thing has changed. Sure we got the internet and cell phones. But 95% of our lives back then is still the same now.
We wiped our asses with toilet paper in 84 and 94, we do it now and we'll still be doing it in 2014.
we were driving around in our grounded internal combustion engine boxes in 84 & 94 and we still do it now. We'll still do it in 10 years.
Sure we have a *few* new things. We have cheaper and smaller cell phones, so some people have them. We have the internet and faster computers.
He's claiming faster computers will change our lives because they get 128 times faster every ten years. WOW that's incredible (/sarchasm). What has that brought us the last 2 decades?
weather reporters are not any more accurate than they used to be where I live.
He talks about how our toilets and toothbrushes will analyze our fluid samples and tell us if we're getting sick and what we have. Dream on buddy. I work as an R&D biochemist and let me tell you, product development in these areas take MAJOR time. Not 10 years. If we dont have working prototypes in peoples homes for trials right now, the ordinary person won't have diddly in 10 years. You can run into a snag (murphy's law, you WILL run into a snag) and take 5-10 years just to work out one detail so you can get back on track.
He talks about how roads in 10 years will have microchips embedded so they can drive your car for you. That one had me on the floor laughing. My city hasn't paved the roads with normal asphalt in 10 years. You think they're gonna repave all the roads with stuff that doesn't even exist right now and be done in 10 years? L O L. They've taken 6 months and counting just to redo a 500m strech of road outside my house. They're still not done.
Sure, I wont dispute that we'll have some of the technology to do some of the stuff this guy talks about in 10 years. But at most it will still be a pipe dream in somebody's laboratory. no way it will be a fully functional 100% coverage public infrastructure or cheap consumable.
Don't be fooled by this guy because he writes good sci-fi. That's exactly what he's written here, good sci-fi. Your life will still be the same in 2014.
I predict most of his predictions will fall through. What he needs to do, is look at areas that are already functional in laboratories and are already cheap to do. Certain kinds of gene therapy for example. The ones to do with enhancing muscle growth. Inserting broken myostatin genes, or extra IGF1 genes into muscle cells. These are things that are already working in animal models (ie. good enough for athletes to say fook it and try it) and are also cheap to do because you only need to prepare the material once and you can administer it at no cost and produce more very cheaply.
You want my prediction? in 8 years, watch for a shitload of olympic records to get thrashed.
Liberty.
Yeah, but this guy is a nutcase. What he describes isn't the world of the future. It's a world of fairy elf magic.
;)
The things he describes are quite possible, but not *economically feasable*. Why don't we all have robot butlers and maids cleaning up after us now? Is it because we don't have the technology? Of course not - it is because of economic feasability. There's just too many parts, and too much effort, required to produce just *one* of the "miraculous future inventions* that people have been promoting since the birth of sci-fi.
A brain wave monitor alarm clock? Hello, an alarm clock is designed to *Wake You Up At A Given Time*. People get frustrated enough with those "slowly wake you up" alarm clocks, and now we're supposed to get an EEG involved here?
A robokitchen? Aparently noone ever told him that the price of robotics doesn't follow Moore's laws. We've had robots building cars for ages, but you still don't see them in peoples' homes. And, since this would require changes of an integral part of the house, it would require modernization of housing design, something that's hardly been done in a hundred years.
An electronic ink newspaper? Yeah, I saw that in a copy of "Amazing Stories!" from the 1940s - it worked by radio waves. Noone used them then, noone's going to use them now. The closest you see? The internet, of course
Smart toilets and sensor toothbrushes are going to give us digital readouts (of non-ridiculous price) of what is wrong with us, and health problems will be "Trivially Easy to Correct"? Sounds like what people said when the first antibiotics and disease tests were developed. Sorry, but pathogens don't play along with our "miracle cure" scenarios.
Half of people telecommuting? Yeah, telecommuting really took off, didn't it? Rote memorization out of schools? Yeah, that's really happened. Electric cars in all of the streets? That notion's been around since the 60s, and it is little closer to reality (again, thanks to *economics*).
I could keep going, but I won't bother you. This sort of stuff is just plain dumb, and at best 2-5% of what he says will happen (perhaps, say, Cell/PDA/camera/E-books, although not on your wrist, because that would be awkward).
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
"Yeah, but this guy is a nutcase. What he describes isn't the world of the future. It's a world of fairy elf magic."
The man is a science fiction writer, what do you expect? If you're stupid enough to actually take the article as an accurate description of 10 years from now, then You Just Don't Get It(tm).
In fact, Sawyer is one of the more brilliant and creative SF writers of our decade... go to his site and read some of the premises of his novels. I've read a few of his and throughly enjoyed them, and have a few more of his books on the way.
Give the man a break: he writes fake stuff for a living, you cannot honestly expect him to try to extrapolate perfectly the world 10 years from now.
What's changed in 10 years?
In 1994 finding tech support for any gadget (not just computers!) usually meant calling the tech support number for the company. Now a tech support number is the method of last resort. Online docs, newsgroups, and Google are the way to go.
In 1994 my vision was 20/450 in each eye. It's 20/15 now -- BETTER than "normal".
In 1994 cell phones were heavy, expensive, and worked in miniscule service areas. My unlimited long distance now means that I've discontinued long distance service on my landline entirely. I'm seldom inaccessible now -- unless I CHOOSE to be.
Money? I live 90% of my financial life electronically. In 1994 I still made trips to the bank to hand a paper paycheck to a teller. I spent ages trying to reconcile my checkbook to a once-a-month bank statement. Paying bills meant getting back to that stack in the corner when you had money in your account. Now I schedule my bills for payment as soon as the arrive -- set to deliver after payday whenever necessary. A list of every transaction I've made is ALWAYS available to me. I can keep my financial program reconciled to my bank's records DAILY. I usually carry under $10 in cash these days since my debit card works almost anywhere. Oh, remember PRICE TAGS? Little stickers with numbers on them that had to be read and manually punched in to a cash register. Very few stores use them now.
As for computers -- I have a LAPTOP that substitutes for a whole table top covered in computer junk. The house is wireless -- I get the information I want when I want it and where I want it. For that matter, my wife's wi-fi enabled Palm Pilot is about as powerful as my 1994 desktop -- which ran WINDOWS 3.1 (shudder) and cost 4 times as much. I still don't know what to do with that big table, though...
In 1994 I had to drive to the video store to rent a movie. Now, I usually just pick one off iControl. When I do choose a movie, it's a DVD which I can play on my TV or my laptop if I'm traveling. Same thing for music. I'm either buying songs from iTunes (and ONLY paying for the songs I want instead of buying a whole album with only two decent offerings on it) or I'm listening to Virgin Radio streaming live from LONDON (I'm in North Carolina).
Speaking of traveling, when I'm driving in an unfamiliar area I connect my PowerBook to my GPS. My position is indicated in realtime overlaying a map of the area. No more getting lost!
While I'm typing this to an international gathering of techies, I'm also chatting with my mom who is alone today via instant messaging.
The changes since 94 have been HUGE.
Life is short: void the warranty.
When I was a little kid (1974) our grocery store got its first automatic door. It was amazing, just like Star Trek! I went in and out of it shouting "Scotty, give me more power!" and "Red alert!" while my mother shopped. How many of you (who are parents) would be separated from your six-year-old kid in a grocery store today? How many of your kids play pick-up games of street ball with their neighbors? How many of them roam around the neighborhood on bicycles, unsupervised, like we did in the 70's?
In the neighborhood where I live today, lawns are immaculately kept, and the streets are devoid of children. They live here. It's just that their parents never let them see the light of day, except during organized, structured activities that they drive to in their monster SUV's.
I, for one, would trade all my gadgets to give my neighborhood kids the freedoms we had then.
There's just too many parts, and too much effort, required to produce just *one* of the "miraculous future inventions* that people have been promoting since the birth of sci-fi.
Really...is that a fact? I'm glad not everyone is like you and discounts everything in sci-fi because they didn't get their personal robot or flying car as predicted. Remember the "fi" in si-fi is FICTION--it is MADE UP in the minds of those imagining what the future will bring, and in the case of sci-fi dramaticised to fit with the story.
As for "miraculous future inventions" being economically infeasable, I'd say your blanket statment is quite inaccurate:
You don't pay much attention to the old Star Trek episodes do ya? Don't know bout you, but the flip-open communicators sure look like the cellphone I carry with me today. Today's flat-panel monitors also look a lot like the screens sitting on the conference tables in many of those episodes too. Even though we don't all strap our gagets to our wrist like Dick Tracey did our radios, music players, pagers, phones and so on could certainly be made small enough to wear on our wrists if we wanted to. Electronic newspapers bed by radio waves--well I already read the news online, and we have tablet PCs with 802.11x *radio* communication, and there has been a lot of advancement in display technology that allows for flexible, reflective electronic display AND flexible ICs.
Even as recently as ten years ago someone like you probably would've said "a drive smaller than a pen that holds hundreds of megabytes? That would cost a fortune and would be too easy to lose! Nobody needs to carry that much data anyways!" Well, today I carry a keychain around that holds 256 MB and I can tell you it comes in very handy when you have to (re-)install WinXP or 2k on-site and need the security updates/firewall/etc to keep it from puking 30 seconds after getting on a network. If you aren't a techie its great for carrying photos and movie clips around so you can just plug in at a friends and show off your kids, garden, pets, etc. Step back and think about that...sounds a bit "sci-fi" if you remember life in the 80s eh?
Smallpox used to mean certain death...now a "trivially easy" vaccination prevents infection and the disease is basically extinct. That's one pathogen that rolled over and died in the face of a "miracle cure" scenario. Diabetes also meant certain premature death, and is now "trivially" treatable and in some cases curable. Cancer survival rates have also dramatically risen even within my own lifetime (and I'm not that old). Cyctic Fibrosis used to kill all its sufferers before they reached adulthood, and now they can expect to live far longer.
I'd argue with you about telecommuting--it's true that far less than half of people telecommute exclusively, but I'd say there are a LOT of people who do so part-time at least--and I did full-time for awhile. Even so, technology has completely changed business culture. How often does the secretary do dictation in short-hand anymore? How many typewriters are in your office? How often do you get an inter-office memo on PAPER anymore?
When did you last set foot in a school? "Rote memorisation" is already all but gone. Kids barely learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide and then they are given calculators--I didn't get to use one until ninth grade, now elementary kids have them! High school kids all get graphic scientific calculators--it's pretty close to mandatory now. In high school we only used computers in business-ed courses and after class to do homework, now they're all over the place.
Electric cars in all the streets--HELLO, we are already heading there, I'm starting to see more and more Toyota Prius and Honda Insight cars out there, and more hybrid models are cropping up (even SUVs), and with oil heading to $50/barrel I don't think the trend towards electric power will slow--the economics are shifting.
You might want to re-think your opinion about "just plain dumb" and 2-5% accuracy. The details and timing might be off in sci-fi but an amazing amount af this stuff does indeed show up in the future.
While the article paints a picture of some kind of Uptopia, frankly it scares the shit out of me. I want technology to progress, but I don't want it part of every aspect of my life. I don't want the toilet to know more about my own health than I do. I don't want my car to drive itself. I want the technology to exist, but I want control.
There are too many things to go wrong here. What happens if there's some catastrophic failure (i.e., BSOD)? How will everyone continue to go about their lives? What if someone cracks the system (whcih can and will happen, if this is really what our future is like) and starts monitoring my every move, if the government doesn't do it already?
Not my idea of a bright future...
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.