Sci-Fi Authors and Scientists Predict an Optimistic Future

An anonymous reader writes: A few years ago, author Neal Stephenson argued that sci-fi had forgotten how to inspire people to do great things. Indeed, much of recent science fiction has been pessimistic and skeptical, focusing on all the ways our inventions could go wrong, and how hostile the universe is to humankind. Now, a group of scientists, engineers, and authors (including Stephenson himself) is trying to change that. Arizona State University recently launched Project Hieroglyph, a hub for ideas that will influence science fiction to be more optimistic and accurate, and to focus on the great things humanity is capable of doing.

For example, in the development of a short story, Stephenson wanted to know if it's possible to build a tower that's 20 kilometers tall. Keith Hjelmsad, an expert in structural stability and computational mechanics, wrote a detailed response about the challenge involved in building such a tower. Other authors are contributing questions as well, and researchers are chiming in with fascinating, science-based replies. Roboticist Srikanth Saripalli makes this interesting point: "If the government has to decide what to fund and what not to fund, they are going to get their ideas and decisions mostly from science fiction rather than what's being published in technical papers."

Comments

Re:Not always

[sillybilly]

Wow, and I just found this quote on that page:

Here at least We shall be free
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice, To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

That's like nonsense, gibberish, but for a genetically "queen" being, the concept of "serve" others instead of reigning over others yourself, may indeed be strange. After all, that's like cuckolds in porn, go ahead please, let me be second, and disappear. It's complicated. You can have brotherly love between men, not gay, or homosexual, just love where they push each other forward. But then again, the ones that sort of "cheat the system" and assert themselves at the expense of others, in such a social environment, will proliferate. Kinda like people having a ton of kids on welfare, they don't serve others, they serve themselves first and foremost. Ultimately, the breeding capacity of any healthy life form is infinite, and only the external world, the external resource constraint is what sets a limit on what an adequate size of population is. For most lifeforms it's a limiting nutrient. With the limit lifted, such as infinite cat food, or phosphate detergents for algae, you get a bloom and inharmonious upset of the ecosystem from a population explosion.