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Experts Fear Future Will be Like Sci-Fi Movies
segphault writes "In the year 2020, Luddite terrorists attack technology infrastructure and artificial intelligences dominate earth! Or at least that's what 700 experts predict in the latest poll conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (pdf). Is the future really going to be like a science fiction movie? Ars Technica provides a humorous overview of the survey results. From the article: 'Are these scenarios really indicative of future trends? Given the prevalence of many of these concepts in science fiction content, it is obvious that the ideas themselves are at least relevant enough to warrant consideration. That said, the nature of the survey and the way that the scenarios are presented makes the entire thing seem less plausible. In looking at classic science fiction films of the past, from Blade Runner to Soylent Green, one realizes that few of them really predict with any accuracy the world we live in today. Culture and technology can change in radically unpredictable ways, and today's experts may lack the foresight to perceive the future with the clarity of Hari Seldon.'"
As far as I'm concerned it won't matter what happens, just as long as I get my soma.
This guy's the limit!
hejdig.
/OF
I would say that The Running Man makes quite a good foreseing of the television future. Everything that is in the film has been aired, on different stations though.
- wierd costumes, spandex, bling: any show with a host. think oscar, music competitions
- people making a fool of themselves: many shows there are
- people dying, deadly outcome: wasn't an execution aired in Texas or something
Wait, which is it? The people left behind will self-segretate but not all of them do so my choice? My prediction is that in the year 2020, pulp will be written by lousy artificial intelligence. What do you think, George?
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is also a prevalent theme in science fiction, but that doesn't mean we'll be doing it in the foreseeable future.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Cool! I have always wanted to be immersed in a virtual environment ala Therteen floor or having my own slave robot (to get money from my ATM machine ;) similar to bicentenial man, although I would prefer the femenine line =o).
In all seriousness, I believe the "present" has become as scifi movies. When I woke up in 9/11/2001 the TV woke me up (tv alarm) when it turned on on certain channel, when I started listenting the program and I was watching the scenes my first thought was "what movie is this?", I guessed it was a "Die Hard" movie, but then I saw the News program marks and the rest is history...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Strong AI: pff!
There I was expecting a Jetsons-like future and we seem to be getting a Startrek-like future.
Very disappointing.
We haven't advanced genetic engineering, AI, and the like to the point where Blade Runner type issues could arise. When we start engineering replicants and the first replicant refuses to fight in a war, then we'll have those issues and can see if it was ahead of its time or not....
Plus, keep in mind that a lot of Blade Runner was simply film noir....
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
(10 points to the first person to name them all)
Summation 2
hmmmm Soylent Green
1984 was made into a movie, so I guess they're right.
I more fear that it will be like 1984. Cameras everywhere, mass surveillance, no criticism of the rulers allowed.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Otherwise its going to look like the matrix world outside.
Not a movie but, when I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, I thought I was reading a nonfiction novel of a current situation. Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one.
Bran muffins and whiskey.
Except 1984, of course.
... had thousands of well-documented years of history to make his predictions. We still don't have those, specially because until a "few" years ago, historians didn't have to be accurarate, just write a nice story to read that was losely based on reality. Maybe his theory is possible, maybe not. But Asimov has already impressed me in his non-fiction essays to make me believe we can, someday, have psychohistory.
So say we all
I predict that the poor and stupid will continue to breed at over twice the rate of the wealthy and educated such that eventually we will reach a high-water mark in technological development. After that point some continued advances will be made but I believe we will see a gradual decline as there simply aren't enough people to sustain the extreme level of specialization we see in society today.
And, oh yeah, I predict lots of attendant unpleasantness - first-world cities emptied as birth-rates decline, then re-filled with unassimilated, superstitious immigrants (or, in the case of societies largely closed to immigration like Japan, just plain emptied). Noone to care for the elderly in once-wealthy societies. And lots, lots more fanatical religion and superstition. A new dark ages.
A bunch of hot ass Jessica Albas running around would be awesome as hell!
(perhaps Penn Jilette?) "The future will be a lot like now but with better special effects."
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Was setting the movie in 2019. Even in 1982 I thought, "come on, this is going to happen in 40 years?"
The first rule of a sci-fi movie should be, the date in which it is set should be at the very least just beyond the lifespan of the 15 year old watching it.
I more fear that it will be like 1984. Cameras everywhere, mass surveillance, no criticism of the rulers allowed.
Aren't we pretty near the 1984 society already? This would no longer be news today.
There was a recent poll about the favourite end-of-world scenario. The voters voted for a mad max / terminator end to their world above the rest. Of course, "This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
Ask me about repetitive DNA
The one author who just about nailed his terrifying vision of the future is George Orwell. His time frame was off by 25-30 years, but that was his only big error.
I'm no luddite but if the future is software patents, DRM, executable content (flash, javascript etc...), loss of privacy and biometric checkpoints littered throughout my day; then I am a refusenik.
Damn straight!
It's intersting that our so-called governments and their private sector partners are responsible for all the shit I listed above and that these are the same governments who currently rule by terrorizing their citizens.
I think it is inevitable that us "intelligents" will come in to conflict with the "artificials", but by the year 2020? I think that is a little optimistic (in a gloomy way). I think by the time AI reaches a threatening level we, as a society, will be discussing either AI Rights or AI Limitations. What I am more interested in is seeing how AI integrates into our fucked up society. Will they develop their own religion? Will they join our existing religions? Will they all join the same religion? Will they worship God/Allah/Whoevertron as their creator, or the creator of their creator? Or will they just be smarted than most of us and realise organised religion is the bane of existence?
The future is already here for the developed world. Ubiquitous surveillance, networking, "dangers and dependencies" not recognized "until it is impossible to reverse them," and so on. Our future will be more of the same, mixed in with diminishing oil reserves, rising energy costs, rising environmental problems, rising religious wacko problems, better/deadlier biotech, and so on. I'm especially thrilled about the juxtaposition of a rising worldwide tide of religious fundamentalism and the affordability of biotechnology. No, I'm not in the field, so I don't know the right lingo, but I know people are tweaking viruses and bacteria right now, and that doing so is becoming cheaper/more prevalent/etc. How long before a group of eschatologically-minded Allah/Jesus/FSM/IPU/whatever Freaks fund and operate a lab? That is our future. Human fallibility is more dependable than human decency. And even if you assume we're too incompetent to make a killer bug, evolution keeps churning out new and better microbes. Nature really is trying to kill us. I don't think everyone will die within my lifetime (though why it would matter after I'm dead is beyond me), but I do expect a rather scary plague to kill off a few million or so in the next few decades. But I'm a cynical, pessimistic jerk, so I really prefer a world where I'm often wrong.
Sure, nobody can know for certain what the future will bring specifically, but one incontrovertable observation is that since the beginning of time overall progress has been accelerating exponentially.
The closest real-world parallel to Hari Seldon's "Future History" would be Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns (a generalized "Moore's Law"), which makes the point that all evolutionary processes building on past progress accelerate exponentially, and it's only towards the knee-end of the curve -- like now -- that you notice the most change.
Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics/AI (GNR) will play a huge part in the coming decades; the only question is how well we'll be able to guide how it all unfolds. Take for example just one implication of advanced nanotech: The Molecular Manufacturing "replicator" in every home -- at the same time such a device creates vast "wealth without money" for the poorest of people, it also removes concentrated power from the former elite, which in of itself isn't a bad thing except that we're... only human, so the primitive-reaction could be bad.
It's my opinion that it's actually in our best interest to make sure that we either merge with AI, or that benevolent AI "take over" before our selfish monkey-brain fucks everything up with the increasingly powerful tech at our disposal.
Power to the Peaceful
...and the truth is that businesses these days, if they have to think about an issue or something they just don't do it. If the answer isn't immediately obvious then they don't bother with it. If there aren't any invisible AI overlords enforcing the same mediocrity everywhere, then its ripe for them to take over as soon as they are created.
You keep watching your precious Reality on TV news with all this FUD!!11!!!1
Even that Reality is changing to what we do in Online Games like CS!!!1!!!1!
And some day your precious Reality might be interesting and important again!!!!1!!!11
But until then stop your whinge about your precious Reality as if it would matter to me!!1111!1!!!!1
Assuming the questions were posed in a "Y/N" fashion, what this study tells anyone with a statistical background is that there is no fucking consensus whatsoever. These guys have no idea - pick any question about 2020 and pose it to one of these guys. They're almost exactly as likely to say "yes" as "no".
It's interesting that this study was done, and it makes an interesting read, but it produced almost exactly no significant results.
Meta will eat itself
According to expert futurologists, we face a nightmarish future -- a future without expert predictions of the future!
"People will get sick of it," said a spokesman for the Institute for Predictions. "They just won't want any more baseless predictions -- so people will stop making any."
Professor Isaac Sagan of the University of Pontification agrees. "In the future, people will almost certainly have gotten sick of hearing me talk about what will happen in the future. Very likely, I'll have to find another job -- such as fry cook, or hat salesman."
Although vapid, uninteresting predictions of the future are currently at a record high, even those who attempt to make actualy useful predictions foresee a downward trend.
"At some point, real problems are going to become impossible to ignore," pointed out Dr. Bob Gore of the Smartville College, Oxford. "With climate change already depopulating some areas, and the deepening split between the American, Muslim, and Chinese spheres of influence, it's only a matter of time until people just don't have the time to talk about whether, in future, they will have the time to make predictions about... hang on, I can't remember how I started this sentence."
Whoever you listen to, one theme is clear -- futurologists and the kind of 'experts' who appear in newspaper articles as 'experts predict' will one day die out, and that day may be sooner than we think. Which gives us all a ray of hope for the future.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
...maybe it's a good idea to vote schwarzenegger for president. Just in case.
My city: Barcelona.
I'm still waiting for flying cars!
In answer to the "experts" quoted in this article: SF movies are a better indicator of what's happening today than they are of what the future will be like.
... "Colossus" springs to mind) are about the future? These stories challenge us to recognize and deal with problems that are here now, while they are small enough to be dealt with.
On the surface, it would seem that SF stories are about "the future;" that they're about making predictions, based on scientific extrapolation. I've also noticed, however, that many SF stories are about issues and concerns of the day. Orwell, even though he's known for two novels late in his career, was a prominent journalist: I wonder if Winston's job at the Ministry of Truth resembles anything Orwell saw his editors do? (btw, I think "Brave New World" is more accurate and scary than "1984") At the height of the cold war, how many SF movies were there about the effects of radiation ("Godzilla," anyone?), or about invaders from space?
And now, we think that movies about expanding urban blight (the gritty future of "Blade Runner"), the ethical dilemmas of advanced biological science ("Gattaca"), and rogue artificial intelligences (too many to choose from
Recall that the writers of these stories, prescient though they undoubtedly are, are still people like you and me, living in the same era as we do. How can they escape letting the concerns and issues of the day into their writing?
"Brave New World", already partially implemented
"People who are willing to sacrifice essential freedoms for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
B F
Smart man that Joss is.
Artificial Intelligence is coming a lot sooner than 2020.
The Singularity Timetable predicts True AI in 2006; an AI landrush in 2007; human-level AI by 2008; and Superintelligent AI by 2012.
AI has been solved in both theory for neuroscience and software for robots.
A theory of artificial intelligence has been implemented in Forth for robots and in JavaScript for tutorial artificial intelligence.
AI in Forth is free, open-source artificial intelligence for robots.
JavaScript for Artificial Intelligence describes how even a simple language like JavaScript is ideal for instructional artificial intelligence tutorials.
The Joint Stewardship of Earth will be in effect long before the year 2020.
Turing Store Books tells you all about the very most important writings by human beings about the coming artificial intelligence.
Mind.html in JavaScript has an enormous installed user base and can no longer be stopped from engendering a global AI Mind by 2020 if not sooner.
all the ancester of this "brain" tel us that in 2000 we will see flying car and a single pill will cure every diseases. So the suppossed expert can say anything about year 2020, they just irrelevant.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
I think there is a genuine risk of worrisome change, and I am sure many slashdotters think so too, despite the huge amount of sophomoric humor. (Doesn't anybody post real comments anymore?) I have spoken to a couple of very famous AI professors and they are also concerned and think we should be working on policy now.
While the frightening stuff is still somewhat remote, isn't it time to develop serious binding policy on what is allowed and how it is controlled? This may be very difficult, but it isn't even on the table being considered these days. The Asimov 3 laws are totally unrealistic, but some realistic safeguards and restrictions on robotic systems might be possible. The biggest problem is that this will conflict directly with plabs for using robotics in National defense systems, but let's at least think about it all as a society!
That's just great!
Next: experts predict global warming!
Best way to predict the future is to invent it.
The Robot AI Mind requires Microsoft Internet Explorer
with JavaScript enabled.
But we don't have telescreens in every room that can listen and watch us. Yes, they listen to our phone calls without a warrant, but no, you don't have to guard your facial expression for fear of being tortured in Room 101. Saying that our situation is that bad trivializes the suffering and deaths of those whose situation is that bad.
I detest the rantings of O'Reilly and Coulter as much as the next thinking biped, but they do not consitute the Thought Police. Morons may impugn your patriotism for being skeptical of the President's policies, true, but no one, even Coulter, is saying you should be tortured for doing it.
There is no boot in the face, forever and ever. We are being pwned by bible-thumping do-gooders who are not burdened by the humility and self-doubt that plague those of us who can't think of ourselves as instruments of divine providence. They don't think of themselves as power-hungry. That is why our world is so alien to Orwell's fictional one. I'm about halfway done with Orwell's essays, and basically he thinks that people are good, except for those who are bad. But the world really isn't that way. The bad things are done not by inherently bad people, but by people who think they are doing good, but lack the capacity to doubt themselves, their convictions, and their methods. Mix in political conviction with religious faith, bind them together, and you get borderline megalomania, which I think characterizes Ashcroft, Perle, Cheney, and Bush pretty well. They aren't evil (well, maybe Cheney--he's scary), only immune from self-doubt, because they think that the ultimate arbiter of good, meaning God, is firmly on their side. If you are on God's side, then there is only one other side, really.
But this sort of megalomania is seductive even to non-religious people. I'd bet Pol Pot and most other Communist leaders just thought they were doing what was right, they lacked the capacity for self-doubt, and they were surrounded by those who told them what they wanted to hear. There aren't that many authentically bad people in the world. I think Orwell actually gave human beings too much credit, because being rational himself, he assumed that, a few stupid people aside, most people were rational. So even his "bad guys" are rational--they want power, and will use "the boot in the face" to get and keep it. But in reality we have clean-cut, Christian soldiers torturing people to death because they think they're fighting for freedom and democracy. People will do horrible things for noble words, and still sleep like babies at night. Evil is more complex and insidious than Orwell made it out to be.
Anyway, rambling aside, our world is not like the one Orwell created in his books. There are similarities, yes, but ours differs from his in nature and degree. If you use up all your superlatives now, if you shout "tyranny" now, what words will you use when it gets worse?
The reason movies show the future mostly to be bad is because it make a nicer story and it tells people that NOW is good.
It makes people happy to know that this is the best time to be alive. Otherwise after 90 minutes you will be pretty depressed for the rest of your life.
The few times it tells about a good future, it only hints at it. A sunset or the like. There are only a few that tell that the future is better then what we have now. A reason is that most science fiction is not so much about the future, but simply telling about the present in a different way.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Apart from the 'caring for the elderly' bit (family structures were different back then) that sounds a bit like a description of the last century or so of Roman rule in the Western Empire. The Romans (my ancestors) were essentially out-bred and then overrun by the 'barbarians' (also my ancestors
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The RIAA should not be allowed to read The Proud Robot. The story references a solution to unauthorized copying using infrsound that sends would-be pirates running away in terror while soiling their pants.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
...war was beginning.
Time Travel "is also a prevalent theme in science fiction, but that doesn't mean we'll be doing it in the foreseeable future"
Well actually it happens all the time, but you don't notice. For instance in the future you invent a time machine and travel into the present. The world splits into two alternative futures and you always end up in the one in which you didn't invent a time machine. In fact you don't even need to invent a time traveling machine, just send messages back using tachions.
For instance 'Trice Upon a Time' by James P. Hogan gives a good illustration of communication with the past. Unfortunaly you won't be able to find this one on Amazon as he experimented with just such a device, the writer accidentally wiped himself from existance.
See also 'Timescape' by Gregory Benford where the exact opposite happens and someone turns up alive although one of the characters remembers her dying. Have you ever been suprised when some celebrity turms up on television movies and you go 'isn't he dead' or remember the plot of a movie that's different than when it turms up on tv. Well someone's just been messing with the spacetime continuum.
was Re:Time Travel
davecb5620@gmail.com
Surely they really mean we will be sitting around watching a movies with our two robot friends.
This is a report containing predictions about the future of technology according to a survey of "technology thinkers and stakeholders". I am sure many of these technology thinkers are brilliant and all that, but whatever predictions they make are going to be the result of tunnel-vision, because they are commenting on their own industry.
It's not surprising that most of their predictions sound like science fiction, because for one thing, the future IS fiction. There is no such thing as the future. It's not something you can grab onto or even look at - it doesn't exist. It's the product of imagination. Just like fiction.
And for another thing, people's visions of the future are largely based on other people's visions of the future. Nobody is really interested in predicting the future. After all, you can't predict lottery numbers or anything else that is actually useful. People are only interested in being right. They want to say, "See? I told you." Even though it gains them fuck-all, aside from bragging rights. So out of their desire to be right, they look at the past (the Luddite social movement) and they look at their peers and they adopt the same visions as them, because those are safe bets. And naturally, a lot of visions stem from science fiction. The best science fiction is the kind that gives you chills because you get a sense that the author is predicting the future with eerie accuracy. So if you're looking for a vision you can adopt, science fiction is a good place to start.
The two stupidest predictions in this report are AI and violent anti-technologists. People only believe in AI because they would like to believe that their own intelligent consciousness is somehow trancendental. Meanwhile, let me know when we have a robot that can ride a damn bicycle. Then we'll talk about AI. As for violent anti-technologists, this is just the manifestation of nerds' fear of getting beat up at recess. The fact is that technology itself is violent, since it subjugates nature. True anti-technologists are people who are not even interested in technology, like my uncle Ron who lives in a house he built himself. These guys think technology is just a bunch of screwing around, which it mostly is. They're not going to go around smashing particle accelerators.
So TFA is not really about the future, it's about "experts' fears" about the future. And a lot of experts are nutty - that's what drove them to become experts.
No more than two years from now.
I mean, now...
Err, now?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
But what you've described is largely the present. Yet here you are. Hmm. Yes, there are ways around some, perhaps most, but there will always be workarounds. So there is no magic point in the future where it will be clear to you that now is the time to break with technology. They get you incrementally, not all at once. If they developed crack-proof DVDs and CDs tomorrow, and if all TV signals were record-proof, would you just walk away? As someone who listens to pretty much no contemporary music, watches no TV, and watches very few movies, I can tell you that walking away from popular culture makes connecting with those around you pretty difficult. There just isn't as much to talk about if you haven't seen the same TV shows (however crappy), listened to the same bands (however crappy), and so on. I wish you luck, though. I'm inherently misanthropic, so the cultural isolation doesn't bother me, but most people just aren't cut out for it.
Clearly, they'll be queuing up to get into Silicon Heaven.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Please mod parent up, I enjoyed reading!
Eloi are tasty.
Like Sci-Fi movies? So the future will be filled by potentially good plots absolutely marred by incompotent acting and low production budgets? Wow, I can hardly wait.
I read the Foundation series a long time ago so I may have this wrong but wasn't the whole 'joke' about Hari Seldon that really he couldn't predict the future? The 1000 year plan is found to be wrong at some stage I'm sure. And then there was that 'mule' fella.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
True, but don't overlook the difference that hindsight makes in how you view things. The human animal has two key characteristics that make it a poor judge of history. First, it is adaptable. Second, it rationalizes. In fact, it may be more correct to call man a "rationalizing" animal than a "rational" animal.
My point about adaptability is this: the path the future involves lots of little local optimizations, during which many big things get lost. When here in the US we talk about the founder's intent, and what they would have thought of this or that, the one thing that we don't say is this: any person brought from two hundred years ago to present would be both thrilled -- by the level of wealth and technology -- and horrified -- by the uses we put them to. Jefferson would be thrilled at the advances in science and agriculture, but horrified that we are not only a post-agricultural economy, but a post-industrial one. Nineteenth century social reformers would be thrilled by the advances in the physical conditions and political clout of the poor, but horified by the godlessnes, materialism an dnarcisisstic alienation from our communities that typify most people today.
We are creatures of out time; what seems normal to our descendants, who in all liklihood will be as technologically and economically better off relative to us as we are to our ancestors, will strike us as a horribly dystopia. It seems likely that the concept of privacy will be harder and harder to support. It is conceivable that even our thoughts may not be entirely our own -- probably not primtive aspects of our emotional states.
The wonders later generations take as granted always come with accepting as normal things that would horrify the earlier generations. Progress is usually a faustian bargain.
My point about rationalization is that we forget what we have lost, or the pain inflicted as part of getting where we are today. The point I always like to raise about the triumphalistic way in which the enclosure movement is taught is that it is always taught from the perspective of the people who benefitted -- us -- not those who starved to death and had their children turn to banditry and prostitution. Nor are we even able to fully understand the things that were postiive about the past experiences of our ancestors. Our reason is a homestatic process; it keeps us alive, mostly by trapping us in the status quo. This both allows us to live with the loss of what was once held dear, and it allows progress to creep along as a series of incremental changes while undermining what we hold dear.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There is no doubt that more and more people are getting access to technology faster and cheaper as technology gets more advanced. It's been possible for a while to have Internet access everywhere via mobi (mobile phone). Now companies are making it even easier to buy mobile-phone components and data plans that facilitate laptop internet connections at half broad band speeds (I was sort impressed by Verizon when I went to the mall the other day). No plug intended.
Some fear that computers will run rampant and try to destroy us after 2020. It just may happen that computers (if they think and have feelings) may treat us like gods or parents. After all, we are the creators.
One thing is certain. People will not stop embracing and exploring technology. Humans by nature are explorers. There was a push to explore America. There was a push to go to outer space. The same push drives us to create our own Holodeck or Matrix.
I am not totally sure what is so significant about 2020. What will everyone be doing in April - (4:20 4/20/2020)? Will everyone have perfect vision?
> "poor and stupid will continue to breed at over twice the rate".
This is an old old idea. H. G. Wells, 1895, "The Time Machine" is just one example.
First of, poor != stupid, there are a millions ways people who with high intelligence can end up at the bottom.
And what is stupid? If might be a different type of intelligence is being selected for. It's obvious that there is a selective force against any type of intelligence that often results in childlessness [regardless of monetary success].
Also the kids maybe the reason for the low in-come, specially for teenagers or single mums.
I don't think intelligence is being selected against. I think what is being selected against is the desire to put of having kids or not have them. That's all.
> "first-world cities emptied as birth-rates decline, then re-filled with unassimilated, superstitious immigrants"
The unassimilated' ness lasts one generation, if that. Superstition, well, let them build their churches to their pixies and elves as the peoples of first-world lands did before them. The more attention religion gets, the more important people see it, the more people get worked up about it. If it's within the law, and they don't try and force it on anyone who doesn't want it, they should be allowed to worship what ever they want.
> "Noone to care for the elderly in once-wealthy societies. "
Eh? That's why all the first world country love immigration! It fuels the economies and stops them becoming top heavy.
Returning to the topic, I believe episide 27 (1981) is the first mention of the idea of using one computer to connect to another remotely and proxy instructions through an encrypted link. Yes, Avon Zen and Orac invented ssh!
If you can get past the production values (roughly on a par with Dr Who of the same era) and allow yourself to get absorbed in the drama and story, you'll love it. Of course, I'm biased because I was an obsessive fan from the moment in 1978 when I saw the first trailer. And the doom-laden, martial yet somehow spacey theme tune is a work of art in it's own right.
It's not that it's the best SF TV or film of the era --- not even I would say that --- but it's a real shame it's only a "cult favourite". As the attempt to produce a feature film version appears to have gone tits-up, it seems likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future - a real shame IMO. If the US had been exposed to B7 in the 70s rather than Star Trek re-runs, I bet we'd be living in a different, better, world today.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
> I predict that the poor and stupid will continue to breed at over twice the rate of the wealthy and educated such that eventually we will reach a high-water mark in technological development.
You are sure that the children of the "stupid" are also damned to be stupid as well? I think "uneducated" would be a better choice of words, if only because I doubt that "being stupid" is a dominant genetic trait.
"In the year 2020, Luddite terrorists attack technology infrastructure and artificial intelligences dominate earth!"
Did they mean to write 2520 ?
From TFA: [...] and 42 percent believe that "English will displace other languages" by 2020.
How?!? There'll still be a geographical spread and there'll sure as hell still be 3rd world countries that won't get an invitation for the great globalization party. Even if - by magic - English replaced all other languages in a split second and everybody became fluent English speakers instantly, people would soon start to develop regional dialects (e.g. cockney vs. some Texan redneck's dialect) and the more isolated groups' dialects (e.g. the less globalized regions of the world) wouldn't take too long to become unintelligeble to other "English" speakers.
A more plausible scenario could be, that even more people will become bilingual with English as their 2nd language, but still keep their mother tongue. English wouldn't displace or replace much, just supplement it.
Besides, with approx. 7000 languages in the world it will probably take a little more than 14 years before English can be said to have "displaced other languages".
"Live free or don't."
10 Terrible Portrayals of Technology in Film. I think that we should be very afraid.
It is fascinating that you would make that connection, despite my original intention and written word. The relevant implications of it are interesting because we are discussing dystopian future scenarios.
Making common language unintelligible (self-contradictory statements that are taken as wholy true, for example) is essential for the world described Orwell to be possible. If people lose the skill or tools to effectively express reason (see also Fahrenheit 451 ), they will eventually become unable to do anything other than what they are told to do. As I am at work, I will leave it to the reader to make the connections and mental leaps between this concept and a society controlled by artificial intelligence. (A concept, incidentally, beliefly alluded to in a popular anime with a very dark vision of the future.)
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Any trend deduced from increase in technology or economy in the last century is doomed to fail.
...
Electronics progress have been fueled by miniaturisation. Electronics in labs now are composant with a width of a few atoms. We can not go much further. Moore's Law will end if not in price$ in energy required.
Cheap and easy energy will end when we will have used all the reserve of Gas. It is not obvious that we will have anything to replace it in time.
So my prediciton is Technological stagnation and chaos.
Unless we manage to make the necessary social changes without war and unrest. I doubt it will be possible. (Time frame ? 50-100 years )
When civilisation re-emerge, it will be in a simpler form helped by technology where technology really helps. No more gadgets (will it be worth living?)
No faster than light spacecraft, no replicator, no light saber, no eternal life, no brain transfer into a computer,
Artificial Inteligence caused catastrophe will happen but less frequently than human made catastrophe.
The Luddites were fighting against the use of machines as tools of oppression. We are doing the same by resisting the tide of DRM and 'Trusted' Computing headed for our golden shores.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
n/t
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
I for one welcome our interstellar overlords....
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
The future looks scary from the past but when you actually get there it's no big deal really.
When we watched at Star Trek from the 1960's the communicators were amazing - but now everybody has mobile phones, and that's accepted as perfectly normal.
By the time we get to the 2020s things will probably be very different, but because we will gradually move towards that point nobody will mind too much. Though I have to admit I find it hard to see how we will adapt to hunter/killer robots trying to exterminate the human race through a post apocalyptic landscape - but who knows, it might not be all that bad.
Old people will still find the music too loud though - only difference, I'll be one of them.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Who will own the Artificial Intelligence? If it's some corporate head like Rupert Murdoch or some Government head like George Bush then count me with the luddite terrorists.
In looking at classic science fiction films of the past, from Blade Runner to Soylent Green, one realizes that few of them really predict with any accuracy the world we live in today.
I've been saying for years that THX1138 comes frighteningly close. Oddly enough, created by a guy whe went on to have some success specializing in the space opera genre.
hey if that is the future then sign me up!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
OK back in the 80's films like Blade Runner predicted wild fantasy Sci-Fi for our world now. Would you really have sat and watched a 4 hour movie based on the life and times of Jim-Bob the 750# shut-in "blogger" who goes by the online name of "Sex_kitten"?
Yeah we have made some advances in technology and science but emotionally and psychologically we are just as backward as our counterparts in the 80's, 70's and before. We just have more distractions, less inhibitions and about the same NIMBY attitude. It's not a failure to predict the future, it's that the future isn't all that friggin interesting. There are no evil geniuses that threaten the world with a megalomaniac's plans of mass control. There are no genetically engineered super people coming to the rescue of some impoverished or oppressed people. Half of us can't even drive to work safely or get along with others in a social atmosphere of a bar "relaxing".
I wouldn't have paid money to see a movie called Terminator about a robot that can recognize facial expressions and have a conversation.
I think the original post misses the mark a bit - the best predictions are made on paper, not on film. The best predictions are also general ideas and not specific things. I mean, Steven Spielberg can predict that we'll have animated newspapers and cereal boxes and he's probably right, but that wasn't all that difficult to call. Philip K. Dick, on the other hand, took the effort to ask the question "what happens when we substantiate present action with the information of future events."
IMHO, the greatest "predictions" of SF to date is the rise of the logos (the living information, not the nike swoosh) and the death of affect. See: Philip K Dick's Valis, William S. Burroughs' Nova Express, J.G. Ballard's Crash. More readable: Snow Crash. Evidence: The internet, the media, reality television.
m0nstr42.blogspot.com
True, but I thought 1984 was also based upon what Orwell thought the British empire was becoming. From what I understood, he worked with their government communication office for a while and was displeased at how much information they kept from the public.
SciFi is usually either an analogy of present events, or an utopian or dystopian vision based on today's events. They're either reflections based on the question "where will this all lead us to" or hopes or fears, also based on today. The hope that everything gets better, or the fear that the bad gets worse.
They usually place humans in abstract situations and explore how humans react to certain stimuli. In a way, this can be seen as a prediction, but more it would be some kind of self fulfilling prophecy. Some things become reality as time passes, and human nature is just that, no matter what technology you pit against it.
1984 was written in the aftermath of WW2, where two participants were totalitarian regimes, and they both employed incredible firepower. Orwell just explored just how the people in those systems could be kept under the thumb during times of great stress and despair. His conclusion was that war, and the "us against them" sentiments that comes with it, would make people accept pretty any kind of pressure and exploitation. And that, as usual, some don't conform, and how those nonconformists are persecuted and dealt with. Not more. He was no visionary. That it happens now, if only to a rather limited degree compared with the total control of 1984, is human nature, not some augury.
Some leaders will always try to abuse their powers and use the most sophisticated technology available to get and retain control over their subjects. Some people will suck up to anyone to increase their status and their well being. Some people will simply let you do whatever you please with them and want to be lead. And some will fight such systems at all costs, placing their freedom over their life.
Technology is only the tool. Not the harbinger of humanity's doom.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...what do they know ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I predict that the poor and stupid will continue to breed at over twice the rate of the wealthy and educated
:-)
"I don't care about all that crap", said Michelle Davis, 18. "All I know is, I'm in love!"
I've been searching for that Onion article, but no luck. But for some refreshing cynical elitism, you can't go wrong with this classic. Cracks me up, every time.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
OK, I know it's foolish to feed the Trolls, but I couldn't let this one go unchallenged.
I don't see where the GP AC post is racist. It mentions no ethnic group. There are "poor and stupid" of all ethnicities, just as there are "wealthy and intelligent". However, the phrase "poor and stupid" is a loaded phrase; "poor and ignorant" doesn't have the same connotation of blame.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Which is a good point, because the use of the term "selection" carries with it the implication that the trait is a result of one's genotype. For the most part, this is inappropriate when discussing the desire to reproduce. Using the term selection in this way is like suggesting that there is selection against hunger because hungry people die more often.
I don't think it's appropriate to apply natural selection or evolutionary theory to human populations, for the very simple reason that human behavior and reproductive success is, more often than not, unrelated to one's genotype. A more useful prism to view this issue through is sociology. Different cultures and sub-cultures, by definition, exhibit different behaviors, which of course applies to reproduction.
I don't think this is true at all--particularly when many immigrants actively seek (and are allowed to) to segregate themselves from their host populations. Look at the recent riots in France. Most of the rioters were second generation muslim immigrants.
The real question is: should ethnic tension and violence be surprising when the politically correct doctrine of multi-culturalism has cast assimilation as a profane practice?
-Grym
Pat Buchanan posts on slashdot. Kewl.
Poor little Dickie Jordan.
Terminated because his intelligence exceeded the government allowed quota for the time.
About the scariest thing I saw, apart from The Cube, and the original Max Headroom.
I think it is a little early to make fun of luddites as postmodern Amish. The respondents may have been influenced by the book Rebels Against the Future by Kirkpatrick Sale. Being a luddite wasn't originally restricted to passively copping an attitude. The luddites were groups of the desperately unemployed displaced by technology and angered by the cultural changes and environmental damage technology caused. Sound familiar?
/.ers just won't allow us to conceive of anyone harming a computer.
And they caused some significant damage to machinery and some significant costs to government in crowd control. I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that a second wave in the info revolution might yet do the same. It could be that the reverse Asimov of
This is a good thing. In the countries where things have gone to the point of having "extreme specialization" (think US and now Japan) create products filled with problems. They'll have all sorts of great features and be built with all the things which make a specialist horny (XML, RPC, DOM, ASP.net), but several important aspects will be neglected--like the thing actually working!!!
I'm typing this on a computer I carved out of a hickory stump. Damn all you non-neo-Luddites :P
So what's the news, exactly? (other than that the Ars Technica guy watches nothing but Star Trek...)
You are dangerously naive.
For every imaginable future, there is some science fiction that has explored it, often long before academics and "futurists" got into the act. I guess what the article means it that it is like popular science fiction.
I think the only two remarkable points about this study are the biased and imprecise language ("some luddites/refusenicks will commit terror acts"), and the very high rate at which the respondents had an answer about absolutely everything.
Predictions and policy decisions require careful, reasoned arguments, and a detailed analysis of costs, benefits, risks, and probabilities, none of which are present in those responses or questions.
I heartily recommend the work of the pseudonymous author, Spengler, at The Asia Times:
As a good introduction, allow me to suggest the following essay:
And if you're interested, he has a forum:
of course, soma and jet packs don't mix.
Wait...are you Mike Judge?
SciFi is never right. Never. In the whole, that is. Bits come out right, and if we ignore all the wrongness, that makes them look clever, but it's just a point or two taken out of context for most works. The same sort of cherry picking, in a more extreme form, makes bible prophesy look reliable.
SciFi folks may do a better job of predicting than the average schmoe, but they don't do fantastically well. This is because technology changes and we're all living in bonazaland. (Marshall McLuhan's term for the fact that we're all living in the world of our youth, mentally, and the fact that it is impossible for us to see the world the way the kids do.) We don't see what's already happening.
Also, when we do make a look into the future, we cannot see far enough. When computers first appeared, the world expected them to be huge and brilliant. SciFi had them running planets. Meaning one big computer, running a planet. Who guessed that they'd still be stupid, 50 years later, but so small and so cheap that they run coke machines?
Further, when technology changes, it has a ripple effect. Things change all around it. That coke machine now has a computer in it. It knows what was bought at what time. Who thinks about the little things like that in toto? One or two may occur to a writer, or even fifty. But thousands of such small effects? And together, they change society.
But SciFi is right now and then, and we take those points out of context and those POINTS appear brilliant. HG Wells described the use of the atomic bomb. Never mind that he thought that, because of nuclear decay, it would keep exploding for years.
For SciFi that gets things right, the key is to look for SciFi without Sci. Orwell, for instance: 1984 is amazingly prescient. Look in various totalitarian countries (like or own, more and more) for bits and pieces which appear. Nothing on the whole, but lots of bits.
At the other end of the spectrum, John Varley looks horribly dated, these days, because he wrote about tech and sex. Well, sex hasn't changed, so he still describes a future, there (though it seems more like a wet dream than a possible future) but the tech in his books looks impossible or silly, now. This is a man who eschewed word processors while writing SciFi -- Talk about Bonazaland.
Philip K. Dick still seems current, since Phil didn't even know how light bulbs work. All his work is about society and ethics and the nature of reality. It ain't coming true, but it still grabs ya!
Its entertaining to read "future" books in the libraries from the 1960s-1990s and see how much they missed. Most just lineraly extrapolated the trends of their times.
As much as I love science fiction [realistic and fantastic styles], the fact remains that predicting the future is a damn hard thing to do. Consider how people thought that cars would be made obsolete and replaced with flying cars or 'air buses' over half a century ago, yet today cars are getting more and more specialized in composition and function. Then the predictions that robots would be commonly used in every facet of society, yet the fact remains the power constraints for even the least electric motorized platform limits their economical viability. And so on.
Now, lets look at the current things none of the futurists predicted; wireless communication being common [even in the least developed nations], advancements in cancer research [The stem-cell theory of cancer is becoming the prominent paradigm in diagnosis and treatment of cancers.], and even the slow [but steady] advancements [mostly indirect, but a few direct] in life extension [quality and quantity]. Just these three areas weren't even considered possible or predicted by many if any so-called future studies expert. But other discoveries, such as the advancement of negative refraction meta-materials, weren't even on the 'radar' of these experts at all. So, as much as I love guessing what's over the next hill in the future, I don't take it seriously, nor will I take it without a giant lump of salt.
-- Attis
The "Future" is popular enteraintment at Disney theme parks. The vision changed three times. When disney opened Tommorrowland was all about spoace ships, supercars, and the house of tommorrow. A couple decades later, post-Earth Day Epcot had more ecological friendly vision of the future. Finnaly, the future is now all about digital entertainment gizmos- fancy TVs, phones, the InterNet.
Translation: 700 Experts Not Very Creative, Rehash Old Sci-Fi
http://outcampaign.org/
Any chance of us getting a future like the beginning of Back to the Future II, or possibly the one in 'The One' that the good Jet Li ended up in? (I only ever caught the end of The One, so I don't know if it was shown in the rest of the movie)
Technoli
Only given the slimmest chance that the populous of the world gains control over their currencies, banks will rule the world. They will refuse to give loans to corporations might threaten their power, and shrink the money supply (depressions) to scoop up the assets of the people servant to their debt to build power. Patents allow the creations of man to be controlled, and debt controls man. It's pretty obvious how this will play out.
So movies with car crashes upset me. They can take it.
Blar.
Corporations globalizing, commercials eveywhere, elevators, bathrooms. The truth really is stranger than fiction.
"My break dancing days are over, but there's always the Funky Chicken" --The Full Monty
I never said, implied, or intimated that all people of faith were alike--you reached that conclusion either because of a persecution complex, or because pretending to do so suits your purpose. There are those in whom faith is manifested by humility, compassion, and decency. There are others whose faith galvanizes them with a self-confidence, to me arrogance, that allows them to drop bombs on people, or to torture them to death, with a clean conscience, because they think of themselves as instruments of God's providence. If you choose to think that I'm offended by their faith in Christ, rather than by killing and torture, then you are more interested in defending the honor of religion than in maintaining a basic level of human decency.
science fiction is a benefit to humanity by warning of "what might happen" in the future, by proposing "what-if" scenarios, rather than by attempting to predict the future.
Sure, nobody can know for certain what the future will bring specifically, but one incontrovertable observation is that since the beginning of time overall progress has been accelerating exponentially.
You're forgetting various local dark ages. EG, the decline of the Egyptian empire from Saharan desertification, for an easy example. Progress was on a downturn for a while.
Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics/AI (GNR) will play a huge part in the coming decades; the only question is how well we'll be able to guide how it all unfolds.
More importantly, you're presuming we can find economical replacement(s) for geo-petroleum in the requisite timeframe. Our current infrastructure is highly dependent on it, and the time frame left before the anticipated global Hubbert curve's decline in production rates is small. Solve that problem, and the future looks bright. If we fail to solve it, then "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
The jury is still out.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The book just had it's 75th anniversary a few weeks back. John Derbyshire over at National Review commented on it:
M 2E3Y2VkMWYxOGM1YTQzNTYyMWUwMzcyMDA=
e y.htm
"When I was an earnest sixth-former (=highschool senior), a standard classroom discussion was: Which of the two books Brave New World or Nineteen Eighty-Four presents a more probable view of our future? The question looks pretty absurd now, unless you live in North Korea, I suppose."
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDYxOTc5
This might be worth reading too.
What happened to Aldous Huxley
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/feb03/huxl
In the UK, we tried an experiment called 'multiculturalism.' The idea was that we would make a stronger nation by allowing immigrants to come over but keep their own culture. Now, you find communities of (for example) Muslims, who are taught in schools in the languages of their parents, and who have failed to accept any of their adopted nation's values. Recent polls showed that many of them are in favour of Britain adopting Sharia law.
A lot of the strength of the Roman Empire, and later the British Empire and the USA, came from accepting immigrants and adopting the best parts of their culture, while they adopted the best parts of ours. Building ghetto communities does nothing to help this.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
atleast as far as genetic screening goes, and the eventual outlawing of tobacco (in the U.S.)
Dunno about six fingered piano players tho.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
E. E. Smith.
Yes, he wrote horrid space opera, but the computers in Skylark were tremendously fast and powerful, small and cheap enough to throw away, and completely stupid. There's one scene in the Skylark series where Seaton (the hero, brilliant, handsome, caring, monogamous) and a super-intelligent humanoid are working on the control system for a new space ship. Seaton sits down and designs a control module, then another only slightly different, and another, marvelling at the ability of the alien force-based technology to aid his design... and when he finishes the first row he looks up to see his alien partner leaning back as row after row of controls are built automatically.
In that scene... written before computers even had a name... you have computers that are cheap, dumb, fast, small, and completely capable of being misused because they're dumb and fast. Of course at the same time the "brain" of the ship was single huge machine, but even there it was purely a tool. It wasn't a thinking machine, it was a control system.
My questions surrounding AI, I suppose, are more philosophical in nature. They revolve more around purpose of being and such. People generally aren't just handed a purpose of being and told they must work toward that purpose. This purpose must be discovered through gained experiences which help determine a sense of right and wrong, a sense of duty, and other somewhat emotional and philosophical aspects. We build a sense of purpose through living, and then try to live our lives towards our ever evolving sense of purpose. My question, is what purpose will such a super AI find for itself? If it is built on initial experiences, which undoubtedly will be interactions with humans, what factors of these human interactions will "rub off" on the AI? Which factors will it see fit to contribute to its purpose. After establishing this sense of purpose, the AI would continually modify itself in a way that supported the agenda of its purpose, much like people do...
So anyway, there is my long futurist AI rant... Love to hear any comments, etc..
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
You don't need to look to immigration to provide the superstitious and ignorant. Today's school systems are churning them out in the first world. While the first world's universities and other centers of higher learning are first-rate, fewer and fewer of the children of the first world are taking advantage of them. Because they grow up fat, happy and cocooned within their first-world living standard they feel entitled to a living, sustenance, etc. They don't feel a drive to learn, succeed, or improve themselves or their world.
Complacency and entitlement will halt not only forward progress but maintenance of the status quo and so rather than emptying, first-world cities will stagnate and collapse under the weight of their grown-up babies, rather than be maintained by adult workers. It's not just about marching morons, but about the refusal of first-world parents to put their children through real challenges and tests which form the character that makes success and progress possible.
Bruce Lee was a good example of this
He said something like "Why do the chinese come to america and proceed to recreate everything we hated about china?"
His fighting philosophy followed the same principle: Screw tradition. Keep what's good, toss what's bad.
> "Using the term selection in this way is like suggesting that there is selection against hunger because hungry people die more often."
;-)
Well in a manner of speaking there is. Hunger is lack of resource/resources. Which has caused many a species to change. From scaling down or slowing metabolism down, to storing reserves in times of plenty. We already have some adaptation to hunger, that's why we are all getting so fats these days. Our genes are still waiting for the food source to run short. Sugar, fat, salt taste great to us because they would normally be in rare supply. So we stuff our faces with them like the monkeys we are.
> " natural selection or evolutionary theory to human populations"
I aggree that memes will be doing the real evoling (I was careful not to use the word gene). If something went on long enough though (which it won't) the genes would catch up.
> "The real question is: should ethnic tension and violence be surprising when the politically correct doctrine of multi-culturalism has cast assimilation as a profane practice?"
You think things would work better if there was forced assimilation? No, people from similar backgrounds will always group together. People living away from the lands they feel as home will always try and take some home with them. Of course something are not acceptable, laws must be followed, language learnt. But other then that, things should be left to nature rather the poke around. If you try and interfere with people's customs in the name of assimilation, you will only piss them off.
The riots in France are not the result of a multi-culturalism society. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/paris_riots/
(s)
There are things that Bladerunner absolutely predicted that have come to pass, or are occurring in the present.
Manufactured animals. In the movie there are man made animals like snakes that are created in the bio tech industry. This is really no different than someone cloning a dead pet or Dolly the sheep. Anybody with the money can have it done.
Further more it is also common for parents to be able to pick the sex of their child.
The political and economic climate of the movie had large multinational corporations as the central power structure of society. This is exactly what is happening today. When corporations have such vast amounts of wealth to spend on lobbyists, they are the true power behind our government. Who feeds and houses our military; the government, or Haliburton?
The spread of Asian influence into every day society was also predicted in the movie.
This is something that is on going. We already have this influence in the mfg industry. All of our tech dollars eventually flow into Asia. And the Chinese economy is set to explode. At this rate, something like almost 1/4 of the population of the planet will be speaking Mandarin.
And perhaps, most profound is the disconnection of people from each other, leading to increased isolationism, and a lack of understanding and empathy of those around us. Look at the character of Sebastian. Holed up in his apartment, surrounded by friends he built himself. More comfortable around machines than people.
..if I had to make a guess, it would have to be madmax, because of resource depletion and now the billions of people who have an inkling and a taste of what is considered a normal technologically advanced lifestyle. The resources simply don't exist to have all the people on the planet at that same level, say, as western europe or the US/Canada. Probably going to cause problems and more than a bit of social strife, etc in the future.
Go and read his work, PowerShift.
....Now, go check the copyright date.
'Nuff said.
Regards;
> "In the UK, we tried an experiment called 'multiculturalism.'"
/ 8476000511/m/8060004314), the same poll says:
It's not really a experiment, and it's not finished yet. We need immigration!
> "Recent polls showed that many of them are in favour of Britain adopting Sharia law."
That's not the whole story........ (http://community.channel4.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f
"99% per cent thought the bombers were wrong to carry out the atrocity."
"Overall, the findings depict a Muslim community becoming more radical and feeling more alienated from mainstream society, even though 91 per cent still say they feel loyal to Britain."
> "A lot of the strength of the Roman Empire, and later the British Empire and the USA, came from accepting immigrants and adopting the best parts of their culture."
The key here is two way, and that doesn't just mean eating westinised versions of the foods.
> "Building ghetto communities does nothing to help this."
Agreed, but Ghettos are a symptom that people do not feel welcome. It is a symptom of the problem not the cause.
Ex = Has been
Spert = Drip under pressure
Expert...
I just spoke with 5 experts and they agree in 2020 we will all have somthing called a teletype
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
In the UK, we tried an experiment called 'multiculturalism.'
. . . you mean 'cheap labor'.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
In the future, can I get a government voucher to send my Jedi kid to school at the Jedi Temple, or will I still have to take out a massive loan and have him keep living at home with his parents?
I dunno, but the idea of Jedi keg parties give me the financial heebie-jeebies.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
It will get cheaper and cheaper to kill more and more people.
Some small group or series of groups of wack jobs will design nasty viruses.
Lots of people will die.
Governments will become increasingly fascist and controlling.
Corporations will continue to increase in power and learn how to subvert any alternative news flows with propaganda.
And there will be porn... lots of it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Isn't that the plot to Idiocracy?
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Werid. It seems entirely geared towards the shitty misleading press-release and subsequent mislead news peices it will generate.
(Not to mention low quality internet writeups and subsequent buzz by people who don't RTFA)
I predict that in future all polls will be like this.
In the future, the leaders will be lizards. The people are gonna hate the lizards and the lizards will rule the people. But it's still going to be a democracy. The people won't get rid of the lizards because it hasn't occured to them. They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want. So they vote for the lizards because if they didn't vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard might get in.
*apologies to Douglas Adams
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have all claimed that various criticism of the current policies of the executive branch are anti-American. They may not use the term directly, but they phrases like "helping the terrorists", "unacceptable to think...", etc. Of course, sane people ignore them, but that's where the parent poster is coming from.
...everyone will look like Keanu Reeves in the future
Thank God the future will be like a sci-fi movie because the present is already like a bad Jerry Bruckheimer movie.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
oh come on... time and time it has been proven that 'experts' are no better at predictions than anyone else, otherwise individual superstars would be crushing everyone else in the market place.
Poor and stupid are two distinct groups. I don't think technology would necessarily decline if poor people took over. They have more incentive to do more with less resources, which in my opinion is a good catalyst for technological development. As for the decrease in the number of rich people, that would also mean a decrease in the number of people stifling technology now, such as the RIAA and the politicians performing oral sex acts on corporate heads.
I fear the future will be much like the past only worse.
Poor and stupid are two distinct groups.
No, the truth of the matter is that there is an almost perfect correlation between stupidity [respectively genius] and poverty [respectively wealth].
Sorry, but that's the ugly truth of the matter, and no amount of whining, bitching, or moaning will change things.
Poor and stupid are correlated, like it or not.
Lots of people have gotten rich because they are smart.
think about it
Nooo the matrix is comeing and the stupid ai plane from stealth will kill us all
The people "who are not burdened by the humility and self-doubt that plague those of us who can't think of ourselves as instruments of divine providence" also happen to be "bible-thumping do-gooders." I was complaining of a subset of A that also meet condition B, but you're offended because you ingored the qualification of condition B, and thought I was sliming all of set A.
That just has to be a rhetorical question. Are you implying that all arrogant people with faith in God don't really have faith in God? If you follow the line of the No True Scotsman fallacy, then no "real" Christian never does anything wrong, because at the very moment they did something wrong, they weren't a real Christian. But yes, I have found faith in God to be very compatible with arrogance.
Take the attitude towards science--I'm not a professional scientist, but I can see the fruits of the scientific method all around me, I know how much education and expertise go into that field, so I respect the scientific theories, even those I don't fully comprehend. But many religious people reject evolution, geology, environmental science, and pretty much all theoretical science because they, after expending a minimal effort in reading a creationist web-page, don't find them "credible." They actually want to re-define science to disprove what scientists consider science. Yes, that's arrogance. That's "I find evolution improbable after reading a Creationist web-page, so evolution must be false." Who cares about people who have spent decades going to school and doing original research? Yes, that's arrogance.
Whats wrong with a scifi future?
Bunches of scantly clad women running around on the decks of sparsely laid out starships flying around looking for things to do out of boredom is ok in my book.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
it also was believed to be cursed when several companies that advertised in it failed. Atari is back, but Pan Am is not and probably will never be. I was always hoping Budweiser would fail, but that never happened ;)
A more realistic view on the future has been already been produced 27 years ago, no aliens, no space travel and no time travel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max_2:_The_Road_W arrior
I think the best depiction of the future was Back to the Future II. It was absolutely hilarious, and other than the hover crafts, pretty realistic.
Libertas in infinitum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock
Toffler wrote about the subject in the 70's, a very interesting read, but 30+ years later technology has continued to develop and people have continued to adopt to the changes. With the current state of affairs I would be more concerned with Orwell predictions of the future http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984 coming true than any Sci-Fi show. Although I do fear that the jumpsuit will become the universal clothing choice of the future, look around the room, imagine everyone wearing tight fitting body hugging jump suits, now thats a bleak future!
Here's a clue to the wealthy and educated to whom I assume you believe you belong: stop killing your children in the womb, and maybe that birth rate discrepancy you have such disdain for will be reduced.
If you really think you have the answers to all the world's problems embedded in your shining DNA, maybe you could invest in the future and pass some of it on rather than murdering it.
But the people they ask are the *same* people that movie makers consult. So of course their own opinion is going to resemble their own opinion.
Table-ized A.I.
This isn't a time to panic but we do not actually KNOW how many people today are taking blood transfusions to remain alive. I view blood as an organ of the living body as do most doctors. In effect, living off other people's donated blood cells is a liquid form of Soylent Green food staple made from people. Science Fiction always contains a lot of truth in its plot. The general perception of "Science" is that it is our great & wonderful OZ. Is it? No, not always. Many scientific advances contain a serious amount of Halloween horror. There are negative sides to the Science coin. We should not hide from these realities, nor that widespread genocide is being quietly pursued against certain ones of the American Public {anyone perceived to be a "threat" (boat rocker)}.
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
... toggle the OFF switch!
There, no electricity, no problem.
As long as we retain control at the most basic level, it doesn't matter how much the AI develops, or control systems get out of control or whatever scenario a futurologist can imagine, we can cut it off at the knees.
Bring back the 486! I knew what I was damn well doing with it.
Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post
Let's assume that today, the world's reporductive rate falls to 1 child per 2 parents, and that they have that kid at the age of 35.
The world's population falls in half every 35 years.
In 70 years, we go from 6 billion to 1.5 billion people.
Are you telling me that 1.5 billion well educated and wealthy humans can not sustain a global economy?
I'm pretty sure that just us Texans could do it.
Andy Out!
For the sake of being a little on-topic: those predictions of the future are in some cases self-preventing! "Brave New World" and "1984" are examples of sci-fi scenarios unpleasant and memorable enough that people have actively and consciously worked to make sure the future isn't like that.
Anyway, Jakuta, Hi! I've been looking through some old e-mails after a hard drive crash, and found yours. I actually finished that little game demo (re: "I'm tired of being the hero"), such as it is, months ago. More info and the download are here. (Sorry for posting that here -- although it does involve sci-fi megalomania -- but I don't know how to contact you otherwise.)
Revive the Constitution.
"Don't forget the neckbraces that explode when you go beyond the perimeter. We have those today in the form of shopping carts with wheels that lock if you take them outside the parking lot."
My dogs would tell you that a closer example might be the shock collar that each wears around their necks that remind them of the perimiter of our yard...
NO! I want shopping carts which explode when people take them out of the lot! Heh.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.