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SF Authors Predict Computing's Future
Esther Schindler writes "'Over the past century a lot of science fiction has been published, showcasing a lot of wild ideas, and if you sit enough authors at enough typewriters or word processors, somebody is bound to get a few things right. Science fiction's greater influence, though, goes beyond whether or not the authors can make a good guess,' writes Kevin J. Anderson in Science Fiction's Take on the Future of Computers: Visionaries and Imaginaries. 'Rather than predicting the future, the SF genre is much better at inspiring the future. Visionaries read or see cool ideas in their favorite SF books or films, then decide how to make it a reality.' So Anderson assembled a set of visionaries, and asked them where they thought computing is headed: Mike Resnick, Robert J. Sawyer, Greg Bear, Michael A. Stackpole, Dr. Gregory Benford, and Christopher Paolini gaze into their crystal balls. 'Forget artificial intelligence. The future of computing is artificial consciousness, and it will be here within 20 years, and maybe much sooner than that,' says Sawyer. 'Our future wired world will have smart, wireless robots — gofers in hospitals, security guards with IR vision at night, lawn mowers, etc. We ourselves will be wired, with devices and embedded sensors taking in data and giving it out — a two way street,' contributes Benford."
Quality science fiction authors (not the pulp hacks), aren't TRYING to predict the future. They know better than anyone that's a pointless pursuit. Real science fiction writers, are merely using a genre setting to comment on the PRESENT, and perhaps on the human condition in general. Anyone who seriously thinks they can predict the future is a fucking retard. In the past, every time someone has tried they were laughably off. Even when someone does occasionally luck onto to getting some small thing right, like a specific piece of technology, they usually screw up its context and use in some fundamental way, or they make some assumption that turns out to be untrue (Arthur Clarke assuming that NASA would continue on with Apollo-level funding for example). No serious writer is arrogant enough to think their predictions are actually going to come true. They're literary devices, not prognostications.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Ya I've never heard of most these authors but the article lost all credibility when they said 'Christopher Paolini' was on their list. He isn't a science fiction writer he writes fantasy and not even good fantasy at that. Why is he even there?
Its funny when people think that a Scince fiction author is trying to say "we will have x technology on y date" when the reality is more like "hey, wouldnt it be cool if we had this in x years?" Sometimes it works out, because the people behind the real tech say "yeah, that WOULD be cool, im on it."
Unmanned taxi cabs piloted remotely by a human assisted by in-vehicle AI Navigation. This will be the private sector job market for Air Force drone pilots.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
Pop sci reporters realizing that "[Fantastic Thing X] is 20 years off..." is such a cliche it should never be seen in print is about 20 years off.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
was I the only one who thought "SourceForge" before thinking "SciFi"?
I've learnt over the years to completely ignore any predictions made on a time based framework. They are just pulling that number out of their ass. They haven't performed intense and complicated calculations to determine when such and such is going to come out, and how. The fact of the matter is that no one knows.
The problem with writing about what a future world looks like is dealing with current trends and pretending they don't exist.
For example, it is only a matter of time before the "desktop" as a general purpose computer which can do anything disappears to be replaced by a device like a ChromeOS appliance that is locked down and controlled from the CPU up by a third party whose interest is likely mining every bit you create to sell to advertisers or parties interested in finding undesirables and removing them before anything more than a Facebook petition can start.
Or using IP laws as a tool for censorship, where a tool checks all postings on the Web and if there is any text in them that matches some other document and does not please the status quo, the user is arrested on the spot. Sort of how China's internet firewall can intercept posts in transit and change them before they hit a Web forum.
Pretty much, as a SF writer, one can either write about a setting in a brutal police state, or a post-apocalyptic hellscape (think The Word/Void Trilogy.) Or one can ignore trends and hope that people don't lose their suspension of disbelief.
We'll soon have vehicles, planes, and tiny unmanned flying or wheeling devices that we send places to buy stuff, deliver stuff, or do other errants. Initially we won't trust their autonomous controls but will sit behind a console, steering them to their destination and home again. Eventually, we'll just tell the domestic droid to "Go buy a gallon of milk." (It will know that we prefer 2% over whole). Already, we have a lot of this tech in place and the military is using it.
We'll have more augmentation of our physical senses. Probably a lot of us will wear glasses or hair bands or necklaces equipped with earbuds, microphones, and computational ability to translate languages, whisper directions to us as we walk or drive about, remind us of to-do lists, and answer just about any factual question that we need answered. Googling--that is, sitting down at some clunky keyboard and typing in search terms--will be as quaint and old-fashioned as a horse and buggy are today.
We may have glasses that expand our sight into the infrared and ultraviolet, handy for night vision, spotting muggers around corners, etc. We'll see that a pot is too hot to pick up rather than have to actually touch it.
Speaking of which, smart pots will tell us when the food is done, and will turn the stove off on their own. Kitchen timers will be a thing of the past--they almost are, now--and cooking will be a matter of tossing food into some kind of processor which washes it, cuts it, cooks it, and serves it. Eventually, kitchens will be a wall of machines where food storage and preparation is totally self-contained, just as heating and air conditioning are self-contained today.
One could go on and on. We haven't even touched on medical advances. That other Slashdot article today about living to 150 is going to make some ripples as well. When you have an extra 60-70 years life expectancy, think of the new scientific discoveries you'll have time to produce, the artistic achievements, the new world records, the writing you can do.
It all boggles the mind. And most of us reading these articles today will be around to see it.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
20 years ago it was 1991.
Except for the web, which was not much more than a hypertext system at the time, computing really hasn't changed. X, Windows, and the Mac were old technology by then. But what's much newer than them now?
Computering has gotten faster, smaller, prettier, and an ungodly bankload cheaper.
But most of us (here) are still writing scripts in text to get useful things done.
Does Siri code in Python? That could be a game-changer.
Although books like Shockwave Rider described a fair implementation of the internet, it only managed it a short time before it actually arrived, so merely describing things that occur within 10 years don't really count as "SF predictions".
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
http://xkcd.com/548/
... envisioned the internet and SmartPhones and more in 1952: http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51
I asked Ted Nelson once about that story when he visited at IBM Research when I was there around 2001 and he said yes, that story is where he had gotten the name "Xanadu" for his hypertext work, but he had forgotten the full name of the story until I reminded him of it.
Please read it to see what has been shaping our present and probably hopefully our future.
And with OWS, the rest of Sturgeon's predictions may be beginning to come true (about people teaching each other how to get better and better at freedom).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I've been waiting for strong AI for decades. Progress has been very slow. (It was really slow during the "AI Winter", after expert systems turned out to be a dud.) But it's picking up, what with all the effort in statistical machine learning.
The big difference this time is commercial applications. Until about 10 years or so, the commercial value of AI was tiny. Now, serious money goes into it and profits result. This makes the technology self-supporting and growing, rather than dependent on research funding. A big chunk of what Google does now involves machine learning. Machine translation is getting to be reasonably good. A lot of industrial stuff that few people see has more self-adjusting capability than it used to. Machines that move around in the real world by themselves and get stuff done are starting to work, and they're getting better each year.
There's a lot of noise about "conciousness", but once we get AI into the low end of the mammal range, moving up may not be that tough. All the mammals have roughly the same DNA, brain components and structure, after all.
Once machines get anywhere near human intelligence, they'll go way past it, of course. Computers scale up and network far better than biology does.
'Rather than predicting the future, the SF genre is much better at inspiring the future. Visionaries read or see cool ideas in their favorite SF books or films, then decide how to make it a reality.' So Anderson assembled a set of visionaries, and asked them where they thought computing is headed
Is this supposed to some take-off of the games guests play on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me? These people are great at "A", so we're going to ask them to do "B"!
Wouldn't it make more sense, since "visionaries" are better at inspiring the future rather than predicting it, to ask the assembled group where they wanted computing to head rather than where they thought it was heading?
Haven't we established they are almost certainly to be wrong about the question as asked?
You are correct, but TFA doesn't exactly claim to be predicting the future, they claim to be inspiring it.
"Rather than predicting the future, the SF genre is much better at inspiring the future. Visionaries read or see cool ideas in their favorite SF books or films, then decide how to make it a reality."
"I asked several of my SF writer colleagues to turn on their imaginations, let their ideas flow, and sound off on any aspect of where they thought the future of computing might go. Maybe they'll inspire new technologies we will all be using in a few years."
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Yah!
Sony PlayStation 10 the Implant! Watch out for the root kit though, it is going to be a real killer.
Hey, everybody! Read the book "Wired For War" by P.W. Singer. It's mostly about robotics and combat in the 21st century. VERY interesting stuff.
Yet none of these writers seem to be able or willing to connect the dots. Mr. Sawyer predicts that future intelligent machines will not be burdened by our primitive survival instincts and will therefore see cooperation with us as a "win-win". I doubt that very much. More likely, once machine intelligence evolves beyond human intelligence - and then accelerates - we (humans) will be seen as irrelevant and pesky, at best.
Mr. Paolini says that he cannot wait for brain-machine interface implants. But does he realize that that is the beginning of the end of the separation between man and machine? That right behind that Rubicon will follow the ability to inter-connect multiple minds and multiple machines as well, and that right behind that will follow the obsolescence of individual human minds?
The future of "computing" is not utopian. It is a future in which humans as we know them do not exist anymore.
This is very probably our last century.
A few months ago, I dug through my old Science Fiction Bookclub books, circa 1970's, and came up with this gem, an anthology of short stories specifically to comment 30 years in the future.
Pretty laughably wrong on most of the problems solved by 2000, and way off on what new problems we might be experiencing 30 years in the future (from 1970).
Not that it wasn't a good read...!
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
Forget artificial intelligence. The future of computing is artificial consciousness, and it will be here within 20 years, and maybe much sooner than that
Yes, that's what we all meant by AI.
Advice: on VPS providers
The future of computing is artificial consciousness, and it will be here within 20 years, and maybe much sooner than that,' says Sawyer.
Yeah, it'll be running on a Linux desktop in my fusion powered flying car in the Mars colony. Good thing they're all just 20 years away.
Yet none of these writers seem to be able or willing to connect the dots. Mr. bonobos predicts that future intelligent apes will not be burdened by our primitive social structures and will therefore see cooperation with us as a "win-win". I doubt that very much. More likely, once mans intelligence evolves beyond our intelligence - and then accelerates - we (apes) will be seen as irrelevant and pesky, at best.
Mr. orangutans gesticulates that he cannot wait for voice-ear interface signals. But does he realize that that is the beginning of the end of the separation between ape and man? That right behind that Rubicon will follow the ability to inter-connect multiple minds and multiple men as well, and that right behind that will follow the obsolescence of ape societies?
The future of "man" is not utopian. It is a future in which apes as we know them do not exist anymore.
This is very probably our last millenia.
In the first of the Foundation series novels Isaac Asimov predicted the pocket calculator. It was used by Hari Seldon.
This is explained outside the fiction field in a more rigorous fashion in The Law of Accelerating Returns:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/17/195244/sf-authors-predict-computings-future
Very interesting read!
I've said it time and time again, what appears in the anime series will happen some day, which is what the author touches on. We'll have partially to fully enhanced humans, and then a whole slew of fully robotic devices including gynoids. I assume it'll be mostly for the better, but just as the series touches on that the same helpful things could be used in nefarious ways.
If you haven't check out GITS before, do so now it's grrrrrrrrreat!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
David Gerrold is the most forward looking SF author that I've ever met.
He started writing on the cutting edge technology of the day: the IBM Selectric typewriter.
He was looking for someone to build him a full word processor years before anyone else had even heard of the term and knew exactly what it needed to be.
His most far reaching idea that is almost in reach now was in a story he easily wrote 30 or so years ago where you carried a small object with you that would slot into any computer of its futuristic day and completely remap the keyboard and system to your own language.
Extrapolating that, my prediction (not that anybody cares) is that the future is a wearable computer that you have with yourself always, that is powerful enough for any normal task, and that can be plugged into more powerful systems with big screens and keyboards for specific tasks. The cell phone of today is within shouting distance of this, once we can get something like a wearable heads-up display and a better virtual or portable keyboard, or truly accurate voice recognition to at least the level of an 11-year-old human.
Of course, legally we have to make cell phones not searchable without a warrant. Or include such strong cryptography that they become unsearchable regardless of the warrant.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Gynoids (fembots), count me in!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Forget artificial intelligence. The future of computing is artificial consciousness, and it will be here within 20 years, and maybe much sooner than that,
Yeah, right. I've been hearing that since the mid '80s, and we're no closer now than we were then.
some of them will happen eventually. Then you only need to publicise the things that you hit, noone will remember the rest. That's how future prediction works.
True AI is at least 20 years away and has been so for about 50 years, making it more likely > 100 years away or infeasible, with 'infeasible' a very real possibility at this time. Now, we do know a lot less about consciousness than about intelligence, putting it farther into the future. We have a working theory for neither. We do not have even small demonstrations for neither. Extreme effort spent by an automated theorem prover does not count, as that approach doe not scale at all. Expert systems like IBM Watson are nice, useful when they become affordable and become robust and do have quite a few real applications, but what they do is not AI.
This is just the usual rambling BS of what these people think they want. No connection to reality and what can actually be done.
Caveat: I have some insight into the actual research going on. (No, I do not mean what people claim in order to get funding. I do mean results.)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
More gimmicky consumer devices, less ownership, control, and privacy.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
RE: "completely remap the keyboard and system to your own language"
Why bother carrying anything? Touchscreen buttons "English", "", etc.
RE: "can be plugged into more powerful systems with big screens and keyboards"
Again, why bother carrying anything? The cloud will negate the need. Who am I kidding? The cloud has already negated the need.
On The Big Bang Theory, there is a flashback scene where several of the characters are playing with their iPods. Sheldon says to them, "I assure you, you'll be sorry you wasted your money on an iPod, when Microsoft comes out with theirs."
Duke NUKEM 3D
I, for one, welcome my cyborg implants. I have been committed to them for some years now--all I need is a mad scientist friend or enough time to implant my own.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
will be more of the same, only different. And I sincerely doubt "consciousness" will arrive in machines in 20 years--or ever. We may cleverly program them to seem conscious, but that is not consciousness. We must not confuse the appearance with the fact out of enthusiasm. Just more over prediction and kind of boring.
E Proelio Veritas.
Every time we make progress in the field of AI... ...it becomes commercially useful, we spin it off as another discipline and rename it to something other than AI.
-- Terry
I think this has come to pass. Well at least a computer that covers parts of the surface where we live. Its called the internet. Perhaps not quite what Asimov had in mind, but its here, now.
a bunch of people got together and predict that computer will be further along in the very fields that are currently being developed. Surprise.
I could get better guess from a class of 6th graders.
And, very, very, very few techs in sci-fi every actually come to pass. It's stupid to turn to sci fi authors for this input. We should turn to experts in the fields.
What we have is a bunch of confirmation bias. People remembering the hits, and forgetting the misses...also people have a tendency to try and twist a sci-fi idea or item into something of today.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"This is all just pattern matching, "
What do you think intelligence is?
" there are people guiding them."
entering moves isn't guiding.
Also, you are who you are because people 'guided' you.
"developing something that can learn and make inferences "
You mean like the tech in the android and iPhone 4s?
http://www.radiolab.org/2011/may/31/
And here is a software system than can duces laws of physice through observation: In fact, it's so good it ahs given biologists answer to queation they don't understand. Think about that: You give the system data, and it gives you a formula that you can use toa ccurate predict an outcome, but the scientist don't understand the formula.
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/apr/05/limits-of-science/
Finally, I know there are at least 3 AI bots with uid on ./ All have positive karma.
Yeah,it's here, it's new. The only problem is people give a mystical quality to intelligence as if it's some 'magic gift'.
It isn't.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Mike Resnick thinks his computer will castigate him?!?!?! Disgusting!