...something he always forgets when he makes these high-flown pronouncements on The Shape Of Things To Come. All right, so some of the points are valid and some of them are not. That's acceptable from science fiction, that's the way it's always been. It's when Asiaweek (and the clueless media in general) starts handing this stuff out as the Authorized Version of the future that it bothers me. And Clarke does have a bit of a bee in his bonnet about his predictions... recently "predicted" that the President of Sri Lanka (where he lives) would win the Nobel Peace prize in 2006 (or thereabouts). In a word, bollocks. I still like that qualifier, though - "optimism about the future is always desirable; it may help to create a self-fulfilling prophecy". Sly one, old Clarke is.:)
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...something he always forgets when he makes these high-flown pronouncements on The Shape Of Things To Come. All right, so some of the points are valid and some of them are not. That's acceptable from science fiction, that's the way it's always been. It's when Asiaweek (and the clueless media in general) starts handing this stuff out as the Authorized Version of the future that it bothers me. And Clarke does have a bit of a bee in his bonnet about his predictions... recently "predicted" that the President of Sri Lanka (where he lives) would win the Nobel Peace prize in 2006 (or thereabouts). In a word, bollocks. I still like that qualifier, though - "optimism about the future is always desirable; it may help to create a self-fulfilling prophecy". Sly one, old Clarke is. :)