Blinded by Science

That'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.