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Ayleurs old and new, Is there a word for the tendency, when making predictions, to project the present into the future?I'll give a few examples here. Although they all come from the world of Science Fiction, I don't think that's the only area in which such a term would be useful: 1. Gerry Anderson's ( http://www.fanderson.org.uk/)television series. (a) Thunderbirds http://www.thunderbirdsonline.co.uk was produced in the 1960s, but set in 2020(ish). The look of the technology, but more especially the hairstyles and clothing adopted by the puppet stars, were very much 60s styles, albeit cutting-edge 60s styles. (b) UFO http://www.ufo-dvd.com/#Produced 1969, very daringly set in 1985! By this time we would all be driving De Lorean style "gull-wing door" cars that sounded jet propelled, but we'd still have early 70s clothes and hairstyles (slightly Chairman Mao suits for Earthlings, as I recall, silver one-piece jobs for people on the Moonbase). Unlike Thunderbirds, UFO used real live actors, which made the dated styles even more obvious. What I find most entertaining about UFO now is the idea that roads could actually be less busy in 15 years time  In fact I don't reckon much of Gerry Anderson's stuff has aged well. The hardware looks good, and most of these programs are (great) fun to watch, but the blatant projection of the then-present into the future is striking, and occasionally ridiculous. 2. H.G.Wells, Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke. OK, I know it's unfair to compare TV programs with books, but I'm making a point. All of these authors have, one way or another, been called prophetic - in other words they didn't project their present into the future as Gerry Anderson did, or at least they did so in a more selective manner. Jules Verne is credited with predicting submarines, H.G. Wells with predicting (errrm) global organisations like the UN (surely something else?..), Clarke with predicting communications satellites. I realise that we can only really judge how much people are projecting the present in retrospect; but this doesn't stop us assessing someone's powers of prediction in advance (predicting powers of prediction?  ) Just think about investments or racing tipsters. However, it's very specifically the tendency to project the present into the future that I'm talking about here, not simply being a poor prophet. Gerry Anderson is more ?eh? than Arthur C.Clarke Arthur C.Clarke is not prone to ?eh?If there isn't a word for ?eh? then perhaps we could invent one... FiskP.S. I predict that I will need to explain myself better here. Quick check on my own ?eh? factor.
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I don't know about tendencies, shona, but this sounds a whole lot like the "science" of futurology, which deals with the projecting of current trends into future possibilities.
; )
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it is also a failure of imagination.. computer are prime example.. even though they were known in the 1940 and 1950, no one ever imaginged they would shrink in size, and become universally available.. (to any one who has money)
many science fiction writers of the 40's and 50's envision computers as tool that are only available in giant companies, governments, and universities, very few thought that they would be come everday tools, and small enought to fit in a pocket! Today's Palm pilots do more than enniac, faster, cheaper, with 1/10,000 of the space and energy requirements!
one of my father's "greenhorn" stories about coming to america is about his choice to fly to US.. in 1948, flying was so expensive and exotic, he thought, this is going to be my one and only opportunity in my lifetime to take an airplain... and i'm doing it!
i first flew in 1960, and by the late 1980's, my parents has so many airmiles, they flew to alaska free! so in my fathers lifetime, flying has gone from a once in a life time type experience to a normal mode of travel..but he failed to see that possiblity! and he is not alone..
improvement to engines, and economies of scale have made airtravel everyday..
my personal view of the next big innovation? transdermal electrical rechargers.. so batteries will be come obsolete.
we will charge our phones, our portable CD, our beepers just by walking and talking. and we will use even more electronic gadgets, because keeping them charged will be easier!
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Verne also wrote a story called "From the Earth to the Moon." It was a little prophetic, but he did project the current into the future. If I recall correctly, his "spaceship" was a projectile lobbed from a big gun.
I think prophetic is commonly used in this case. Is it that you believe the term has more of a mystical flavor and less of a "reasonable inference" flavor?
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I think prophetic is commonly used in this case. Is it that you believe the term has more of a mystical flavor and less of a "reasonable inference" flavor?Not quite, FF - it's more about the quality of the prophecy. And the same applies to futurology tsuwm. It's like some people are prone to make predictions which are essentially on a straight line from the present, with no surprises or quantum leaps. Reality never works like that, of course. I suppose if futurology is taken as "straight line prediction" and prophecy as fairly accurate "quantum leap" prediction, you could say Arthur C Clarke is more prophet than futurologistor Gerry Anderson takes a futurological approach to his storiesHmmm.  I suppose I'm looking for a word for the tendency to straight line prediction, to put it another way. I thought this would make my brain hurt
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my personal view of the next big innovation? transdermal electrical rechargers.. so batteries will be come obsolete.
we will charge our phones, our portable CD, our beepers just by walking and talking. and we will use even more electronic gadgets, because keeping them charged will be easier!
I so hope you're right on this. This carrying an extra battery business is far too irritating. It seems like such a natural extension, too. Maybe it would encourage Americans to be less lazy (I know I need all the encouragement I can get). [Frankly, though, we need to think of town designs that make it easier to walk and ride bikes, etc.]
I think Dr Seuss is going to end up being prophetic and that the days of GATTACA are not far away - and no laws can stop it. (No, I'm not being funny. I'm serious.) First stop genetic defects, then on to designer babies, then after-the-fact mods like breast augmentation, penis enlargement, no more male pattern baldness, etc. Then we'll have Sneetches, people striving to be like those who are considered their betters. Scary thing to me is designer germs (Ray Kurzweil writes about it in "The Age of Spiritual Machines" -- seems extremely far-fetched, but this guy seriously knows his stuff, so I'm reluctant to categorize him as a loon.) Imagine we take a highly infectious disease and make it hard to kill. (Seems *really* possible now with the recent news of the synthesized polio bug.)
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it is also a failure of imaginationYou ain't kidding, Helen! No one could have envisaged how big the Web would get. Even Microsoft, techy of techies, utterly failed and had to run to catch up. Having said that, apparently Pete Townshend of The Who envisaged something similar in his proposed musical Lifehouse, started in 1971 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/newsid_403000/403916.stmAnd on the other hand, the business prophets were wrong about the supposed rush to get WAP phones http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_942000/942808.stm - and paid dearly for their mistake! The latter is an example of a straight line prediction - "the Web is big, mobile phones are big, so the Web via mobile phones will be big". The former is an inspired prediction, that didn't depend upon the existence of anything like what was being predicted at the time of prediction. There's the distinction I'm trying to make, put another way (keep trying, Fish  )
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what we are talking about is a paradigm shift... this is a place were the word has a real meaning..
Xerox -- was one.. the Head of the old Haliod company saw that there was a real need for a tool that no one had ever seen before.. a quick, cheap copier..
being able to see, that a technology fills a need that people don't even know that they have is a gift..
i personly know, that several years ago, i thought a moon roof (windows on the roof a car that could open) the stupidest thing.. (and presumed it would be prone to leaking.. then i bought a used car, and it had one.. now, i wouldn't think of buying a car with out one! I love it!
Clikers (remote controlers) are an other one of those, i never knew i needed till i had one things.. i don't have garbage disposal, and have use one at friends houses, and have no desire to have one..
ATM's too, who imagined how they would change the world?
some changes are incremental, tapes recording to tape cassets, to digital recording to CD, to DVD's... but the leap to recorded music and from there to tapes.. were major shifts..
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Okay, wait. Moon roofs? Moon roofs? I'd never thought of them as being used to let in the Moon!
Is it just people around my area calling them sun roofs?
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Moonroof and sunroof are two different things. The moonroof in my wife's Cherokee has an opaque hand-operated sliding roof that opens to reveal a glass roof above it which may then be moved or left closed.
A sunroof is an opaque moonroof without the secondary roof below it.
TEd
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i have heard them called both moon and sun roofs..
i haven't figured out the difference, but my car manual refers to it as a moon roof..
i can shut it and cover it up (inside the car) so it looks like a solid ceiling..
i can tilt it up (with the ceiling panel in place, and have it vent, with out any light coming in) i can tilt it up with the ceiling panel slid out of the way (and have a glass roof, tilted open, or i can open it... and have a big hole in the ceiling.. (all with the touch of a button or two..)
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A sunroof is an opaque moonroof without the secondary roof below it
I understand the difference now thanks, TEd, but us simplistic Brits don't specify that difference, and call them both "sunroofs". I suppose "moonroof" implies something you may have open at night, and there are so few occasions you'd want that given our climate [rueful smile]
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a paradigm shift..being able to see, that a technology fills a need that people don't even know that they haveIs this the difference between invention and innovation? I've never quite been clear on that one. Paradigm shifts were first described by Kuhn (nice summary of his viewpoint here: http://cgi.student.nada.kth.se/cgi-bin/d95-aeh/get/kuhneng) the term used in relation to "scientific revolutions" i.e. the old ways take a lot of shifting, and the history books get rewritten afterwards so that it looks like the revolutionary development was a natural conclusion of what was happening already. I found his book enlightening and refreshingly honest; rationality doesn't really rule the roost, and the tree needs shaking from time to time. But but - we're still no closer to a word for people who can (or can't) make a kind of paradigm shift in their predictions, allowing for revolution(s) to come. It's a real skill to be able to discard the (recorded) past and present when looking ahead, so surely there should be a word for it! I think I may try to invent one
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ever heard of psychohistory?
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psychohistory?As in Asimov's Foundation series? Yup. I think that's what tsuwm's futurology aspires to be - a scientific prediction of trends, and some significant specifics. Asimov's hero (Hari Seldon, was it?) was a bit of a superhero, though - he allowed for everything in his predictions, eh?
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In reply to:
Asimov's hero (Hari Seldon, was it?) was a bit of a superhero, though - he allowed for everything in his predictions, eh?
Not mutations. That's why the Mule caused so much trouble.
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part of seeing the future, is seeing what will be a problem in the near future, and then anticapating how the problem will be dealt with..
Malthus saw population out stripping production of food, and saw only a famine.. Darwin saw other possiblities.. such as increases in food productions..(he looked backward, to be sure, but he saw the past as an indication of the future) famine was only one possiblity...
sure enough, soon, man had learned how to remove nitogen from the air, instead of being dependant on guano, and food production increased, no famine..
or as an other example, electronic's grew during WWII, the sheer weight of the wiring was becoming a factor in building planes.. there needed to be a better way to wire components.. first step was introductions of circut boards.. and they lead--to transistors --as scientist/engineers saw a new way of making circuts... and the idea of flat wires-, and that idea plus new product technology lead first to transistors and from there to chips!
which actually lead to planes being better equipped, and weighing less.. so the expensive technology of 1947 (the year my father immegrated..) was soon replaced with lighter faster planes, that could carry more payload, and resulted in cheaper costs to consumers.. and so 40 years later, he had flown over 100,000 in less than 3 years, and qualified for a free flight to alaska!
what problems is looming now for the world? can some of the political problems of the mid east vs modern world find new solutions?
In modern (western) countries, muslims embrace technology.. one specialize gizmo that sells well in NY is a program for a sharp/franklin (and other PDA's)-- that is programed to provide reminders to the devout when they should pray (since the , the, (the guy who calls all the devout muslems to pray from the mineret) is not a common site on NY street corners. )
what other problems are looming? polutions? energy? resourses like fresh water? what technology exist to solve these problems? and if the technology doesn't exist.. it will be invented
last year, when California was having an energy crisis, it was pointed out, it would be cheaper for the state to buy every household solar panals than to continue subsidizing energy producers.. problem was, there weren't enough solar panals in the world.. but if the state goverment made it a plan, and there would now a huge market for panels, more people would produce them, and some innovator would figure out how to make them better and cheaper (and still charge the same retail price and make him/herself richer) and with the innovations, there would be more competition, and other improvements would come about and soon, instead of being generally cost in-effective,increased competition would lead to lower prices. soon solar panels would be as common as cell phones!
right now, we (in US) have so many generators, and so much invested in land lines for providing electricity by wire... there is very little effort to make solar panels.. but if some one did a bit of work, places that do not have the pre existing infrastructure would snap up the technology..
cell phone took off in europe and former USSR-- they did not have the same level of infrastructure.. and there was a pent up demand for phone service.. here, in US, cel phone use lagged.. but we have great land service and a 3 day wait for a land line is unusual.. (but i understand that 3 week or 3 months or even 3 years waits for a land line not uncommon in countries as advanced as Netherlands before cell service and for less developed countries, waits for land lines stretched to decades!)
i see an increased need for portable technology.. and batteries are just not going to cut it.. there is a growing need for some way to keep all the portable technology running.. with out tons of batteries.. so soon, there will be a solution... at first, it will be more expensive than batteries.. but as more and more users buy into the technology, it will become cheaper, and more effecient!
(well that my take on the future..!)
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part of seeing the future, is seeing what will be a problem in the near future, and then anticapating how the problem will be dealt with..
One of my professors is convinced that there will soon be a severe fresh water shortage, and tells us that we should start investing in desalinization plants now. I think he may have a point-- my father just mentioned this evening that when his family moved here in 1961, the creek on our property used to be nine feet deep near the bridge. It's down to two or three now... We're not sure why the water level has decreased so much since then, but I think it may be due to increased demand. There have been a lot of new houses going up in our area lately.
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yes, fresh water, and clean water is a growing need.. desalination is one solution
other might include better use of grey water (say the water from your washing maching and sink, (but not the toilet)-- using grey water to water lawns. (again, here is where our exist infrastructure make it harder for most cities/urban areas, to do this.. places with out already existing sewers can build this new technology in..)
but other solutions might include waterless technology for common things.. water is great for washing cloths.. but is there a better way? maybe sonic waves.. or super absorbient matterials to absorb body oils from clothes..
or just change to front loading washers.. (so maybe investing in Maytag will be just as effective)
the earth is over 70% water, but only about 4% of it is fresh water at any given time! thank goodness the earth is already adapt at recycling salt water into fresh!
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That's odd, TEd. I could have sworn that a moonroof was a special adaptation to a lowrider designed so that people could stick their bare asses out at the passers-by with the minimum of fuss ... 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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There's the distinction I'm trying to make, put another way (keep trying, Fish )
I don't think there's a word for this, shona. For my sins I used to review science fiction (amongst other types of fiction) for the newspaper I worked for. There was some extremely dire sci-fi being produced in the 1970s. It was a bit like nearly all of the good plots had already been used and those that hadn't been had been grabbed up by Star Trek's script writers. Most of the books I read were simply recycling others' earlier ideas, usually badly expressed and written - which is, in my book, an even worse crime!
When it comes to film, it's easy to confuse bad special effects with the failure of imagination mentioned by others here. Remember Buck Rogers? And while the original Star Trek series uniforms were probably not simply a product of projection of their times, so to speak, the series production values were and they haven't dated very well either. I'm beginning to notice the same issue with Star Trek NG as well.
Yet consider the Alien movie series as a complete contrast. The clothes weren't all that way-out, but neither were they today's or yesterday's fashions recycled (no skintight catsuits) and the Nostramo sets were "timeless", i.e. they were understated but definitely "different" to anything current or past. And, of course, Ridley Scott commissioned an artist/sculptor to come up with the alien creature and alien architecture which won't date at all until someone actually finds some of the real deal. The only thing that disappointed me about the alien was that withall it was still bilaterally symmetrical, thus imposing earthly evolution on all of creation by implication!
Enough rabbiting. Great thread. Keep away from the desalination/fresh water stuff!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Shona:
I'm sorry to get in towards the end of this, but I plead a bad week.
I'm a bit surprised that no one's mentioned it, but the word you are looking for may be futurist. I googled that and the first entry is about a World Future Society. It's got a lot of interesting stuff there. When I think of futurist, two people come immediately to mind: Bucky Fuller and Alvin Toffler.
The latter is far more readable, but Fuller is probably the more influential. He and his friend G. O. Desicdome helped shape the future of our world. One of his omre interesting concepts is an umbrellaed city (not domed and sealed, just umbrellaed) that is designed to make the most out of as little as possible. Influenced, I'm sure by Frank Wright, but an order or two of magnitude greater in the grandiosity of his plans.
I can't remember the name of the last book I read by Fuller, but it was damned near impossible for a person of normal intellect like me to get through. Marianas deep.
TEd
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>>Asimov's hero ...allowed for everything in his predictions, eh?
Not mutations. That's why the Mule caused so much trouble.
Ah yes. Been a good while since I read the series, jim.
Hari Seldon got it right in the end, though, despite the Mule. Am I remembering correctly?
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I plead a bad weekCondolences, TEd - mine was the week before  the word you are looking for may be futuristAre futurists people who do "futurology", as mentioned by tsuwm? Or would those be "futurologists"? I've read Toffler, and was especially impressed by The Third Wave. I'm not sure that Futureshock has come to pass, though. People actually handle an incredible rate of change better than Toffler expected; and it's also never the case that everything changes, so maybe the demands aren't that great. I suppose I'd see Toffler as more of a "straight line" futurist, projecting the past into the present then following that line into the future. I don't know about Buckminster Fuller, but get the impression that he's more quirky and occasionally brilliant . More of a (errm, still trying to get the words) "revolutionary" futurist, happy to take major leaps on the basis of proto-seedlings (whaat?) If my impression of Fuller is correct, I'm trying to get a word for something that Fuller does better than Toffler. My brain hurts.
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Fuller had the ability to turn his futurist thinking into something practical; the geodesic dome, his car which is still too far ahead of it's time, and other concepts which will percolate into the human psyche in some distant future. one of the most profound thinker-doers that has ever lived, on a par with Da Vinci.
Toffler, though brilliant, just gives us things to wonder about.
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I don't think there's a word for this, shonaI'm starting to think you're right Cap. Shall we invent one? I used to review science fictionYou poor, poor sod! Hope it paid well. Star Trek ...production values ...haven't dated very well eitherYeah. But I reckon the hardware in Star Trek ain't bad, really. Everything's small and neat, which wasn't necessarily predictable at that time. Sure is now. I heard that Gene Roddenberry was obliged to introduce the transporter (and thus portable kit, I suppose) because they didn't have money/time to do a landing vehicle. If so, that's real serendipity. the Alien movie series as a complete contrastI'd certainly agree with you there, Cap. Ridley Scott's made a bit of a speciality of creating plausible visual futures. Perhaps it's crucial that everything is "lived in". So... Ridley Scott is a "plausible futurist", not prone to "straight-line futurism" ?? Yuk.
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before I start really wracking my brain to come up with a new word, a question:
is there a negative connotation to the concept of "straight-line" futurism? it seems a bit like there is; that if we're going to predict the future accurately we have to get past the present paradigm into something different, therefore the straight-line stuff doesn't really get us there.
yes?
no?
I suppose it also makes a difference how far onto the future we're aiming...
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is there a negative connotation to the concept of "straight-line" futurism?
Well, eta, I feel there is, but that may just be personal taste. "Straight-line" (linear?) futurism probably works well enough in the short-term and within a limited range. Maybe it's a bit like Newtonian and Einsteinian physics being able to coexist quite happily, each being more useful in certain situations (think I'm correct there, but I'm no physicist)...
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what about "futurecaster"?
a bit unwieldy, but describes the idea pretty well.
I'll keep thinking...
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In reply to:
Hari Seldon got it right in the end, though, despite the Mule. Am I remembering correctly?
The 2nd Foundationers got to stick their nose in after the war with the Mule.
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Maybe this is understating the question entirely, but how does visionary feel? It at least encompasses *some* of the aspects you're getting at... <shrug>
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Way to go Pedalfish, you've asked we good people to supply a name for a concept that will jell once a name is given. Kinda like having the outboard motor in the front of the boat. Well Fishpedal, thats no hill for a stepper. Dig these... Da ja vu, da ja va, oui? or maybe something more catchy like... futurecalilisticallidosis. Get real. Build us a proper stadium and we, the world, will come. - -
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(a)Thunderbirds http://www.thunderbirdsonline.co.uk was produced in the 1960s, but set in 2020(ish). The look of the technology, but more especially the hairstyles and clothing adopted by the puppet stars, were very much 60s styles, albeit cutting-edge 60s styles.Don't forget the music, FoaB! Who can forget those old classics Captain Scarlet! Captain Scarlet! and Marina, Aqua Marina [Pass the sick-bag emoticon]
Produced 1969, very daringly set in 1985!
but we'd still have early 70s clothes and hairstyles but, but I did! [flared trousers emoticon] Unlike Thunderbirds, UFO used real live actors, which made the dated styles even more obvious. What I find most entertaining about UFO now is the idea that roads could actually be less busy in 15 years timeThat's because everyone would have achieved Utopia and would be swanning at home being looked after by their robot servants (probably). One thing I always remember about Space:1999 is the date when the Moon separated from the Earth - September 13th 1999 - because it appeared at the beginning of every episode. That day I had just gone for an interview and went into work straight after. When I asked anyone if they knew the significance of the date they shrugged and shook their heads. Then, when I told them Space:1999 all the thirty-somethings' heads turned and lit up. Everyone knew the date but had almost forgotten it after almost 15 years.
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you've asked we good people to supply a name for a concept that will jell once a name is givenWell yes, milum - but minor little niceties like that never stopped us before. Reminds me for some reason of RD Laing's "poem" in Knots about the finger and the moon: http://www.oikos.org/knots7.htmfuturecalilisticallidosis This would, of course, be the pathological - often chronic - condition whereby the sufferer believes the future must be the same as the present. A classic example: "I have bad breath now, therefore I will always have bad breath" Or am I confusing it with "futurecalilisti halitosis"?
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Don't forget the music, FoaB!Oh yes. Captain Scarlet also had the best lyrics ever: They crash him, and his body may burn.
They smash him, but they know he'll return,
To live again.http://time-screen.freeyellow.com/scelyr.htm>>daringly set in 1985!..but we'd still have early 70s clothes and hairstyles
but, but I did! [flared trousers emoticon] Umm, yeah, me too, come to think of it.  September 13th 1999Like your colleagues, I remember the date now you come to mention it. The Moon getting blown out of orbit provides a brilliant apocalyptic scenario, doesn't it? I suppose there was a bit of an environmental warning there, too, as the chain reaction and explosion was caused by the storage of huge amounts of radioactive waste on the Dark Side of the Moon. "Everything under the Sun is in tune But the Sun is eclipsed by the Moo-oon.."
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how does visionary feel? Actually I was starting to think "visionary" goes very much in the right direction myself, FB.  Maybe we'd contrast visionaries (dynamic/dramatic/non-linear predictions) with futurologists (linear predictions)? What would be the opposite of "linear"? Perhaps this could be tied in with Chaos Theory, where you get past a certain quantitative value and there is a qualitative change, i.e. it's more like changing over to a different graph/formula than following the same formula. (At this rate I'll get a chance to incorporate all of my interests in this thread )
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<<From Earth to Moon>>
I have read that the gun Verne describes is essentially a technology that has since been developed, and is called a "rail gun." It involves a pair of charged parallel rods the projectile is hurled by plasma. This overcomes the barrier of maximum velocity to which gas expanding in a tube can excellerate, something like 20,000 mph. This, however, is another 'fact' retrieved from boyhood memory.
As to your original question, what is "futurism." (sorry, no time to look)
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what is "futurism"Ah - Futurism per se hasn't been mentioned yet, Peter , but now you come to mention it: http://www.futurism.org.uk/(It's an art movement with political aspects, for those who can't be bothered with clicking the link) Argh - does this mean that we shouldn't talk about people like Alvin Toffler and Buckminster Fuller as "futurists" (or rather "Futurists") ? I think "futurology" (a proponent of which would be a "futurologist"), as first mentioned by tsuwm, is something different again. More of a pseudo-science, but with the central tenet that it deals with future possibilities based on current trends.
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Actually, I keep a copy of "Future Shock" on my bookshelf just to tell me what WON'T happen ... - Pfranz
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just to tell me what WON'T happenRumour has it that Gerry Anderson was Bill Gates' technical advisor for The Road Ahead. Although another rumour has it that Bill Gates doesn't need any help on that front.
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Rumour has it that Gerry Anderson was Bill Gates' technical advisor for The Road Ahead.I always suspected that someone was pulling some strings for him! geddit?
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Howcum nobody's mentioned "prophecy?" Seems to fit.
"Inovative proclamer" also "visionary leader" is how OED defines prophet.
A person who makes a prophecy (foretell the future) would be a prophet, oui?
Re Star Treck - anyone else notice that our present cell phones look and work (flip to open and flip to close) very much like the communicators used by James Tiberius Kirk on the Original ST?
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Well, now you're just showing off, wow...
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OK..you can spell "James Tiberius Kirk" and not "Star Trek"?
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>the tendency, when making predictions, to project the present into the future?
here's an article that contends that's pretty much all you can do anymore:
Blinded by Science
July 14, 2002
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
THE impossible isn't what it used to be.
Not so long ago, the realms of science fact and science
fiction seemed worlds apart, two swirling spheres orbiting
each other around the galaxy.
But lately, news flashes from the front lines of science
suggest a bewildering telepathic collision between fact and
fantasy. In Australia, researchers in quantum optics say
they have "teleported" a radio-signal message in a laser
beam, using the same kind of principles that enabled Scotty
to beam up Captain Kirk. In rural Quebec, images of H. G.
Wells's "The Island of Dr. Moreau" have alighted upon
genetically altered goats whose milk contains a gene from
the golden-orb weaving spider, enabling goats to produce
milk containing superstrong spider silk. Meanwhile, two
young British researchers invented a "tooth phone" - a
microvibrator and low-frequency receiver that can be
implanted into one's tooth, raising the possibility of a
James Bond dental experience while undergoing root canal.
All this and "cc" - the cloned cat produced earlier this
year by Texas scientists - too.
The whirlwind convergence of science fact and fiction
raises the question of whether a sense of the impossible is
becoming passe. "Science fact is rapidly outstripping
science fiction," said Neil Gershenfeld, head of the new
Center for Bits and Atoms at M.I.T.'s Media Laboratory,
where a researcher is developing "paintable" computers with
chips suspended in viscous liquid, making the idea of
running to the hardware store to buy a few gallons of
computer a distinct possibility.
"I feel great sympathy for science fiction writers these
days," said Paul Saffo, a director at the Institute for the
Future in Palo Alto, Calif. "People used to go to
psychiatrists to say, `the C.I.A. planted a chip in my
brain.' Now, the family dog has a chip to prevent him from
getting lost. In a few years, psychiatrists may be asking,
`Have you been chipped?' "
Even paranoia isn't what it used to be.
In his
forthcoming book "I'm Working on That: A Trek From Science
Fiction to Science Fact," William Shatner explores the
reciprocity between Starship Enterprise fantasy and
real-life scientific breakthroughs. "What was suggested 30
years ago in `Star Trek' is now old hat," he said in a
telephone interview. "If you analyze the word `impossible,'
you break it down into `possible' and `I'm.' If I'm
possible, anything is possible. One imagined flight of
fantasy builds on another."
It all gets surreal.
As a culture, we have become writers of our own fantasy
saga in which pacemakers, cloning, the Internet, speech
recognition software and the like are merely part of the
scenery. And while much of what now seems humdrum was first
envisioned in science fiction - from mobile phones ("Star
Trek") to fax machines (Philip K. Dick) - it can sometimes
seem as though the tables have been turned, with reality
now providing inspiration to fantasy.
The science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling, who once wrote
about goats genetically altered to produce plastic
explosives, sees scientists unveiling more and more ideas
that can feed a fertile sci-fi mind. "They're becoming more
peculiar and far out," he said. "They're really into
antigravity and time travel."
Mr. Sterling recently returned from a Computer Research
Association conference, where computer scientists hobnobbed
about genetic algorithms and ubiquitous computing. He says
he came away with a full spiral notebook and the germs of a
novel's plot: a world in which every object is seeded with
sensors, where black helicopters hover over smoking ruins
and spew out computers that detect breathing.
To the biologist Robert J. Full, director of the Poly-Pedal
Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, this is "a
revolutionary moment" made possible by cross-fertilization
between disciplines. His laboratory is using the principles
of insect locomotion and the suction qualities of geckos'
toes to develop lifelike robots, including a fetching
self-righting six-legged fellow named RHex. RHex emerged
from collaborations between biologists, engineers,
mathematicians, computer scientists, and even Pixar
animators working on "A Bug's Life." Interplay with
once-alien colleagues is allowing scientists to venture
where they haven't gone before - and science buffs are
taking notice.
IN San Francisco, the Long Now Foundation, a nonprofit
organization that is building a 10,000-year clock, recently
launched a Web site called LongBets .org that attempts to
take the pulse of the impossible. People - many of them big
shots - are placing bets on what the future holds and will
be publicly accountable for their predictions. Among them:
"By 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in
pilotless planes," and "At least one human alive in the
year 2000 will still be alive in 2150."
"Things that clearly seemed impossible a few years ago,
like nanotechnology, have moved from the lunatic fringe to
core doctrine more quickly than at any time in history,"
said Stewart Brand, a founder of Long Now. "The downside
has become taking the long term seriously. We need to
develop civilizational patience."
In the meantime, it might be difficult to keep fantasy from
springing forth from newfound scientific realities.
Especially dreams of gossamer spider-silk evening gowns and
Sean Connery whispering sweet nothings into our molars.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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RE: anyone else notice that our present cell phones look and work (flip to open and flip to close) very much like the communicators used by James Tiberius Kirk on the Original ST?
that was a very conscious design decision made by motorola!
they wanted to make a smaller cell phone, and the Star tak (get the name!) was specifically designed to look like the Star trek communicators.. life sometimes does immitate art, just as art immitates life!
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one of the thing we must remember about the future is it will in many ways be just like the past!
i live in a 75 year old house.. i know people who live in 150 year old houses, and some in the UK live in 300+ year old houses..
somehow, houses haven't changed that much.. (well the dweller of the 300+ year old house complain about the damp..No, wait, doesn't every home owner in UK complain about the damp?)
houses have changed.. and the 300 year old house have been changed over time.. the plumbing has been improved.. pumps have been replaced by pipes and facets, and drains have been improved.. and the out house (what ever) has been moved in..
in general, in new housing, ceiling are higher (but not nessesarly, some old house had very hight ceilings.. depends on how fancy it was to begin with..)
room are bigger, and more open and have more windows, fireplaces are smaller and fewer, storage space, as closets, cupboards or china cabinets are bigger and there are more of them.. but 300 year (and older) houses still function.. the changes, like electricty, plumbing and heating and closets can be retrofitted into existing houses with total destroying them.
like wise, 300 years ago, a well off person would not walk a great distance if they had to travel to the city, but would take a conveyance..
nowdays, that is a car or train, then it was a horse drawn carriage, so there is a technology change, but not an attitude..
recipes for dinner and menus have changed only slightly.. and mostly for the lower economic classes.. the rich always had access to lemons, tea, sugar and other imported foods, now everyone has access. Likewise, the poor eat more meat, and cheese, and other foods that were luxuries.. but really, food is mostly the same.. what has changed is, it is fresher (well not always) cleaner, better preserved, cheaper, easier to cook and store, and there is lots more of it... bread is softer and whiter.. but its still bread.. and beer is bottles, but still beer.. for the most part we still eat the same foods as we did 300 years ago.. (yes, red meat is more likely to be beef than venison, but meat is meat.. and almost no one eats wrens or larks, when chicken is so cheap, and available. )
(in the past, eggs were fresher, often eaten the same day they were laid, nowdays, even organic eggs are likely to be at least 3 days old before they get to the store, and then rarely eaten the same day they were purchased. the same was true for milk, it was often served same day!)
clothing? well we often wear less, and there are more synthetic fibers, and its better tailored and cheaper but men still wear trousers, and woman still wear skirts, and both men and woman wear shirts with buttons.. zippers and velcro are new- but Buttons were new not that long ago! (the amish don't use buttons for the most part, since they are too new!)
clothes are cleaner, lighter weight, and easier to care for... the changes are machine knits (very fine knits, like T shirt fabric) and synthetics micro fibers are new even in my lifetime! but i still wear cotton, and linen and silk and wool! the clothes are more colorful, since synthetic dyes are richter.. but some plant dyes were very rich, and while the were not color safe, since clothes got washed less often, the colors didn't have a chance to fade.
the big changes, transportation, communications, electronics, just made things easier... and faster and cheaper..
the biggest changes that effected one life and life style are are literacy, books, information, travel... (which are possible because of the big changes in transportation, communications and electronics!
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<<one of the few things we must remember about the future...>>
'nuff said.
;)
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<<one of the few things we must remember about the future...>> 'nuff said. No no inselpeter, nuff didn't say that, of troy did.
Nuff was the one who said something bad about Captain Kirk.
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Milim, do you know that one of the things that makes me feel welcome here is being caught using the wrong idiom, words, and once in a while the wrong spelling it not that i spell thing wrong once in a while, its just once in while i enjoy being corrected!
i laughed when inselpeter pointed out that i said one of the few things we must remember about the future-- but it sort of make my point.. the future will, in many ways be just like the past! we can remember it!
mind you, i am sitting a computer, using a technology that, 20 years ago, was almost unthinkable to say this!
when thing change, they change in unexpected ways, and often keep remnants of the old technology.
i do use a qwerty keyboard, a design set up 100 years ago, intentionally to be slow, when typist could type faster than mechanical keyboards could move! so while my pentium 3 technology is state of the art, the keyboard is a legacy!
and Cap't Kirk was a sexist womanizer!
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>>our present cell phones look and work ...very much like the communicators used ..on the Original ST
>a very conscious design decision made by motorola!Ah, but most European "mobys" don't work like Star Trek communicators, as Nokia are by far the most popular brand. As you say, some of the Motorolas do, and there are nifty little numbers by Samsung and Sony (of course) that flip open - but sometimes it's false economy. People prefer slimness to shortness, if you see what I mean. And then weight is a very important factor. Nokias are almost light enough to sit in a top shirt pocket without being pendulous. All the others except the Sony (which is very nice but expensive) tend to be noticeably heavier. Funny, I managed to get by without my own moby right up until my last birthday - and now, of course, I take mine almost everywhere. Then again, I got by without a car and a TV of my own until I was 29. Surprising how the need isn't necessarily there until it's introduced, eh?
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yes, it is interesting what we consider to be vital.. but that is taking off to philosophy! but i suppose pondering the future is philosophical, too!
i have cell phone for emergenies.. i don't even have a contract for service.. except for on-line service i don't make a dozen phone calls in a month.. i do stay on for a while, and have made hour long calls to Japan (oh, my that bill!) but phones are one technology i could do with out, almost. but ice machines? i love ice machines!
NY has had a few black out.. every few years we are reminded about life with out electricity, for a few hours. its always interesting.
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Blinded by ScienceThat's a brilliant article, tsuwm. Very appropriate - also very scary in some ways. Dunno, I think the focus of prediction changes, is all. It's not so much the technology (and as the article says, it can't be), it's more how all of these SF dreams/nightmares coming true at the same time will change our culture. And that is almost impossible to predict. If you explore some recent(ish) SF, these are the very issues that are (implicitly at least) being explored. William Gibson's "CyberPunk" stuff went in that direction quite substantially; Iain M Banks' "Culture" similarly explores what almost limitless technology would do to the human race. SF (and probably futurology) has been here before, in that the inevitable conclusion once looked like nuclear holocaust, end of story. Then along comes something like Judge Dredd ( http://www.2000adonline.com/index.php3?zone=thrill&page=profiles&choice=dredd) which says "OK, so it happens. Then what? Because people will still be around in some shape or form." I find that quite inspiring. I suppose it's about a sense of possibilities.
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the future will, in many ways be just like the past! we can remember it!
Ever read Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke, Helen (or anyone)? Nice bit in there about why we have a particular image of the Devil - related to the circularity of time.
And that reminds me of another "what would people do with limitless power" story - Dancers At The End Of Time by good old Michael Moorcock. A recommended read.
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NY has had a few black out.. every few years we are reminded about life with out electricity, for a few hoursWe often call them "power cuts", which is interesting as it may go back to Trade Union actions and the WInter of Discontent... but there's a serious digression  I think it's frightening how close we all are to chaos when the power goes. Being out in the country, my family is reasonably well-prepared for power cuts, but if the power were off for more than, say, 8 hours, we'd start having real difficulties. Freezer contents defrost, can't use the main ovens.. mind you, that ain't life or death, as we could still use the (propane gas) hob. Hmmm, maybe a fuel crisis would be worse. I suppose you always adapt as required.
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Ever read Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke, Helen (or anyone)? Nice bit in there about why we have a particular image of the Devil - related to the circularity of time.
A great and haunting story. Forgot that part about circularity of time.
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Futuring the present can not only be predictive/projective but productive. General Motors' "Futurama" pavillion at the 192[9] World's Fair is a case in point. In it, GM presented an image of a United States built around the automobile. It was by far the most popular attraction at the fair. The reality may not be altogether like the dazzle, but the dazzle certainly played its part in the advancement of it.
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wasn't that the 1939 world fair? --
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>Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke
Forgot that part about circularity of time
Remember what the aliens looked like, FF? There's a suggestion that their presence at the End (of Mankind) is so powerful and significant it "bounces round" to the Beginning and resides with us as a racial memory, i.e. infinite future = infinite past (or just infinity=infinity, I suppose..)
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<<wasn't that the 1939 world's fair>> I knew I put the brackets around the wrong digit! [certificate of immaturity and stupidity emoticon]
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Futuring the present can not only be predictive/projective but productiveor at least a self-fulfilling prophecy! I wonder - if a group of people had seen the US built around the automobile as something fantastically undesirable, could they have even slowed up what happened? I suspect that the "law of reversed effort" would have applied, and they would find they were merely providing extra publicity for something completely inevitable. I also wonder which is most effective in bringing about change: 1. Portrayal of a negative future, being what will happen if you don't do a defined something. 2. Portrayal of a positive future, being what will happen if you do do a defined something. I know which one looks like it should be most effective, but is that actually borne out by reality?
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somehow, houses haven't changed that much.. (well the dweller of the 300+ year old house complain about the damp..Just recalled seeing my sister in law recently. She lives (along with her family - hubby, 5 kids & a dog) in a huge, lovely old farmhouse (17thC/18thC I think) - but it came at a big price, and continues to cost a fortune in maintenance. I suppose in some ways people used to build better, with nice thick walls, etc, but in many ways building techniques have improved hugely, and modern buildings are much more economical to run and maintain. Think about thatching, for instance. Delightful stuff, as picturesque as you can get, but expensive. There are also often problems with renovating this kind of property in the UK. "Listed buildings" or buildings in "conservation areas" are quite rightly protected, but this will tend to mean even more expense if you want to introduce modern features whilst retaining the original character. We've had a couple of excellent home improvements recently - double-glazing and replacing the kitchen (which involved moving a boiler and taking down a flue/chimney). I'd hate to be in a situation where I couldn't do that kind of stuff; and it would really rankle to be unable to make my home more environmentally friendly. So personally, I'm going to stick with 1920ish onwards houses even when I do make my million Sorry, this is all a bit unromantic of me, but sadly it is also true!
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Diving quickly in and out (no time) of this fascinating cats cradle of thoughts and ideas, how about "prescient" as THE WORD.
There was a sci-fi book (or may be a trilogy?) by James Blish called "The Flying Cities" or some such title. Very imaginative tales about the cities of earth having outlived their usefulness in an age gone back to its agrarian roots. The cities up and left to go and look for work, taking themselves off into space with the aid of a device called a spindizzy. The mayor of New York was the hero - someone mentioned deja vu? - and the final ending occurred one nanosecond past "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe". Can anyone confirm the title?
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the AMNH has a imax film on water.. and focus on the NY water system. NY water system, is basicly over 100 years old, an delivers all of the cities water needs (it was stressed by a drought, that ended in May) and it is primarly gravity fed. NYC water cleanliness and purity exceeds (i will admit at time low) US Federal standards... and is treated only with a low level of clorination.
but.. cities like NY are dependant on resourses far out of their reaches.. NY Water comes from reservours 100 miles away.. and while it has a good system, it has no viable alterantive.. with the lose or distructions of the water system, NY, would fade from sight, and other cities would take over its functions.. no one city would take over all of them i suspect, but still NY would sink into oblivion.. and as its resourses and value as a city failed, the harbor, in danger already of silting up, would. with out a port, or a good water supply, NY would lose 90% of its populations, and just be another small city half on the east coast, like new london or bridgeport..
likewise, energy in NYC is generated in Canada and Niagara falls.. (there are local generators, but we are dependent on the "grid", too..
i don't see how cities can outlive there usefulnes.. but what is defined as useful does change.. NY as i pointed out a few weeks ago, has a great natural Harbor, Bean, our resident oceanographer, said, oh, yeah... most people don't think of NY as port town. NY main focus has moved from ocean going shipping to financial management..
good cities have the ability to change.. Much is often made of Atlanta (GA) -- a city famous because it did not start out on a river or port.. but rather as a rail hub..
1000 years ago, overland transport was expensive and unreliable, and all cities were ports, for local and distant shipping.. some of those port silted up, and the cities disappeared.. others, developed lives for themselves aside from there original purpose.
150 years ago, Sag Harbor NY, and New Bedford MA were big cities.. Centers for whalers, and whale oil, whale ivory, and other imports.. today, both have remade themselves over as seaside resorts town. but both had hard times as they changed.. and some port cities never succeded in changing and langish.
other cities, redefine themselves to new needs..
London and Paris, port cities and capitals are no longer dependant on shipped goods or the crown. tourism, fashion, finacial markets contribute more to the cities health than shipping.. they have evolved.
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<<or at least a self-fulfilling prophecy>>
"productive" in a literal sense and without connoting value; as a factory may be said to be productive.
Concerning the "law of reversed effort," that's a nice term ([truly emoticon}), where'd you find it? -- in terms of the advancement of the auto industry's program, one would need to look at the whole scheme of communications, pr, and beliefs about industry and progress and political and economic and regulatory environment at that time in order to make an assessment. I don't think you could make any direct inferences based on what one might expect to happen today. It is interesting that various agenda should acquire an air of inevitability under the rubrick of progress, though -- so that it almost doesn't seem to matter which, positive or negative, future you pick.
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the "law of reversed effort," that's a nice term ([truly emoticon}), where'd you find it? I personally found it when addicted to Alan Watts (as a student, surprisingly enough ): http://www.manypaths.com/book13.htmBut I've only just found the term was first coined by Emile Coue "the father of auto-suggestion": http://www.geocities.com/recutter/rel4.htmlI certainly believe in the basic truth of the law; very often the more you try to do something, the more you achieve the opposite of what you intended. it almost doesn't seem to matter which, positive or negative, future you pickYes. Events can take on a life of their own, and achieve such a momentum that it's difficult even varying their course a little. On the other hand (butterfly's wings and what have you), in the global village relatively small events can add up to make a huge difference. Damn, me off into philosophy again.
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this fascinating cats cradle of thoughts and ideasWhat a pleasant and positive term for something that could easily be seen as an anarchic mish-mash of tangential (?) observations, David (and mea culpa to the extent this thread is like that) how about "prescient" as THE WORDHmmm. I think "prescient" relates more to the accuracy of predictions than to the way the predictions are made. You could say someone was prescient whether they did a linear projection of the present into the future or whether they took a leap into the unknown on the basis of little or no current experience - as long as the prediction turned out to be accurate. I think I'm tending towards visionary to describe the "non-linear" predictions (and predictors). Still haven't firmed up on a term for the "linear futurologists" - though last night a friend suggested to me that such people suffer from temporal inertia
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Define the tendency, when making predictions, to project the present into the future, then make up a name that will delineate and effect that condition.OK, Mister Fishonabike, Mister one hand clapping, I will attempt your rue de gra dea and so preclude your challenge. - - oui? In a later message I remain, Milo Washington.
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Mister one hand clappingThat's "fin", surely? Or we'll never hear the end of it. So let me be the first to throw in the Tao. Incidentally, just found an amusing and informative link on "the sound of one hand": http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_049your rue de gra dea"Road of fa(t) god". Hmmm. Lost me here, Mr Washington, sir!
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Re:your rue de gra dea
"Road of fa(t) god". Hmmm.
Lost me here, Mr Washington, sir!
Oh one of milum clever bits i got first time round..
not a coup de grace but a rue de gra dea
or at least that what i think.. Milo plays at intensionally make spoonerism..and when you get them, they are so witting and fun.. but half the time.. i think about them, and ponder them, and then some time months later, i finally catch on..
trouble with Milum is, he keeps unrating himself, or overating us.. and we keep missing his jokes and not realizing how clever he is by half.. (still i don't mind too much that Milo thinks i am quicker on the uptake, and twice as clever than i really am.. )
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Brilliant thread, folks! Coming to this late, I found many of my ideas and questions unfolding in the succession of posts. I was going to ask if a non-fiction, empirical foresight like Toffler's Future Shock," would be included in this equation; if Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, while concerned with experimental vivisection, was prophetic to some of today's new medical techniques (i.e. pig's hearts, etc.); and if a far leap of future prophecy, as in Heinlein's extra-dimensional space travel in The Time Tunnel is only a seeming leap until it's plausible, and then becomes a linear prediction.
However, the one direction of futurology not heavily mentioned is the sociofuturists, as in Orwell's 1984 (once regarded as science fiction.) Many of his "predictions" there are, alarmingly, already in place, and the vestiges of many others are increasingly appearing on the horizon. In like manner Huxley's Brave New World. And how would we categorize the allegorical teechnique of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, where he depicts the Morlock society of the far future as a metaphor for the sad vulnerabilties of human nature? Is he saying human nature will never change, or just highlighting our present dilemma by using the future? And where does his vision of the machine, itself, fit into this discussion if it were possible? (in fact, the parallel of Wells and Huxley seems to be, "give people their 'paradise,' give people their 'soma', and you can do anything you want with them...in 1920 or in 4020). Then there is, for instance, the gracious and free-spirited sexual mores of Robert A. Heinlein's "Future History" (most notably in Time Enough for Love; the Notebooks of Lazarus Long), set in a far future world, but predictive of current trends in sociology?
Then there is also psycho-spiritual frontiers of C. J. Jung and others.
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Praps, The Eternal Return? (already coined)
Why do I read the above and think immediately:
"April is the cruelest month."
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And as if that weren't enough to stamp the seal of melancholy, I just read toward the end:
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet,
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
And, again, there's that number nine...
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enough to stamp the seal of melancholyBut Eliot is a brilliant poet, WW - and, sometimes unwittingly, shows that from the depths of despair something infinitely precious and beautiful (yet also fantastically commonplace) can be retrieved. Classic examples of this could be the great Blues performances, but continuing on the Eliot theme, The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.htmland Preludes: http://www.bham.net/soe/arclight/orb2.htmand The Hollow Men: http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/hollow.html-will all do nicely. It seems to me that in conjuring up infinite despair, Eliot nonetheless conjures up infinity. And his eloquence and use of often surreal and dream-like imagery is amazing. His despair is rooted in a tremendously powerful realisation of what we all could be, and what he himself longs to be. So - to the extent that he communicates his longing and to the extent that we share the feeling, his is a powerful affirmation of humanity. Returning vaguely to the theme of this thread (ha ha! turning an oil tanker..) Eliot projects a dismal present into eternity, the only way out being a revolutionary leap into the unknown. That's also the underlying meaning of W'ON's (or rather Nietzsche's) Eternal Return. If Now is Forever it can be infinitely depressing or infinitely wonderful. Or, indeed, both at the same time.
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the one direction of futurology not heavily mentioned is the sociofuturistsYes, W'ON, not dealt with yet, although I did say - in response to tsuwm's article about SF becoming truth so rapidly it made SF almost redundant - that recent SF dealt more with the cultural and social implications of people having god-like powers (for instance). 1984, Brave New World and The Time Machine (and Ira Levin's This Perfect Day, incidentally) could all be classed as the intentional projection of (then-)present aspects of life into the future, thus enabling them to be observed as if from afar. This is a very powerful and effective writing technique, and maybe proves my point that a concise term for projecting the present into the future would be generally useful! Making a fairy-tale story of current events is effective in a very similar way, and indeed, Animal Farm takes exactly that approach. What would we call that? Allegorizing? the gracious and free-spirited sexual mores of Robert A. Heinlein's "Future History"...set in a far future world, but predictive of current trends in sociology?Hmmm, but is it? I see Heinlein's stuff as more of a straightforward projected wish-fulfilment. "Wouldn't the world be a happier and healthier place if we could all cast off our outdated sexual hang-ups?" kind of thing. But maybe I'm just an outdated prude.
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Brave New World
I just happen to be reading this right now, and the sexual mores in that society are pretty free, if not non-existent. Though I'm not sure they could be classified as free-spirited. That seems to go against the theme of the book.
Huxley did though predict, perhaps logically, that flight would become the main mode of transport. They use plane-like vehicles seemingly in the same manner as trains, though they have propellers. In fact, he has a flight from London to New Mexico taking about 6.5 hours. Pretty impressive for a prop plane if you ask me.
I would hope that we're moving in the opposite direction of his society in the area of social stratification, but who knows what cloning will do.
As for 1984, I'm not sure how common TVs were in '48 (when it was written), but he seems to have predicted fairly well the wide-spread usage of them (telescreens), even if not for recreational purposes.
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As for 1984, I'm not sure how common TVs were in '48 ...but he seems to have predicted fairly well the wide-spread usage of them (telescreens)Hi fellow denizen, Yes, Orwell was well ahead of his time on this one. Definitely not straight line prediction. Two relevant developments at the moment: 1. Widescreen TVs you can hang on your wall 2. Interactive digital TV (what is the US situation here?) 2. Monitoring usage of digital TV through set-top boxes which are connected to phone lines. So in a sense we are being observed through our TVs. I would hope that we're moving in the opposite direction of his society in the area of social stratificationWell, Brave New World presents a sharply stratified society, with several levels - and, of course, Huxley is very much making a point. But the gap between the haves and have nots - certainly in global terms - is as wide as ever, if not wider. I also think there's a significant (possibly widening) gap between the haves and the have a lots. Personal impression, though.
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All very well, shona, but most of the predictive stuff that you and the others have been talking about (Verne, early Clarke, etc.) is mere extrapolation of the present into the future. I'm not being critical of these authors; they were being pretty far-fetched at the time and it probably wouldn't have been obvious to their readers that they were actually extrapolating what was into what might be in certain areas, generally restricted to technology. Orwell, similarly, didn't have to invent Big Brother, he just had to take what was happening around him to an extreme. He was after all writing allegory.
Authors who invent different futures, or who project futures into the far distance have one strike going for them and one strike against. The strike for is that no one currently alive will ever be able to tell them that they were wrong. The strike against is that if they wish to be taken seriously by intelligent readers they can't posit basic changes in human nature or the way that society works. I point out as examples of this Herbert's Dune series and SJ Delany's Triton plus plenty of perhaps more Rabelaisian efforts. Often, much predictive fiction is pretty mundane and half-hearted. TV programmes such as Star Trek, flms such as Star Wars and novels such as Heinlein's Starship Troopers definitely fall into this category. They merely take current social structures and mores and impose a "superior" or "advanced" technology on them, calling it "the future". They don't ring true for me; they use predicted technology to entrench the way things work in the present.
Of course there are exceptions to this. One series that fascinated me because it tinkers with institutions is Greg Bear's Eon trilogy.
Yet we know, even using the past century as a short timescale for comparison, that institutions do change and can change rapidly as a response to technology, even if they appear outwardly similar. Think about the impact on the way we live of the telephone and latterly the computer. These two inventions, along with advances in personal and mass rapid transportation, have transformed life in ways that Verne and Orwell never imagined - or if they did, they didn't write about. I don't for a minute pretend to be able to do this myself, you understand.
Rereading what I've just written, I realise that I haven't made another point clear: Basic human nature won't change as a response to any technological or situational changes. We appear to have avoided this for millenia so far and I predict with confidence that this fact will hold good for the foreseeable - and pretty much, the unforseeable - future!
I'm bored by the mostly purely prescriptive futurisation of the present, I have to admit, and I'm buying less and less sci-fi as a result. The one thing I can say for sure is that whatever any writer predicts, I predict it won't happen that way if they are projecting more than 20 years into the future. If you think I'm being needlessly pessimistic, I suggest you re-read Toffler!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Rabelaisian Delightful word, sir! You continually impress me, you know that?
I mostly agree with what you're saying; I will point out that the Star Trek series showed humans being fully accepting not only of other races, but of other species as well. I'd say there is a slight argument for that being a change in basic human nature.
Basic human nature won't change as a response to any technological or situational changes. Oh, I hope you are wrong about that, though I have to admit the odds favor your prediction. What I'd really like to see, or at least hope for for my childrens' great-grand-children, maybe, is an end to the haves and the have-nots. I'd like to think that there might actually be something like the replicators on Star Trek, where anybody can just push a button (or speak!) and presto--whatever item they desired will appear.
I think it is slightly more likely that we will eventually consider all races on the planet as equals. I think, through business expansion and the internet, that more and more people around the globe will--oh dear, I don't mean think alike, exactly, but perhaps come to share many of the same values--and maybe even more importantly, realizing that they do. Talking to people from other countries on this board has been a real mind-opener for me, for example--and not always positively, either. But what is, is.
My friend's son-in-law was recently deported to -- an underdeveloped country, and she told me that they'd finally heard from him: he'd gone to visit his tribal elders, then found a place to hook up his computer. Now, THERE are two terms not often used in the same sentence, I'll warrant. So--I think perhaps that eventually, all of the peoples will be figuratively brought out of the deserts and the jungles, and will more or less catch up with the majority of the populace.
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<<Most of the books I read were simply recycling others' earlier ideas, usually badly expressed and written - which is, in my book, an even worse crime! >>
And still you boast about it, Cap!
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which is, in my book, an even worse crime! >>And still you boast about it, Cap! Ooh, insel, you sly dog! That was good!
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Lots of goodies, Cap! The strike for is that no one currently alive will ever be able to tell them that they were wrongYes. But it does depend on what they're trying to achieve whether that matters or not. I don't think many SF writers are genuinely in the prophecy business, so probably they wouldn't give a damn either way, as long as people buy their books. All else is a bonus (that they won't know about ). Oh, and probably the writers would rather people enjoy reading their books, so they can make a living writing. The strike against is that if they wish to be taken seriously by intelligent readers they can't posit basic changes in human nature or the way that society worksHmmm, generally agree with you here, Cap (as I generally agree with you that basic human nature won't change) , but it is just a matter of degree, certainly not 100%. Even Asimov, many years ago, wrote about an alien society based on three sexes. What relation does that have to anything we know? Did it adversely affect sales of that book or subsequent Asimov books? Not in the least. People love to be entertained and many love to have their imaginations stretched and thoughts provoked. In that context anything is fair game. Creating coherence and plausibility is difficult, but certainly not impossible. Again, it's not really about prophecy. I feel SF books about parallel worlds are quite relevant here, as they can show how very different our world would be following an often small historical twist. And where do you draw the line between basic human nature, and changeable human nature? Same applies to the way society works. I agree there is something fundamental that appears to be in us and our society regardless, but it's bloody difficult to pin down what that "something" is. They merely take current social structures and mores and impose a "superior" or "advanced" technology on them, calling it "the future". They don't ring true for meCertainly true of Star Wars, although that is (again) more of a myth/allegory - "a long time ago..." Dunno how much you could really call it projection of the present though. Then-current social structures and mores did and didn't apply to Star Trek - the tolerance and (sometimes) appreciation of significantly different cultures was a very important aspect. All I know about Starship Troopers is that I enjoyed the book as a 12-year-old, and enjoyed the film fairly recently. Plausibility? Not bloody likely! Present projection? Too right! Messy jingoistic childish fun, totally unworthy of a mature adult? Yep. One series that fascinated me because it tinkers with institutions is Greg Bear's Eon trilogyI'll check it out some time. I liked Bob Shaw's Vertigo for its depiction of a society changed by anti-gravity harnesses. Nothing essential changed there, though, really. How about his "slow glass" stories? Maybe the same. I keep coming back to Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time. The one thing I can say for sure is that whatever any writer predicts, I predict it won't happen that way if they are projecting more than 20 years into the future- Or a lot less! These are very interesting times to live in, to quote the Chinese curse. Although it is definitely something to watch the future happening. Something wonderful. Something absobloodylutely terrifying.
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Fahrenheit 451
Can't let this thread go without a mention of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451...another sociofuturist fantasy with, of course, the burning of books, and the cults of people which actually become the book they dedicate themselves to keeping alive with total memorization (one person was, for instance, Charles Dicken's David Copperfield). And, then, too, there was the ever-present Teloscreen, an actual entire wall of your living room, as it were...ever watching, ever manipulating.
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Re:ever-present Teloscreen, an actual entire wall of your living room, as it were...ever watching, ever manipulating.
this of course exists.. and what's more people are lining up to pay for the privledge!
its called TIVO.. and it tracks what you watch and when you watch it, and it serves up more of the same...
(it also continuously records, and is marketed as a device that will let you pause live TV.) but it is also a data collection device, and it send back infomation about TV viewing habits, and if you start watching say nature shows, it will search all the channels, and then let you know what nature shows are available, and will tape them for your convenience..
TIVO is not the only one... several US Cable companies have "tracking" devices.. and send back info.. and some have the same software on there cable lines for internet connections.. allowing them to tack the web sights you have visited, and sell the information to other venders.. so if i visit "pier 1" and "Ikea" and "targets" web pages, i might find i am getting targeted ads for "ll bean" or other large catalog/online/real retailers..
and if i visit science sites, i might find i am getting invites to subscribe to Scientific American, or Nature, or other zines..
targeted marketing is getting big.. and cable companies see that they have the resourse to collect the data, and sell it.
that as scary as having the government collect data about me..
i am very reluctant to 'conduct business', banking, purchaces, etc over the internet.. i worry a bit about credit card data being stolen, but a lot about what else is being collected and stored!
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its called TIVO.. and it tracks what you watch and when you watch itAh-hah! Thanks Helen, you've answered a question I posed above: http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=76739TIVO, I believe, is primarily a "hard disk" VCR, i.e. it stores TV programmes in digital format. In the case of cable TV, certainly, the transmission is also in digital format, and this is the way everything is going. In areas where you can't get cable, you can still get "satellite" TV - fairly big in the UK. That used to be in analog(ue) format but is now almost all digital, which makes much better use of the bandwidth and allows extra features. In the bandwidth previously used for one channel you can now incorporate several "sub-channels", allowing varying viewpoints of a match, a choice of matches to watch, interactive news channels (brilliant, these) etc. Presumably these are the same features offered by cable TV in the US? And what's the state of digital transmission over the airwaves in the US? Big drive on that over this side of the Pond, though not entirely successful as yet.. In terms of "being watched", digital transmissions are fed through a set-top box/digitizer that has a certain amount of memory (a lot in the case of TIVO, which is also a digitizer). If the digitizer is connected to a phone line or cable, it can share information with a central database. I'm sure the companies would assure you, as on the Web, that no individual information is retained... Also check out White Dot's perspective on this front: http://www.whitedot.org/It's half-run by someone I used to work (and argue ) with, but don't let that put you off. i am very reluctant to 'conduct business', banking, purchaces, etc over the internetWell, your credit card info is pretty damn safe these days, as long as you have a Secure Sockets connection (padlock shown in most browsers). Really that's just a matter of how much you trust the company you're dealing with, and credit card fraud in (for instance) restaurants is much more commonplace. Other than that, individual tracking depends mainly on cookies; and there's a lot of software available that can block cookies, with varying degrees of selectivity. As a huge bonus, these products can often also block ads. If you don't have a personal firewall and an automatically updated virus checker these days, then you could be giving away much more than consumer information. We all need to know how we're being watched, though. It's not necessarily a problem. Credit Card companies and banks have known our buying habits for years. Oh, very appropriate mention of Fahrenheit 451, W'ON. Another allegorical piece of SF, isn't it? Aspects of the present projected and polarised to make a very important point.
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Is there a word for the tendency, when making predictions, to project the present into the future?
Myopia? Short-sightedness
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"All Futures and Pasts begin here." --- John Cage
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The term expressing the linear extension of the present into the future is extrapolation, but no parallel term for a more creative polation comes to mind, partly because the accepted meaning of extrapolate - to infer from a trend within an already observed interval; to project, extend or expand known information into an area not known - usurps extra in the sense of outside and beyond. How about coining something using "create" or "imagine" as a base?
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In the movie Fahrenheit 451, as Montag is walking through the dissenter's camp he hears (and we the audience hear) snippets of various Great Books recited by the camp's denizens. In one case, there is a young boy reciting "...I never loved my father..." and later something about "...as the first snow fall..." or something as his father has just died (the young boy presumably having learned to recite the book).
Does anyone know which book this person was? (i.e. which book the boy was reciting?)
thanks,
k
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The term expressing the linear extension of the present into the future is extrapolation, - sparteyeI dunno sparteye, we extrapolate almost continually and so a more confining term might be needed. How about base projection? Naw, that kinda thinking might actually be functional. What shona wants is a sorta derisive term that will point out the folly of basing long term predictions on the nature of events and things of today, you know like - presentdiction. For example, I was guilty of presentdicting when for twenty years I saved up bond money to spring my children from jail and then they wasted it on a college education. But maybe an even better term might be paradigmation. I was guilty of paradigming way back in 1952. As a street urchin who was running the streets wearing an ice-cream container space cadet helmet when a Birmingham News reporter, in search of human interest story, asked me for my prediction of when men would first land on the moon. "By the year 1960", I said, "and definitely by 1968." The next day my friends and teachers and relatives saw my picture and my prediction in the Birmingham News. They all had a big laugh. And rightly so, everyone today knows that mankind didn't land on the moon until [edited] July, long into the year of 1969. - -
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everyone today knows that mankind didn't land on the moon until long into the year of 1970.
July '69.
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Thanks sjm, may I call you sjm? I'll alter my post to reflect that fact. milum. ~~~
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OP
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>Is there a word for the tendency, when making predictions, to project the present into the future?
Myopia? You'd think so, wouldn't you, doc? The ridiculous thing is that "linear" projection can work sometimes, and surprisingly well. Or perhaps I should say "has been known to work", as past performance is no guarantee of future returns (to quote my mortgage lender)
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The term expressing the linear extension of the present into the future is extrapolationThis is certainly the technically correct term, Spartan - so thanks and congrats! There's also a very mathematical and linear feel to it... although don't mathematicians extrapolate curves more than lines? That may imply more creativity and efficiency than I'm after. I suppose milum is right in saying I want a sorta derisive term that will point out the folly of basing long term predictions on the nature of events and things of today - so a subset of extrapolations where, by intention or not, the future is shown as implausibly like the present. Could the implausibility be judged in retrospect? Uh, yes. How about if we talk about intrapolation as projection that stays "in the box" ? Then we just have to work out what form the adjective would take. For the opposite scenario I agree that imagination and creativity are key - but "visionary" captures all that, so stays up the top of the list as far as I'm concerned. I was guilty of presentdicting when for twenty years I saved up bond money to spring my children from jail and then they wasted it on a college education.What milum, you mean there was once a point where your kids did what you expected, rather than the exact opposite? Wow.
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don't mathematicians extrapolate curves more than lines?
Generally we try to extrapolate in whatever shape we have data for. If it "looks" linear (there are actually measures available to determine what kind of shape is the best fit to data), the extrapolation will be linear, and so on. And I think "curve" is just a general word which means "not a point" so a straight line can also be a curve.
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Carpal Tunnel
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a straight line can also be a curve.
[yobbity-yobbity] Wha--?? I'll take your word for it. Nice to see you here, Dear!
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so a straight line can also be a curve
Theoretically yes but actually no. A curve is a line of which no part is straight and which shows diagrammatically a continuous variation of quantity or force etc. It can also be a surface of which no part is plane.
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[bean]
so a straight line can also be a curve
[/bean]
[rubrick]
Theoretically yes but actually no. A curve is a line of which no part is straight and which shows diagrammatically a continuous variation of quantity or force etc. It can also be a surface of which no part is plane.
[/rubrick]
Like so much of what I think I almost know, the meaning of curve is something I have osmoted and not something I have ever looked up.
There is a difference between the common understanding of a term and the way the term is used in a specialized case like mathematics. (Forgive me for stating the obvious.) Ask a race car driver how to accelerate a car -- you'll get an odd stare or glare and, if you get any response at all, a reply in tones clearly indicating that the question was asked by an idiot, that "you step on the ACCELERATOR." Ask an eager algebra student the same question and he'll immediately recognize that a deceleration is a negative acceleration and he could reasonably say "you can step on the gas or the break." An engineer realizes that if a direction changes, even if the speed is constant, that this is an acceleration and so he might respond "step on gas or brake, or turn the steering wheel." Some people might give clever responses like running into a wall or shifting weight or what have you. But everyone answered correctly in the scenario. (I use this example all the time, but don't recall if I've used it in this forum.)
But back to the point, I think in the common language that clearly curved lines are not straight lines. In the technical language of the mathematician, I do not know the correct definition, but I do know that I have heard mathematicians talk about curves (generically, as the loci of functions) that could, in some cases, be straight lines. I don't know that these guys used the terminology correctly, but I do know they used the words that way.
Trivial example:
Find the area under the curve y=2x between x=2 and x=5.
(Clearly this is a straight line.)
I'm quite sure I've heard this said in class, and I 'think', but am not sure that I've seen this language used in text books. Again, just because mathematicians have used the terms like this doesn't mean they used it correctly.
k
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Sorry, I wasn't very clear. Mostly we use curve to mean the plot of a function, like the calculus usage that TFF gave above. (Especially when the context is extrapolation/interpolation, where we are most certainly talking about a plot of data and a best-fit curve.) So the definition might be something like: curve, all the points which satisfy some equation. (If they all happen to lie on a straight line we still refer to it as a curve, and I apologize.)
Again, just because mathematicians have used the terms like this doesn't mean they used it correctly.
They've used the word correctly in the given context, in terms of what all mathematicians understand "curve" to mean. In any language, one word may have multiple "correct" definitions - it's all good as long as everyone using the word has the same idea of which definition is being employed. You'll find the terminology used consistently in math books written in English, so this is by definition, correct usage in in this context, since everyone in the field has tacitly agreed to that usage. If they were inconsistent, it might be a mistake, but that terminology is quite consistent.
I mean, much as we may rail against changes or irritating neologisms, usage is what makes language "correct" or "incorrect". If the majority of people accept and use a word or construction, then it's correct. So, the majority of mathematicians consider any locus of points* satisfying an equation a "curve", and it is thus correct.
Edit: *Should clarify that I mean in 2-D, specifically.
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