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Sci-fi Predictions, True and False (Video 1)
Science fiction is the domain of predicting future technology. But we rarely stop to account for which predictions come true, which don't, and which are fulfilled in... unexpected ways. A panel at the recent science fiction convention in Detroit explored this subject in depth, from Star Trek's communicators to nanotech and cloning. Panelists include writer and forensic science expert Jen Haeger; professor and generally fascinating guy Brian Gray; and expert in Aeronautical Management and 20-year veteran of the Air Force Douglas Johnson. In this video, they run down a list of science fiction predictions, both successful and unsuccessful, and evaluate how realistic or far-fetched each now seems.
TRANSCRIPTS! Do you have them, motherfucker!
...no, it's not.
Science fiction has never been about predicting future technology.
Science fiction is about considering and exploring the human ramifications when certain aspects of reality are changed.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
...some troll is going to post some trolly comments on a /. forum, soon.
The gizmos, gadgets, and Mac Guffins are merely there to help us ponder the question of "how would the ability to do such and such impact human life/culture/civilization/etc... ?" If that question is ignored, then the story - regardless of the do-hickeys involved - belongs to another genera: perhaps adventure, fantasy, or something else. The question can be treated at the highest levels of galactic civilization and politics or at the lowest levels of an individual's life, but it is the quintessential aspect of Science Fiction.
...ever. Where are my tractor beams?
In C++, your friends can see your privates.
Then there is the rise of very small dwelling, basically just beds, which are becoming popular in some parts, as predicted by the cyberpunk novels.
The real problem with most prediction in science fiction is that is misses a critical development aspect of the technology, or more often the limitation of the applications of the technology. For instance, at this time everyone expected housecleaning to be done by robots, but astronavigation to still be done by hand.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
These lists of sci fi predictions coming true always seem to bend what it means to 'come true' because the fiction never seems to get it exactly right. They almost always seem to either over predict such as tractor beams and cloaking devices which we "technically" have today but only at the quantum level and not in a way that would be recognizable to the average sci fi fan, or under predict, such as Star Trek PADDs being single use one-object-per-task devices rather than the more useful general-purpose iPads that we actually got. I am having trouble thinking of any futuristic predictions that the author got exactly right.
If there aren't sex robots involved, I'm not interested.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Most real sci-fi was written long ago and most of its authors are either already dead or will be dead real soon now.
Nowadays, sci-fi doesn't have much in the way of the quintessential.
Now it is just another part of the fantasy department along with elves and vampires.
And the impact pondering has been replaced by romantic titillation and other prurient pastimes.
Sadly, we have become one of the very dystopias the real sci-fi authors used to poke fun at.
Anyone who thinks we surpassed TOS flip communicators didn't really pay attention. Those things had a range past orbit without the use of a cell phone tower or any other kind of relay infrastructure. The TNG communicators, on top of that, were hands free speakerphones with perfect audio quality and small enough to pin on your jacket.
I also never noticed them needing a charge.
Here's my general assessment of the pace of progress we've actually made compared to what was predicted since around the Sputnik era:
Earth transportation: D- (relatively cheap air-fare about only gain. NO flying cars.)
Space transportation/exploration: C- (chem rockets still expensive as hell)
Artificial Intelligence: B-
Electronics/Computers: A (arguably only area faster than expected)
Medical: B-
Poverty: D (still not solved)
Reduced Work Week: D+
Population Overload or Resource Shortages: C- (problems less than anticipated)
Big Brother: B
Table-ized A.I.
Back around 1905 Tesla made some interesting predictions. These were not intended to be science fiction, but they probably seemed that way to most people for the next hundred years. Tesla claimed that, eventually, people would be able to carry pocket-sized communication devices with them and receive audio, text and video anywhere in the world using these devices. News, stories, letters, etc, he said would be stored on central nodes and our pocket-sized devices would retreive messages from these nodes.
That's a pretty darn good prediction for someone who lived before TV, before most homes had telephones, before eletronic computers or the Internet.
Orson Scott Card was the guy who "invented" the Internet? Hell, it *EXISTED* when he wrote Ender's game.
And if you're talking about WWW, it was predicted by Vannevar Bush long before then.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Right.
"Science fiction is a domain of predicting future technology -- succes rate of said predictions being comparable to Nostradamus'."
Fixed that for yous.
Kurt Vonnegut had a chillingly accurate prediction of the economy of the future in "Player Piano". While of course it contains the standard 1950s era scifi references to huge computers filled with vaccum tubes and it doesn't accurately predict what will happen with sending work abroad but his point about what we do with the now "useless" people is spot on.
In the book you are either one of the lucky few who have the skills and opportunity to become an engineer or else you have meaningless work found for you, either in the army or one of a large number of mostly pointless public works projects. This is eerily similar to the economies of a lot of the rich world, especially the U.S. while the rabid flag waivers don't want to admit it, most soldiers in the U.S. army today are only there because becoming a soldier was their only real chance to live something resembling a middle class lifestyle. We also have huge numbers of menial jobs whose only real purpose is to create busy work selling chinese made goods to each other. I highly recommend the book to anyone who wants to see the downside of the "maker economy"
Monstar L
"Frau Im Monde" Directed by Fritz Lang pretty much has the entire American 20th Cen space program layed out. From a movie made in 1929 you'll SEE! A rocket countdown from 10 to zero. SEE! Large transport crawler haul the launch vehicle to a launch complex with water dampening for the exhaust noise. SEE! A complete pre-enactment of Apollo 8's Earthrise. SEE! Complete pre-enactment of the Ranger series impact lunar probes. SEE! A multistage rocket before it was ever done. And you know the other SEE! I want to put, but I won't even though you want me to, but Mel got to say it. :)
Isn't it about time Slashdot caught up with the rest of the world and ditched Adobe Flash? Simple mp4/webm is so much better.
I recall Ray Bradbury described interacting with a TV with other actors on the screen who were other humans. This was described in Fahrenheit 451 and compared to reading books. It was noted how most people wouldn't bother with books once they had these sorts of interactive screens, which to me also described the rise of video games.
Why do I need Adobe Flash to play videos on Slashdot?
The goal of Sci-Fi isn't to predict, it's to tell a plausible, compelling, future-oriented story. I'm of the school that believes Sci-Fi should not, generally speaking, violate known laws of physics. However the ship has largely sailed on that score and there's lots of Fantasy masquerading as Science Fiction these days. So I'll generally let at least one major "Yeah Right" plot point through without complaining.
Also, we must stipulate that not all science is known. Sci-Fi gets a free pass in these areas of known or suspected future developments.
That said, predictions are one common outcome of good Sci-Fi. The advantage that Sci-Fi has on this score is the stripping away of current technology, current limitations of policy, culture, money, resources, and so forth. Sci-Fi gets to ask the question "What If?"
Yes, and he wrote about them himself — explaining the topic of such predictions in general and his own failures (and successes) in particular. I can not find those works online now (they are copyrighted, no doubt, you have to buy the book), but here is a critique of him — and a critique of the critique.
You could do (a lot) worse, than reading all of the Heinlein you can get — both Fiction and otherwise...
Myself, I'd add the following prediction for posterity — 50 years later, you can say, you read it on /. first: Anything, that is theoretically possible today, will be be practically possible 50 years from now, unless it is found useless, declared illegal or competes with a government-sponsored alternative (the last two being sides of the same coin). .
And the other way around: whatever is not possible even in theory today (like faster-than-light movement or time-travel), will remain impossible in practice for the upcoming decades.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
>Science fiction is the domain of predicting future technology
the purpose of Science Fiction is not to "predict" future technology, but to tell a story about today either using
1. ficitonal end result of today's technology, mixed with politics, mixed with society, as a socio-political statement about the same.
2. A story about today, with fictional races, nations, people, aliens, and laser beams to abstract way too hot to handle concepts and political ideas. Laser beam weapons are great, because there is rarely too much blood and the bad guys just fall down.
3. A story about history, that like #2, is still too hot to handle, or presents a viewpoint that people would reject on concept without really thinking about it.
Go re-watch the Original Star Trek, but in your mind pretend what all the abstractions, are what they are supposed to represent. It gets dark, and heavy really fucking quickly.
Sometimes it DOES predict the future, but often, NOT in the way it was expected. For example, the period after the year 2000, in Heinlein's universe, was a kind of dark ages referred to as "the crazy years". In that future, America was taken over by a dictatorship for 100 years, a kind of born-again Christian dictatorship. Many of us today suspect it we are more likely to be ruled by a different kind of dictatorship, that of the secular, multi-culti, politically-correct left, not the Christian right. This is a dictatorship where certain opinions are not allowed, not allowed to be discussed, are shouted down, are silenced. Example: Robt. Kennedy Jr. wants to pass laws "to arrest and jail anyone who doesn't "believe" in AGW". Who will save us from these fools, and their "good intentions"?
They subscribed to the "Pay per View".
Nice links to the speakers' bios, and annoying complaints in the comments about the lack of a transcript. However, unless I'm getting blind, I'm not seeing a link to the video.
Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Kennedy isn't an elected official, just a private citizen exercising his free speech.
The real threat comes from economic illiterates who think deficits matter, that there should be a balanced budget law, etc. They have a faith in some ancient obsolete feudal economic theory that ignores the history of this country, which has had a national debt (and predictions from the right of impending doom and gloom, no really, tomorrow!) since the very first administration.
For an uber comprehensive site that categorizes technologies found in Science Fiction writing check out: http://www.technovelgy.com/
The Machine Stops by E.M. Forester, written in 1909, predicts the internet, facetime (video conferencing) and many others. Just saying.
That in the future nobody would be able to read, and information would only be disseminated by watching a video of people saying things.
.... But there's a broken redirect ad for IBM in front of the video. One more example of getting screwed for trying to play by the rules.
Spain, Italy, and Greece all seem to validate such 'primitive concerns'.
The problem of negative cashflow is such a basic one that it wouldn't even be disputed in any other context.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In the first version of Battlestar Galactica they predicted that there would be receivers you could fit in/on your ears! Totally awesome!
And in Start Trek (the original series) they apparently predicted that the earth would run out of pants for women.
When you do something like this, you want to be informed, so you actually need to do thorough research, otherwise you risk looking like a fool. ;-)
My research tells me that...
Jules Verne [the father of modern science fiction genre] mentioned an advanced version of the internet with complex social networking, accessed from a hand-held wireless device in his 1863 sci-fi novel "Paris in the XXth Century", 30 years before Mark Twain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century
Get it right, lady veterinarian/forensic science master degree holder.
Feel free to reply if anyone has more info.