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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!
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.
I more fear that it will be like 1984. Cameras everywhere, mass surveillance, no criticism of the rulers allowed.
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V for Vendetta, Planet of the Apes, 2001, and Matrix Revolutions I think.
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.
(perhaps Penn Jilette?) "The future will be a lot like now but with better special effects."
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
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.
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
Bradbury's future was marked by huge video screens in the living room, little speakers in the ears, people pursuing dangerous hobbies because their lives had become empty (street racing, in the novel), and a disinclination towards knowledge (books) in favour of a false sense of reality being fed to citizens through the media.
Golly gee, I hope that's not our future.
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.
Smart man that Joss is.
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?
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
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The Wikipedia Article on the Roman Republic has a few statements that I find both amusing and frightening,
"This kind of violent and sensationalist politics only sought to inflame tensions within Roman society, namely the poor and the disenfranchised."
"Starting with the Punic Wars, the Roman economy began to change, concentrating wealth in the hands of a few powerful clans and causing political tension within Rome."
"Formerly middle-class soldiers would return from years of campaigning to find themselves landless, unable to support their families, and ironically, unemployable because the successes of the Legions made slaves a much cheaper source of labor."
Regarding your comparisons to the late Roman Empire, I agree that there are striking similarities in both Europe and the US; just replace "barbarian invasion" with "massive illegal immigration".
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.