Results 1 to 30 of 122
Thread: Missing "The Future"
-
2018-01-03, 02:10 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
- Location
- San Francisco Bay area
- Gender
Missing "The Future"
This post from another thread has inspired a thought:
Fun fact: All Lost in Space and Star Trek episodes (the main shows I watched along with Batman as a kid) were first broadcast before the Moon Landing.
Even though I was alive during the Lunar missions, my parents didn't get a TV until thr Watergate hearings so I never got to watch any of it. When I would get up early to watch the Shuttle launches and landings, my Dad would ask me "What's the big deal, it just looks like an airplane?" He just couldn't see the magic in it.
As a child I was very interested in Science Fiction and Space Travel (I had more future then!).
By the late 1970's and afterwards in California new books seldom were purchased for school libraries, but they were lots of books from the '60's and early '70's which I devoured, that detailing the moon landings, the Viking mission (how I starred at pictures of red rocks under a pink sky!), and NASA's plans for the space shuttle and lunar bases, and in reading the old books I realized something. The future was behind schedule!
The space shuttle did eventually fly (later than planned), but the lunar bases? Never. Going to Mars was "twenty years from now" when I was a child, and forty years on, it's still "twenty years from now".
There was "Star Trek", (23rd Century!) and "Lost in Space" (1999!) on television, and it was easy to be excited by a "bright future". I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up!
But increasingly in the 1970's and definitely in the '80's the "future" became bleak (Cyberpunk etc.).
Perhaps because I personally have less future left, but I read Fantasy now, and I seldom read Science Fiction anymore, and increasingly on the "sci-fi" shelves, there's "alternate history", and stories that take place in "visions of the future" from the past (Steampunk, Dieselpunk, and Raygun Gothic), rather than stories that take place in "the future".
I miss "the future".
-
2018-01-03, 03:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2007
- Location
- Greece
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
I agree with your sentiment. I miss that bright, epic future too. But unfortunately, the future is not behind schedule. It's right on, we live in it. It's just that we're in the wrong genre. Somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn, and instead of space opera we ended up in cyberpunk.
Many thanks to Assassin 89 for this avatar!
-
2018-01-03, 03:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2006
- Location
- Wandering in Harrekh
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
We're working up to different parts of it. Communicator badges (hands-free cell phones), replicators (3-D printers), and voice interfaces (Alexa) are here on schedule. Scotty was a few years late with his Transparent Aluminum (aluminum oxynitride) delivery; I assume Romulans were responsible for the delay.
Part of the difference, I think, is where the discoveries are being made. Back in the 60s, all of the funding (and with it, all of the discoveries) was in aerospace, physics, and applied physics. That's flipped over to biochemistry and medicine. Very important, but not quite so easy to dramatize the explorers and discoveries. (If you ever end up with an attractive green woman anywhere, something has gone horribly wrong and your research will soon be shut down by the police). When we figure out how to give Bones that pill that will re-grow someone's kidney, we'll be able to move on to the next thing.
-
2018-01-03, 04:56 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2005
- Location
- SW England
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
Don't forget video-phones and (finally) wrist-communicators. Back in the 80s when I was a kid, those seemed to be the defining technology of The Future.
Plus, we are living in the 21st Century now. Which, back in the 80s, seemed to be the definition of when The Future began.
-
2018-01-03, 05:59 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2015
Re: Missing "The Future"
Well, things have slowed down a bit. Before the 80's the future did look very bright and soon to be coming. The USA did start a space program and land on the moon in something like under 20 years....and remember that is starting a space program from scratch...literally nothing.
Of course 1980 or so came around and there was a huge shift in where some people wanted the money in the government to go. In stead of space, or the future in general....they just wanted to ''help people''....and we are still doing that today. But the era of the some peoples ideas is quickly coming to a close.
And in the last couple years, the Private Sector has moved up to make more of a future....so there is hope.
The Star Trek idea of a ''Bright Future'' is alive and well....really this idea is a fixture in our culture. Of course Star Trek is a lot of Fantasy too. Though you can check out The Expanse for a ''Bright(maybe) Future that is much more based on reality.
And we do have communications and ''smart'' devices...and sure people whine about what the kids do with Facebook or Twitter....but there is still a lot of good there. I can remotely control things in my house...from anywhere in the country...on my phone. I can track my daughter and watch her on cameras in my home...and when she drives in a couple years I'll be able to track her car (and already do this with my wife). Should someone in my family get in an accident or such...we will all get an alert. And that is just one example....
-
2018-01-03, 06:11 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2012
- Location
- Tharggy, on Tellene
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
I want my flying car and my plasma swords. Seriously, i want to be in Space Opera, not Shadowrun without the friggin magic.
-
2018-01-03, 06:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
I just think some things turned out to be harder then we imagined. Like batteries, which have been famously stagnant for decades. Human carrying space travel was another, we scrapped the shuttle because it proved more expensive then originally forseen.
People are bad at predicting the future in genetal, and technology in particular.
-
2018-01-03, 07:40 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- In my library
Re: Missing "The Future"
Thought, I might post in this thread, seeing as I unintentionally kicked it off.
In my view there is still this grand hopeful future, but it's less hopeful. The future is now as corrupted as the present, technology does not stop humans from being humans, and so on. Even when it's grand there's this grit attached to it. We're living in a light cyberpunk future, and so our view of our future is by necessity a little cyberpunk. But we don't have to stay to the depressing future of cyberpunk classic, we can imagine a future where technology allows us to understand others better and connect to other people.
And honestly? The classic look isn't totally gone. There's a lot to be said for the new look of space, although I'll admit I both have some favourites and an rather biased (one of my favourite starships is the Lady MacBeth from Night's Dawn ). There's still a place for the gleaming rocketships that took our imaginations to the stars decades ago, I'd rage at a version of Lensman or Foundation without rocket ships, but they fit as a signaling that we're going back to the hopeful future.
Note the description quoted was meant to bring to mind something between Star Trek and Starship Troopers, although I'm also hoping for more futures like the Night's Dawn trilogy. To the point I'm planning to at some punt write a space opera in a universe where religion has had a massive resurgence and is important to many people's lives, because religion in space is IMO a very unexplored concept (as most SF is of the 'outgrown such supply superstitions' variety, or religion at at best unimportant to the story).
EDIT: also, it turns out that getting to orbit is hard, and one of the reasons that space bases aren't going to a thing until we can get better at space stuff. I'm honestly uncertain who will win the fight of rockets versus space planes, although I'm hoping it's the space planes.Last edited by Anonymouswizard; 2018-01-03 at 07:43 PM.
-
2018-01-03, 08:02 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
- Location
- where the wind blows
Re: Missing "The Future"
We're in the universe specializing in computers instead. I assume there's alternate universe where instead of inventing integrated chip, they got mini fusion reactor instead, so they got fusion powered cars but they have to make do with giant room sized computer with vacuum tubes and no internet.
(I'm talking about fallout universe)You got Magic Mech in My Police Procedural!
In this forum, Gaming is Serious Business, and Anyone Can Die. Not even your status as the Ensemble Darkhorse can guarantee your survival.
Disciple of GITP Trope-Fu Temple And Captain of GITP Valkyrie Squadron.
Awesome Elizabeth Shelley by HollamerSpoiler
The OTP in the playground.
My Gallery/My Star Wolves 3 LP
-
2018-01-04, 03:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
Re: Missing "The Future"
It's not only that getting to orbit is hard, it's that there's basically nothing in there. There's no smart aliens or vaults of ancient exotic tech or luxurious alien forests, just cold void and some rocks.
Plus you know, advancements in robotics means it's a lot more pratical to send unmanned probes rather than puny fleshbags that need to eat and breathe and thus take a lot more space and you need to figure out how to bring them back safely too. Or send a bot that can work for years with no need of extra supplies if you do it right and nobody will mind that much when they stop working out there.
And I for one I'm kinda happy people aren't colonizing other planets yet because maybe this way we figure out how to not screw up our own planet first. You should be terrified of the day rich people get to emigrate to space and stop having any reason to not completely exploit earth's resources for fast(er) profit.
Heh, Megaman Battle Network is a parallel universe to the main Megaman series where people develop smart computer programs that fit in small devices rather than starting mass production of robots.Last edited by deuterio12; 2018-01-04 at 03:24 AM.
-
2018-01-04, 03:48 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2014
- Location
- Tulips Cheese & Rock&Roll
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
I don't remember cyberpunk being about playing games on a good looking tiny handbrain imported from China to waste time while on your boring job, or about living in cities with dropping crime rates and driving ever larger yet somehow not really more functional (but much safer) vehicles with about the same emissions as the previous smaller generation. Drone racing, robot battles and laser surgery, sure, but those usually involved some crime syndicate killing people over it.
The Hindsight Awards, results: See the best movies of 1999!
-
2018-01-04, 04:10 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Switzerland
- Gender
-
2018-01-04, 04:12 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Switzerland
- Gender
-
2018-01-04, 04:19 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Switzerland
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
William Gibson, who invented the genre, once explained that the Sprawl may be a dystopian vision for today's middle class, but that there's a lot of people today who'd go there in a heartbeat.
There's some newer Cyberpunk which explores that a bit more. The idea that with automation, resources become cheap, but so do people. Most people get the absolute basic resources (heating, housing, food, cheap entertainment), but nothing else, because they will never have a job, since they aren't needed for anything. So they'll basically sit around, rotting away on their couches. Some might turn to art, some might turn to politics or violent crime, but most just never will achieve anything.
It's quite bleak, and yet... at least people get fed.Resident Vancian Apologist
-
2018-01-04, 04:39 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
- Location
- where the wind blows
Re: Missing "The Future"
The capability and availability of computers nowadays is really amazing and beyond imagination of a lot of sci-fi writers back then. I mean, in Lensman universe IIRC they got faster-than-light spaceship and weapons capable of destroying stars, but people in that spaceship still use slide rulers for calculation!
You got Magic Mech in My Police Procedural!
In this forum, Gaming is Serious Business, and Anyone Can Die. Not even your status as the Ensemble Darkhorse can guarantee your survival.
Disciple of GITP Trope-Fu Temple And Captain of GITP Valkyrie Squadron.
Awesome Elizabeth Shelley by HollamerSpoiler
The OTP in the playground.
My Gallery/My Star Wolves 3 LP
-
2018-01-04, 05:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2007
Re: Missing "The Future"
Last edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2018-01-04 at 05:23 AM.
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
-
2018-01-04, 08:12 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- In my library
Re: Missing "The Future"
Oh, I completely agree with you. I find what we're doing with robotics REALLY COOL, to the point where I wouldn't mind using my degree to go into robotics (if it was actually good enough). I think that drone exploration is really cool and want more stories to use it as an element.
My point was that, well, getting to orbit is the first step to getting to anywhere. And there's not enough of a reason to justify sending humans into orbit even to get them somewhere else, because of both the cost of getting people into orbit and the fact that you could just send a bot somewhere else. I completely agree with you, but we really need to admit that a lot of classic science fiction ignores the gravity well issue entirely.
The difference is that we're not the protagonists of the cyberpunk novel (also that we're currently in the story itself, but in the backstory). Also do you seriously think that the corporate wageslaves weren't playing on their handbrains when they were meant to be working?
Also, cyberpunk has moved on. New/post-cyperpunk is a lot more positive and less overly crime focused than classic cyberpunk, while still being relatively dystopian.
I remember reading Galactic Patrol and being confused at the fact they needed to rig up a mechanical autopilot to make the ship move in pseudorandom directions until I realised the ship wasn't controlled by a central computer connected to each character's screen but a bunch of seperate/semi-seperate electrical and mechanical systems, including computers that would be considered dumb by today's standards. Didn't a later book reveal that Lensman computer technology had been artificially retarded, because it developed to the point where Doc Smith could easily see that the technology in his books was already hilariously primitive?
Still funny reading the Skylark books where the incredibly technologically developed people have FTL sensors and precise control over beams of force, but it's all controlled with switches and dials without a text or speech parser in sight.
-
2018-01-04, 09:43 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
-
2018-01-04, 09:50 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Location
- Switzerland
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
Of course not. But it's a flying personal transport machine. It's what we have. As with a lot of things from fiction, it just doesn't get close to the convenience imagined.
Maybe after self-driving cars we'll get self-flying passenger drones at some point.Last edited by Eldan; 2018-01-04 at 09:50 AM.
Resident Vancian Apologist
-
2018-01-04, 11:01 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2011
Re: Missing "The Future"
By that standard, we already had hot air balloons as "flying personal transport machine" long before helicopters.
Turns out that convenience actually makes all the difference. Cars have long been affordable and can easily move you inside urban areas. Helicopters... Do not.
-
2018-01-04, 11:23 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2010
-
2018-01-04, 11:52 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- In my library
Re: Missing "The Future"
Yeah, we're not going to get common flying cars except as a driverless variety if we're insisting on them, and even then probably not until we can come up with a more efficient propulsion system (although helicopters do allow us to make them today, I still suspect the cost of fueling them is too high for most people).
As Eldran has said, the main problem is that the fictional version is more convenient. In all honesty, we still don't have the rockets the writers of those moon bases were expecting, even though we have the technology to build a moonbase (although we might need to refresh our rocket technology) the cost of getting anybody to it is high enough that they're unlikely unless a government finds a desire for one (which, in all honesty, I don't see happening until He-3 Deuterium fusion has been shown to be viable). Sure, maybe we'd have better people rockets if we'd been preparing for a trip to Mars since the moon landing, although honestly for that the rocket is the least of your problems (we could get a human there now if we desperately wanted, but we likely couldn't get them back, need to send their food with them, and have to deal with the damage radiation causes to squishy humans. The Red Mars books are a long way off, it's just not worth sending the human compared to the bot).
-
2018-01-04, 12:43 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2013
- Location
- The Chi
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
I am wondering how much "classic" cyberpunk is just Neuromancer and its successors. These are basically heist novels. The wider genre was never that limited.
Also, while I can see people making the argument for multis owning the world (is it that much different from the 80's?), cyberpunk has that "cyber" and "punk" aspects to it and I'm not sure those aspects are strong even if you are looking at the criminal or system-antagonistic element
That's the thing about the science-fiction. Often they take place far, far, in the future, but the baseline technology advancement is only 15-20 years ahead of our own. Often times they even miss near-future developments and we find technology nowadays that even relatively recent sci-fi missed: Star Trek TNG they couldn't grow organs, gene therapy is considered "eugenics" (but is oddly unnecessary since everyone is naturally perfect), and the computer tech actually looks primitive. Don't even get me started about older sci-fi like TOS.
I will say I always find it telling that one of Asimov's first robots could read minds and played psychological games with the entire robotics human staff, including an actual "robo-psychologist," and they figured out the robot was reading their minds because they discovered it could math involving long numbers, something only one of the advanced engineers could do.
Asimov thought of robots as analogous to humans, so much so they were figured out by their own psychologists and that the basic models would be bad at math since they would only be programmed with an elementry school education.
I think one of the reasons everything is "visions of the future" rather than "the future" is because, in 2017, we've seen the future envisioned so many times that we probably realize our own vision is probably pretty darn flawed.
Actually, crowding is actually a real problem up there. Regulations keeping planes in narrow airlanes don't help.The laws of physics are not crying in a corner, they are bawling in the forums.
Thanks to half-halfling for the avatar
-
2018-01-04, 04:59 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2007
Re: Missing "The Future"
You may want to read "Liar!" again, because that isn't what actually happened. The problem was that the robot was trying to obey the second law (Don't harm humans) by detecting in their thoughts what they really wanted, despite what they may say out loud. So when two scientists were trying to figure out a very hard math problem (the exact pathways that allowed the robot to read minds in the first place), the robot told one of them he knew the answer (because that guy just wanted the answer), but told the other he didn't (because the second one's pride in wanting to figure it out himself got in the way). It was that and other contradictions when the humans compared notes that lead Calvin to realise what the issue is. But no-one was surprised that a robot could do the math (except the guy that didn't want to believe it).
Yes, some of the robots that the company produces aren't great at math (because they are designed for purpose, and you don't need a mining robot to be able to do high-level maths), but no-one is particularly surprised that positronic brains can do math better than humans, because they already do: the central computer for the company is a massive positronic brain, as seen in "Escape!".
Grey WolfInterested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
-
2018-01-04, 05:30 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2013
- Location
- The Chi
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
"I, Robot" is a lightly edited anthology and Escape! was written 4 years later. "Liar!" was originally published in 1941 making it his third story ever. It doesn't make sense to treat the characters (although they are reappearing) as having knowledge form a later story Asimov produced, especially since I'm analyzing what Asimov's vision was about the robots, not the characters.
Escape! was written in 1945 and major advances with computers came between those dates.
My recollection is that the Robot knew how to do the math because he read it from the guy's mind, however even if I'm wrong the point of the story remains that the story notes that some robots can't do math (but one of the less advanced ones was able to read people's minds). I suspect the "I, Robot" version of the story may have been edited to de-emphasize the assumption that robots can't do math, I remember the first time I read the story that it did read like the robot did math with similar limitations to a human. Other pre-digital computer robots show similar mental limitation in realms a machine would now be assumed to excel. Robots didn't become emotionless logic-machines until later.The laws of physics are not crying in a corner, they are bawling in the forums.
Thanks to half-halfling for the avatar
-
2018-01-04, 05:45 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2012
- Location
- Tharggy, on Tellene
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
-
2018-01-04, 06:14 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2012
Re: Missing "The Future"
The Future can only arrive if society has the right ideas and the right desire.
The motion of technology depends on the discovery of new fundamental ideas. We're producing new ideas for gizmos right now, but how many fundamental (principled) ideas are being produced? Where are our Gausses, our Leibnizes, our Einsteins? Quantum Theory has been unsolved for better part of a century—why? Could this be due to the fact people are educated differently now than they were a hundred years ago?
But the desire is also missing. To get into Space we need a Space Mission orientation. Now cultural pessimism has taken hold and sucked people into their fantasy universes and their rat-like lives. The Simpsons episode hit a clear note where there was a sci-fi convention and there was an actual astronaut in his booth ready to talk and sign autographs. The weirdos with silver hair and gogo boots ignored him. One character who saw the truth declaimed, “Don't you people care? This guy has actually been to outer space!” I remember a girl in high school who openly didn't care about the Moon Shot. “Who cares?” she said.
That cultural pessimism, not scientific ignorance—as if shoving facts into kid's minds will make them care about science and Space exporation—is why we don't have the Future. The question is, who wanted it that way?
And Happy New Year!
-
2018-01-04, 06:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2014
Re: Missing "The Future"
Ahhh...I sure missed this. Donnadogsoth throwing around vacuous terms. What is a fundamental (principled) idea? Narrow it down to the size of a post it note if you could and maybe we could point some out to you.
I mean. I think it's a pretty awesome idea that we can print organs. That's not something we'd have thought 50 years ago. 3D printing? Going to change the face of...well so many things when the tech is up and running. Does that count? Probably not...not for you...at any rate.
In their respective fields, I'd imagine.
I'd ask if you were serious but I've been on your ride before. The desire is there.
The fact that the International Space Station is a thing. SpaceX is a thing...the fact that we're getting reusable rockets in a sector outside of any nation...the orientation is there.
I was wondering how long it'd take for you to start whinging on about how our culture is degraded. No mention of porn or Chomsky though so I can't get a Donnadogsoth Bingo for this thread. So close. So close.
WAIT! WAIT!!!! HOLD ON!!!
Vague hints at some sinister conspiracy? That's a bingo!Last edited by Razade; 2018-01-04 at 06:37 PM.
-
2018-01-04, 06:47 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
- Location
- San Francisco Bay area
- Gender
Re: Missing "The Future"
-
2018-01-04, 06:55 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2014
Re: Missing "The Future"
We don't really need lunar landings? We've been to the moon. There's really nothing there that makes it worth the expense. The moon doesn't have resources we don't have here. What's the point in going there? We've moved on to bigger and better things, and cheaper too. Robots cost less.
Supersonic jets are still a thing. Called XB-1. Due to fly this year.
Printing organs isn't like a replicator. You need material to print, not just...magic...and not instant. So nothing really like a replicator at all.