Video Sci-fi Predictions, True and False (Video 1) 139
Male Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome to the last title that actually matters at Defcon 1. The science fiction that is no longer fiction wherein we will talk ostensibly about some tech predictions that various authors and various other shows and media sources have made over the numerous decades that have become reality. Or in some cases, that the authors got wrong, the authors or creators never imagined or the technology that actually has already surpassed them so. For background, some of you know me from ConFusion in January, I recognize you _____00:40. I am now HeirDoctor _____00:43 Professor Brian Gray, the last one is the newest one. I am a microbiologist and immunologist by training but I am not the only scientist here. I am actually joined by two of us here.
Male Speaker 2: I am a scientist.
Male Speaker 1: Well, do you teach? You are a computer scientist.
Male Speaker 2: Okay, I am Doug Johnson, I spent 20 years in the air force, then after with FAD and other things, I got a Masters degree in aeronautical management and Masters in computer information systems. I also am an adjunct instructor at two colleges, more or less teaching intro to computers to brand new people that are 20 or 30 years old, that know how to Facebook and email and don’t know a thing about the computers and also teach them how to do Microsoft Office, and then another one that is a little bit more technical. And when I am working, I am looking for work right now, is I do software testing. They say I rigged the software. Now, they didn’t write it right, but that’s what I do for a day job when I have it. And the reason I am dressed like this is I am the prop in masquerade for my son, so.
Female Speaker 1: And I’m Jenn Haeger and I have a veterinary degree, doctor of veterinary medicine, and also a Masters in forensic science. And I do neither of those things, but I have the education.
Male Speaker 1: Okay. So, I would like to start with one that pretty much all of you have at this point. This is through various incarnations, the world wide encyclopedia, the worldwide knowledge net, the worldwide entertainment stream and so on and so forth, the one problem that I have with these smartphones in our pockets is that so many, so many authors expect the knowledge to be free. And knowledge is, especially access to knowledge is anything but free but the number of authors who predict variations on this theme are kind of beyond count. That is kind of the big one off the top right there, but let me start with you?
Female Speaker 1: Well, going along with that and information and everything. So everyone knows that the internet was invented by Ender’s Game in Orson Scott Card, right? Right? Anybody want to he was the one that predicted it. Does anybody want to refute that?
Male Speaker 2: Usually there is a John Brunner who now predated that, but I can’t remember the name of that.
Male Speaker 3: Shockwave Rider.
Male Speaker 2: That’s the one.
Female Speaker 1: Wrong, you might be right. That was a one that did create that. But actually Mark Twain in 1898 wrote I believe it is a short story called From the London Times of 1904, and he talked about a telectroscope which was pretty much the internet with social networking. So I thought that was pretty good.
Male Speaker 2: Cool. Now I am going with various ones but these I do I am a bit of a Star trek fan, so a lot of things is Star Trek, so flip phone communicator. That we already had and we have surpassed through smartphone, but for some of you
Male Speaker 1: Have you actually seen there is a comic online available of original Spock and Kirk and Bones on a street corner in New York City trying the internet on their communicators. And somebody walking past them and going, “Dude get some new phone.” I saw that one two weeks ago, so.
Male Speaker 2: Yeah. But like I said, we’ve vastly surpassed that but this is very soon after that show this became reality. Now they used all kinds of little discs, which we have had in the 3½" disc but we have surpassed that. We now have flash drives and I call them the X-linear chips in the next generation. But they’ve even got better because I don’t know if you guys know, you can actually run a bunch of programs from your flash drives. Just plug it in to your computer and you can run programs. So that even surpassed the next generation.
Male Speaker 1: Actually you can run from flash drives from – you can run programs from flash drives involuntarily, who are preloading flash drives and handing them out for free, and why is your computer suddenly affected by a Zombie Bot? Well, that’s because you got their key information. But the best one was company policy do not use any outside flash drives. Everybody comes down for lunch one today, there is a big bowl free take one flash drives. Within hours, what they have done is a scary exercise on their own, and not a destructive virus, but see how many people would abuse the policy. And within a couple of hours, their fake virus was all through the company. And the two of you actually have lists, and I am going off the fact that I left my Notebook at home. So, okay, I love the fact that there are three of us up here who were using originally paper material for keeping records, yeah for very technical discussions. It's fantastic.
Female Speaker 1: So earbuds. Does anyone know when they first came out with the earbuds idea? Ray Bradbury, 1950s, that was Fahrenheit 451.
Male Speaker 2: Cool.
Male Speaker 1: Anybody here read the Lensman EE Doc Smith.
Male Speaker 2: I _____06:31 com.
Male Speaker 1: Excellent. So they made a lot of the power of the Lensman. Many of them were electrical. I like the fact that okay we don’t quite have the wireless ways _____06:48 people that we have tasers. That’s I mean, you can either be a contact taser or you can shoot somebody in the back row from here, and it is electrical manipulation of people as a way to repel or in some cases, bring them to you. That's technology that we developed that is not quite up to fictional spec but it is getting there.
Male Speaker 2: So, another one they had from Star Trek was the pads. The reason I came up with the pads, it got them around the technical problem that anyone had something with button knobs that looked like electronic future light, so they had pads they could configure for every situation. Now you have a – this is a model 1 iPad, but there is a variation of this, there is a mini iPad and we got the various Android tablets right now. So, that’s something, we are at the next generation and past that.
Female Speaker 1: One that I actually forgot to put on my list, but we talked about it at the last panel, that was at like this at legendary ConFusion, which was the, I forget what it's called now, but the very scary electric thing that you put on your brain to enhance your learning that you can DYI.
Male Speaker 1: The deep brain stimulation?
Female Speaker 1: Yes, the deep brain stimulation that Ian had actually purchased.
Male Speaker 1: Yes, that was kind of scary. We haven’t seen him yet this con, we don’t know what happened to him.
Female Speaker 1: _____08:11 I don’t know, but no, yeah, has anyone heard of this? It is a device that you put on your brain – on your head, sorry, that provides electrical stimulation for your brain and it is supposed to help you with learning new things faster, although all the data isn’t in, and I saw one study that said that people learned a new technique of doing something faster but then they couldn’t apply that technique as well as the people who had learned it the old fashioned slow way without the brain manipulation.
Male Speaker 1: So deep sleep tape learning would be an analog in the _____08:55. Who wrote that one? Wasn’t me.
Male Speaker 5: Heinlein had at some point, I know _____09:01 had another point as well, so.
Male Speaker 2: Isn’t there an issue with it if you put it with the wrong polarity, it makes you stupider though.
Female Speaker 1: Which is why the DYI is not a good idea.
Male Speaker 1: Another one, from EE Doc Smith, from Star Trek and so on, tractor beams. We actually have had them at the quantum level. And you had your visible laser trap photon tractor beams for about the past ten years now.
TRANSCRIPT! (Score:5, Interesting)
TRANSCRIPTS! Do you have them, motherfucker!
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Yes, enough of this video shit!
Re:TRANSCRIPT! (Score:4, Informative)
Many of us nerds can read (and, possibly, still comprehend what we're reading) quite a bit faster than the average Joe. But few of us watch video any faster!
(Also, when I read, I can do whatever voices I want. When it's video, I'm stuck with reality.)
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It is really hard to watch a video faster. 30fps second is about the best we can do. Remember you also have to keep the audio in sync.
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There's no video.
Re:TRANSCRIPT! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, this falls into the category of "Things where text is more useful/interesting than video". Not to mention people who just don't want noise/video.
Re:TRANSCRIPT! (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you for your courteous request, mythosaz. Serving good people is always a pleasure.
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Thank you for your courteous request, mythosaz. Serving good people is always a pleasure.
Fuckin'a!
Re:TRANSCRIPT! (Score:5, Informative)
Directly below the video I see a link "Hide/Show Transcript", and clicking it expands and shows the transcript.
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I swear that appeared after the story was posted.
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It did, but only a few minutes. I had to go to the VA for an electrocardiogram. I had to leave before the transcription was done, and the appointment ran a bit longer than I expected. Sorry about that. My heart still seems to be beating, or so they say.
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My heart still seems to be beating, or so they say.
That's what they want you to think. Beware the urge to start eating brainzzzz.
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Do you have any transcripts for your heart?
Re:TRANSCRIPT! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Reminds me of the time I worked in a consultancy that re-sold Oracle without having official Oracle reseller status. That meant even though Oracle got paid, the validity of the customer's license was questionable. This was a big concern for me, because Oracle isn't a nice, friendly company.
So I did some digging and found out that only the reason we hadn't got our official reseller status was that someone in the organization had to take the Oracle Licensing Exam -- this is an exam on how Oracle's license
Science fiction is the domain of predicting future (Score:5, Insightful)
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Right.
"Science fiction is a domain of predicting future technology -- succes rate of said predictions being comparable to Nostradamus'."
Fixed that for yous.
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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.
Faulty premise (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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I think you're wrong. Good science fiction is about the possibilities of technology, and how we can use it to become more knowledgeable about ourselves. Bad science fiction is about human soap operas, and isn't really science fiction but more of a romance or fantasy type genre.
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Well, lets take an example. I think most people who are well read in the genre would agree that Larry Niven writes "Hard" SF. So... Ringworld.
Ringworld, at it's core, was about "What if we had access to an impossibly strong substance. How might that change everything."
The setting was an extrapolation on that one question. But, it's not about the possibilities of technology, because there is no such substance. It's an impossible technology, a technology based on an ever so slightly different set of univ
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I'm a scifi fan. But I've never read Niven. So any definition of SF that relies on Niven isn't the definition for me.
The origins of sci fi are in imagining things that weren't as yet imagined. So Poe predicted black holes in Eureka [wikipedia.org]:
"Poe also expresses a cosmological theory that anticipated black holes and the Big Crunch theory"
So, science fiction includes a lot of different things. It is not restricted to human elements as the post I was replying to asserted.
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You should read Niven. I recommend Neutron Star, Ringworld and The Integral Trees.
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Good science fiction is about the possibilities of technology, and how we can use it to become more knowledgeable about ourselves.
The GP was 'more' right. So called "Good" or "Hard" SF is examining a human response to a change in the environment. The key to differentiating SF from space-romance/fantasy etc is whether the plot and conflict is driven by science as a consequence of the change in the environment. If there are "space ships" are they simply used to get from A to B and are nothing more
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Couldn't you just as well say "Fantasy is about considering and exploring the human ramifications when certain aspects of reality are changed"? If you don't care about the science, you're just using sci-fi as window dressing to take you somewhere else, like Avatar is essentially Dances with Wolves with a ton of fancy gadgetry. You can do a historic war movie like 300 or contemporary one like Enemy at the Gates or a futuristic one like Independence Day and it's often the same story of a desperate stand again
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But it's explicitly called magic in fantasy, whereas in Star Trek the show has a logical, scientific explanation for the "fantastical" items. Scotty on Star Trek is not casting spells when he beams someone up, he's using a machine. That's very different from Gandalf casting a spell.
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It's semantics, is what GP is saying. Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan wasn't about "What would happen if we had the power to create worlds?", it was a character-driven action movie about Captain Kirk. It was a good movie, but it was not a good example of SF.
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That's very different from Gandalf casting a spell.
I'm not sure how.
In your long definition, you basically said it was about dealing with the consequences of living in a changed world - one only made possible by the science in science fiction (not merely the backdrop of stars and planets). I don't see a *real* difference between Wizards and Telepaths, and there's been plenty of space-fantasy that blurred the lines. I'm pretty sure we're all familiar with Jedis.
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I think what differentiates science fiction from other types is the science. All fiction can be said to be about human responses to author-created contrivances. But science fiction's focus, apart from the human soap-opera filler, is on scientific contrivances. That's the appeal, for me at any rate. Not the human fluff.
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Treat it methodically and there really isn't any difference. Snape is probably just as much of a scientist as any chemist. He just practices in a different domain. The same is probably true of Gandalf.
Make him a member of Psi-corps and suddenly it's all good and obviously sci-fi again.
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Gandalf's magic doesn't really have any effect on the story, except his foresight. Otherwise, he's just a formidable, wise old man.
His foresight is presented in a mystical, almost religious manner. The Lord of the Rings is not a book that asks the question "What if Wizards roamed the earth?" Instead, it says "Wasn't it great when the gods walked among us and told us what to do?"
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Here's an illustrative example: Anne McCaffrey's Pern series.
This is a series where people have roughly Medieval-era tech, a feudal society and ride on fire-breathing dragons. Clearly Fantasy, right?
However, as the series wore on, slowly everything is logically explained. It turns out they are survivors from a planetary colonization effort that slowly lost their tech due to some unexpected features of the planet they picked.
So now you have two choices here: Either its possible for a novel to have its
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I would have dumped all over you for "Spoiler Alert," but as it happens, McCaffrey deliberately spills the beans in the prelude to the very first book. (It's on a couple pages you might well miss while jumping to the first page of Chapter One and wondering if Lessa is really hot :-) )
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Okay, but I can still choose to read only the scifi that deals explicitly with science and imaginative technology and speculations about the physical nature of the universe. That's also scifi. Claiming that scifi is only fantasy, or only about humans in different realities, is not accurate. Some of scifi may be in that category, but the best (imho) is in a more explicitly scientific genre, using the explicit language of science.
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Okay, but I can still choose to read only the scifi that deals explicitly with science and imaginative technology and speculations about the physical nature of the universe
Most supposed pure Sci-Fi is really no better than supposed fantasy in the regard. They all propose completely impossible things like super-liminal travel, finding a way to survive falling through black holes, traveling backward in time, "psionics", etc. Its all made up. The interesting thing is always exploring how society structures itself around such things, not the things themselves. If you are the odd duck who is only interested in the things, you should probably be reading tech sheets, not novels.
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Scotty on Star Trek is not casting spells when he beams someone up, he's using a machine. That's very different from Gandalf casting a spell.
The only potential fundamental difference between a plot object like a crystal ball and a plot object like a transporter is whether there's a theoretical physical explanation for their function. If there is, then it's science fiction. If not, it's just fiction, and you may as well call it fantasy. It might not be witches-and-wizards fantasy, but it sure-as-hell ain't science fiction. You don't have to actually spell out the explanation, or even allude to it, but you should have one which works consistently
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Scotty uses a machine. The machine is assumed to work in accordance with some physical model (more advanced than our models). That's clear from the show, from the dialogs, from the way they talk about their technologies.
Gandalf is explicitly using magic. He needs no machine. He is tapping into some force that needs no physical model to work. But Star Trek posits some physics model underlying their technologies. Engineers study the physics, and produce and operate transporters, etc.
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Gandalf is explicitly using magic. He needs no machine. He is tapping into some force that needs no physical model to work.
Sure, from his point of view. But what's happening behind the scenes?
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But Tolkien makes no reference to any physical or scientific model that would account for magic. Star Trek explicitly does, for transporters and other technologies.
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Star Trek explicitly does, for transporters and other technologies.
Yes, and for those technologies which have a scientific explanation which has not since been proven bogus, Star Trek is science fiction. But then there's those other times when there is no basis, and it's pure fantasy. Since Trek wavers back and forth over the line regularly, we can simply say that it's bad Science Fiction. I prefer to consider it sciencey fantasy, which makes it easier to stomach.
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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.
I don't think so. That description describes fantasy as well as it does science fiction, but they're two different genres.
You're forgetting the "science" in science fiction. While there is occasionally some overlap, science fiction isn't fantasy fiction isn't horror fiction.
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In science fiction, you generally have some quantified differences from the real physical world, and then you play within the boundaries of the ramifications of that.
In fantasy, you don't bother with any of that.
Many of the great science fiction classics were written to criticize the world we live in without being straightforward enough to be censored, and pitch different social structured and value structures.
Heinlein and Gordon R Dickson come to mind immediately.
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Yeah maybe "many", but not all. I can read science fiction authors like Clarke, Bova, Robinson, Bear and think about the technological contrivances imagined, which is what I prefer to do, instead of the human elements.
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Hunh.
And here I always thought it was about entertaining me with an engrossing "what if..." story.
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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.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. No.
It's Not About Predicting Technology! (Score:2)
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 aspe
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No, I disagree. I read science fiction to try to break through the imagination barrier implied in a statement attributed to Eddington: "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine." The most interesting science fiction deals with expanding our imaginations beyond what the present limits are. The human aspects are mere distractions, like commercials.
Fantasy ate my Science Fiction (Score:1)
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.
Worst video... (Score:1)
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Amazon plans to deliver them to you via drone.
One real prediction in science fiction (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Everyone? Clarke predicted that by 2001 HAL would be doing astronavigation better than humans.
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Not being a Heinlein guru -- any 'predictions' he made that failed? .
Until further investigation, I venture that's just selective thinking on your part, of the same kind as those reading & 'believing' horoscopes employ
Heinlein's predictions (Score:2)
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 [amazon.com]), but here is a critique of him [demon.co.uk] — and a critique of the critique [scifiwright.com].
You could do (a lot) worse, than reading all of the Heinlein you can get — both Fiction and otherwise...
Myself, I'd add t
Re: One real prediction in science fiction (Score:2)
In one of his juveniles, I think "Star Beast", the future society's laws have changed. Most reflected his politics (semi-compulsory concealed carry), emancipation of children, etc., but he got wrong the effects of banning smoking in restaurants. So far as I know, high quality scofflaw places allowing smoking never became popular, and he set an important scene in one.
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Much closer to the internet:
http://www.baen.com/chapters/W... [baen.com]
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Or for some prior art, The Machine Stops: http://archive.ncsa.illinois.e... [illinois.edu]
Predictions are always close but not exact. (Score:2)
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 iPad
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Clarke's communications satellites?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
Sex robots (Score:2)
If there aren't sex robots involved, I'm not interested.
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Not until that machine can also give birth. Fucking someone(thing), that can not — even in theory — get pregnant is no better, than doing it with a pillow or, at best, a prostitute...
Please, don't hate.
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You misunderstood. In my opinion, sex with someone, with whom you would not have children, is like that with an inanimate object or a prostitute, yes. You don't have to try to conceive every time to get my approval, but you should only do it with someone, whose baby you are willing (and able) to raise with them if — by nature or a miracle — the conception actually happened.
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Someday you may grow to learn that women are more than just a vessel for your seed.
As are sex robots, but that's a different story.
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Women are much more than that indeed.
The enjoyment of sex, however — and it was that, rather than women's role in anything, that I was talking about — is predicated on the joy of (potential) reproduction implicit in the act with a beloved.
And until you've experienced that joy, you haven't grown up...
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Someday you may grow to learn that women are more than just a vessel for your seed.
Drifting ever further OT, I would like to point out that the long-accepted use of "seed' to describe sperm cells is a blatant glory grab by males.
The woman provides the egg, which is exactly the analog of a plant's seed. Both require some minor bits of chromosome info from the male (sperm, pollen) to fertilize the seed.
Star Trek Communicators (Score:3)
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.
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The lack of video is one the things that really days Star Trek now. The away team beams down and starts describing the scene over voice link. They don't even seem to have basic telemetry like environmental data as they have to describe things like temperature.
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Maybe they are just verifying the remote telemetry that had already been sent.
"McCoy to Enterprise. 85 degrees Celsius!!! Celsius man! Beam up now!!!"
Meanwhile, back in the transporter room...
"Ooops. My bad. Someone in the previous shift must have changed the telemetry readout from Fahrenheit."
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lord kelvin is rolling in his grave :)
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> If there was no video then how did Spock watch Kirk fight the Gorn?
That was provided by the advanced alien race that created that situation to begin with.
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Communications from planetary surfaces, anyone?
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The communicators, phasers, and tricorders are all inductively charged. They just didn't show that in the show because.... It's not interesting. They also didn't show anyone using the toilet, but believe me, if there are over 1000 people on that ship, I'm sure there is at least one there. (BTW: it's just off the bridge to starboard)
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... and a battery that would last for weeks, at the least. In TNG, it was also in a very thin badge (unless it had some external power supply under the shirt).
We just had a discussion around smartphones in my office. If there was *one* feature that would sell us no a new model (keeping the same features as the current gen) it would be a few days more battery life, preferably 5-7. No faster CPU with more cores. No fancy graphics, flexible screens, or bigger form-factor, but same size, same speed, and battery
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They are charged by sticking them in a replecator and ordering a cup of earl grey tea.
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There's a point that everyone, yes even you, seems to miss about ST communicators as a precursor to cellphones:
Only officers had them.
The world where everyone carries their own communicator, all the time, was not foreseen in TOS.
Maybe it was, and then they bypassed that phase of society by edict.
"Hey Redshirt! Get off that communicator and help us deal with this ugly alien, or it's going to end badly for you!"
"Oh crap, we just lost another Redshirt! Enough of this shit, from now on only officers get to bring communicators down to the planet surface."
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Seems the better edict would have been to have everyone change the color of their shirt.
"Hey these red shirts seem to anger aliens and make people clumsy, so lets start wearing green shirts instead!"
Grades by Category (Score:3)
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
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Artificial Intelligence: B-
Really, B- for AI? I'd give it a C-minus at best, and that's mostly due to the unexpected increases in computer technology and speed, and also due to data aggregation and connections on the internet (which were largely not predicted). If you grade AI and curve it based on 1950s predictions about the state of electronics, computers, etc., I'd say you're looking at a solid D-minus.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm thrilled with the kinds of things computers can do and the limited "intelligent" functionality we ha
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Somebody from the 1950's given Siri to play with for a few hours would be quite impressed. No, it's not human-level, but human level would be "A". Also keep in mind that back then they considered winning at chess a strong test of AI. (We've since come to appreciate the complexity of more basic tasks like washing dishes.)
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Somebody from the 1950's given Siri to play with for a few hours would be quite impressed.
By that standard, all your categories should get an A. Some random dude from the 50s driving a modern car, for example, would probably be quite impressed -- from gas mileage, to airbags, to antilock brakes, to the smooth ride and incredible "quiet" possible in a luxury sedan compared to the 50s. It may not be flying, but it'd be darn impressive to many.
But I thought your standard was about predictions, not about what would seem impressive to average Joe.
No, it's not human-level, but human level would be "A".
Yes, human level would be an A. And what I'm sayi
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50's Cadillacs had bumpy rides? That's news to me. And airbags and anti-lock brakes does not seem like the kind of thing that would wow somebody. "That's kind of neat" perhaps, but not "woooow!".
My point was that because we know the "tricks" Siri and Deep Blue uses to appear/be semi-intelligent, we tend to down-play them.
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It's a shame we abandoned so much. The UK is the worst for that having developed and then abandoned both the ability to put things in orbit and supersonic passenger flight.
People say it's for economic reasons. Well, putting stuff in orbit is big business now. Virgin wanted to take over the Concorde fleet and thought they could make a profit from it, but BA wouldn't allow it. All seems very short sighted.
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Right now they merely watch; they don't throw you into Re-education Camp.
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[citation needed]. The Tesla deification is starting to get annoying.
Tesla's predictions (Score:2)
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That's awesome. Thanks!
They lost me with their first "prediction". (Score:2)
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.
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I'm sorry. If her *FIRST* reaction is that Card "invented" it, then to hell with her.
Player Piano by Vonnegut (Score:2)
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
No, No, and No (Score:2)
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 r