William Gibson Gives Up on the Future

Tinkle writes "Sci-fi novelist William Gibson has given up trying to predict the future — because he says it's become far too difficult. In an interview with silicon.com, Gibson explains why his latest book is set in the recent past. 'We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that — we have no idea at all now where we are going." "Will global warming catch up with us? Is that irreparable? Will technological civilization collapse? There seems to be some possibility of that over the next 30 or 40 years or will we do some Verner Vinge singularity trick and suddenly become capable of everything and everything will be cool and the geek rapture will arrive? That's a possibility too.'"

Comments

I.J. Good & The Suspension of Disbelief

[eldavojohn]

There's two things I'd like to mention after reading this interview. First, let's give the original credit of a technology explosion or singularity to I. J. Good and his quote:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. I think that predates Verner Vinge but he certainly never built it into a story like Vinge.

Second, I would like to point out that every non-fiction book or movie I have read requires some degree of suspension of disbelief. Whether I'm watching Remains of the Day or Demolition Man, I need to look past illogical or non-scientific aspects of the movies. Does this detract from the story? Some would say yes, I would say only a little bit. I am very forgiving in literature. I have read many old Stanislaw Lem novels and the complex emotions the robots display is impossible--the physics of the robots are even more impossible. But Lem's stories are still great, given I can get past a robot with no energy input survives millions of years in space.

So although I have not read William Gibson's works, I ask him not to give up on writing. You will have another good idea and you will write another book about it. Just wait for it to come.

As for this idea of technology actually achieving this event horizon described by Good or Gibson or Vinge, I don't think that it's achievable. I can't prove it won't happen just like you can't prove it will happen. All I will say is that I don't even know where to begin. I would start with digesting the world wide web & developing a logic and reasoning engine to decide which statements are true and which are fact and which are neither. When it would be done, it may be 'more intelligent' than I but not 'more intelligent' than the sum of all human knowledge.

I think there will always be a "???" in the game plan to make an artificially intelligent robot that functions intelligently on a human level or higher. I just don't see a way around it. That doesn't mean we should ever stop writing about it though.

Sci-fi is fun, not something that is completely scientifically accurate--it just is a lot more fun when you explore the gray areas we don't understand or theorize about. Enjoy it while you can!

Re:I.J. Good & The Suspension of Disbelief

[scribblej]

Your post was thoughtful and well-written, as well as insightful. I'm almost embarassed to be replying with humor.

So although I have not read William Gibson's works, I ask him not to give up on writing. You will have another good idea and you will write another book about it. Just wait for it to come.

I'd like to suggest that if you HAD read his books, you'd ask him to please put down the pen and do something else.

He had one great idea, and when he was younger, his writing style was beautiful and articulate, like some crazy poetry. But as time has worn on, he has moved further from brilliant concepts and fantastic conceptualizations, and closer to being "just another sci-fi author."

Neuromancer was an excellent read. The stories in Burning Chrome, genius. I'd even give im points on Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive.

After that, he went to crap. I still give him credit for being a brilliant man, a good writer, whom a lot of people enjoy. But I don't think that anyone, even his current fans, would argue that after his first set of books, "something changed."

Re:I.J. Good & The Suspension of Disbelief

[Lemmy Caution]

In that case, it could be said that hard science fiction has become almost impossible. Conjectures about future technologies are as hard as WG says, and any given writer is going to have to face the likelihood that their conjectures get shown as flawed very quickly. Scientific accuracy is hard enough for scientists now: a physicist will probably not have the ability to recognize biological impossibilities; a geneticist will botch sociology and economics. Yet a comprlling story will have value even if the science is flawed.

Re:I.J. Good & The Suspension of Disbelief

[Jeremy_Bee]

In that case, it could be said that hard science fiction has become almost impossible. Conjectures about future technologies are as hard as (William Gibson) says, and any given writer is going to have to face the likelihood that their conjectures get shown as flawed very quickly. No offense but this sounds like nonsense to me.

Science fiction is no more impossible by these standards than it ever was. If you read sci-fi from the 50's and 60's they got some of it right and huge amounts of it completely wrong. I would venture to guess that science fiction today will have about the same ratio of accuracy some 50 or 60 years hence.

Also, despite his fame and fortune, William Gibson is one of the last person to be talking about predicting the future. Anyone really familiar with science fiction and Gibson's novels can tell you that other than a few buzzwords and the general tone of his one and only original novel, nothing Gibson has written about has actually come true. The metaphorical "cyberspace" (there's the buzz-word [smirk]), in his first novel if not really anything like what actually became cyberspace except in very general, symbolic outlines. And all of his further novels are just regurgitations of the same stuff.

"Real" science fiction, (the original science fiction), is about science and the future in a concrete sense and it's based in social and historical themes. The idea is to base a story in a "real" or possible future society. The "other" kind of sci-fi, the stuff that has been popular since about 1980 or so and has become mainstream in our culture, has nothing to do with the future or with science. Despite the trappings of ray-guns and spaceships for instance, Star Wars is essentially a medieval drama about empire and heroic rebellion. Same goes for the vast majority of TV sci-fi.

These are not science fiction stories, they are War stories (now called "action" movies), romantic dramas, and sitcoms that just happen to take place in some cheesy spaceship. Gibson actually wrote some real science fiction with that first book, but it's been severely overplayed and overexposed.

He has been trading on it's success ever since IMO.

Re:I.J. Good & The Suspension of Disbelief

[fyngyrz]

The premise here is wrong. Hard SF is not limited to technology that *will* come, it is about technology that *could* come because the science, at the time is is written (and that is a very important issue) is plausible as far as is known. It has nothing to do with the ideas "coming true", though that's not to say they could not.

Suspension of disbelief is easier in stories written this way; and contrary to the above assertion, in good hard SF, the technology doesn't serve the role of the main story, carrying the characters as an incidental; the technology can almost fade away, leaving the story to be the main theme because the technology isn't so crazy.

Can there be good, accurate ideas in hard SF? Sure. We have seen them over and over. Frederick Pohl predicted today's convergence of cell phone, PDA, browser and so on with a great deal of accuracy in "The Age of the Pussyfoot." Niven and Pournelle did a great "asteroid hits earth" novel; Gibson himself did some very intriguing speculation along the lines of interfaces, scientifically plausible but requiring considerably more horsepower than was available at the time of his writing (but not now.) Gregory Benford, James P Hogan, Asimov, Blish, Clarke, and a host of others have all dipped their hand into the "hard" SF bowl and pulled out shining fruits no one had ever thought of before, all while writing great, engaging stories about a huge variety of things.

I read both types with equal, but different, pleasure. I enjoy the flight of fancy that comes with the idea of FTL drive; I also enjoy the tweak I get from a lesser technology that I actually might live to see if things go that way. But if the story doesn't bring interesting plot lines, significant character development, thought-provoking social comment, reasons for the major technological developments being posited... odds are I'll put it down and never pick it up again.

The idea that an SF story would be devalued if the predicted technology didn't materialize or if later science narrows the hard SF window such that it could not materialize is ludicrous; on the contrary, an honest window into what people really thought was possible at any point in time has its own magnificent charm.

Not so hard, really

[pieterh]

It's pretty easy to predict the future. The hard part is the timing.

Anyhow, here goes:

- most of the world gets online and fully integrated into the digital revolution
- wireless networks everywhere
- more and more services get online
- large-screen video conferencing in every living room
- digital glasses that overlay the real world with maps, wikipedia pages, everything
- facial recognition for *everyone* you meet, pops up their wikipedia page
- no more queues at the post office - every interaction with the state will go online
- movies will, eventually die, and be replaced with something like scripted video games
- virtual worlds will become a major front-end to the internet
- rising energy costs will define how we use transport
- poorer nations will be strongest adopters of ecological technologies
- we'll see 'fabricators', able to make any product out of a digital design
- the *AA will crack down on design sharers
- cities will reject the automobile and become a lot nicer places to live in
- pharmaceutics will go digital and we'll be exchanging digital drug designs
- some bright kid will hack a drug fab to produce artificial life
- the church and the *AA will crack down on DNA design sharers
- the country as a notion will die and be replaced with the online community
- big, big changes in political structures

Etc.

always be a "???"

[wurp]

1. Use a combination of surgical examination, dissection of dead tissue, and MRI and other dynamic techniques to produce a model of the physics of a human brain
2. Wait until Moore's law puts a computer within your price range that is capable of running that model at faster than 1 model second per real second
3. Implement it

You now have a machine that is slightly more intelligent than a human. Add in the fact that you can fully oxygenate all tissues, remove waste products, control neurochemicals, and dissipate (virtual) heat with no regard for physical laws, and I'd say it's quite a bit beyond human intelligence.

Re:always be a "???"

[Surt]

My estimate is based on direct experience using Neuron:
http://neuron.duke.edu/

And attempting to model everything we know about the chemical processes. That said, there are 2 dimensions of performance issues:

1) Neuron is not as fast as it could be, because a lot of the work being done is at an interpretive level.
2) It's likely we don't know all we need to about the chemistry.

I assume those 2 issues are roughly a draw, and that in order to eventually simulate a human brain, there will be improvements in the simulator software eventually, but those will trade off against the necessity of more detailed simulations.

In any case, 50 years for the computer power to simulate a human brain is a decent bet.