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."

Comments

Atkins

[Shky]

"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.

Okaaaay ...

[Bearpaw]

I happen to enjoy Sawyer's novels, so I can only conclude that this is a cleverly subtle satire of pollyanna-ish amateur futurology.

His job?

[NotQuiteReal]

As a science-fiction writer, my job is predicting the future.

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".

Sounds familiar

[BigChigger]

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

Somehow...

[GillBates0]

none of his speculation strikes me as "miraculous" or wishful thinking.

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.

/rant.

Re:Too Many Connections?

[aardvarkjoe]

It'll keep track of your sleep cycle, gently bringing up the room lights at precisely the right time so that you'll feel rested, not cardiac arrested, as you awake.

Right, like your boss is going to let you waltz in at 10:30 because your brain-wave monitor didn't deem you rested until after 9. (And if you've had enough rest, don't you wake up naturally? Why use a device to do it for you?)

Today, your coffee can be brewed while you sleep; tomorrow's robokitchen will have an entire hot (but low carb!) breakfast waiting for you.

Robotic houses have had the same history of being "right around the corner" as artifical intelligence and fusion power. And does he really think the Atkins diet fad is going to last a whole decade?

Your spouse and kids will be taken care of, too -- with smart toilets analyzing their urine and sensor-rich toothbrushes checking their saliva to make sure everything is ticketyboo; most health problems will be caught early and be trivial to correct.

Seems a bit overengineered to me. We might have the technology to pull it off, but I can't see it being put to wide use within a decade. However, I would not be surprised if slightly less "futuristic" health monitoring techniques become common practice: for instance, maybe kids at school will have a weekly finger-prick test for common diseases.

Throughout the day, your wristband -- a combination cellphone, PDA, camera, and e-book display, all controlled by spoken commands -- will be your lifeline.

I wonder why it is that whenever SF authors try to think up high-tech communication devices, they always go for the wristband idea. And yet, although they make watches with practically anything you want built-in, they don't catch on. (For a variety of reasons, although I think the main one is size. He wants to read an e-book on his watch?! The fact that the watches with built-in address books and calculators aren't aesthetically pleasing doesn't help any.) If anything, it seems much more likely to me that that we'll end up with an improved cell phone/PDA style device than a new watch.

You'll have just one phone number, good worldwide with no long-distance or roaming charges, ...

Ha!

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.

Re:I'll say it once again:

[Skweetis]

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?

this is the stupidest thing I've ever read.

[7-Vodka]

This is such BS. I used to read stuff like this and 'oooh' and 'aahhh' at it. But guess what. I'm old enough now that I know it's all bullshit.
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.

Re:I don't mind that...

[Rei]

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).

Change of a different sort

[WolfMansDad]

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.

Society processes because of these "nutcases"

[WebCowboy]

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.

Blessing or Curse?

[linuxpyro]

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...