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curtw · 03-11-2012, 01:04 PM

You should look for the science channel's Prophets of Science Fiction miniseries, which covered this in great detail. It included episodes dedicated to individual writers, including Clarke (communications satellites, etc.), Mary Shelley (organ transplants, etc.), H.G. Wells (atomic weapons!), Philip K Dick (virtual reality, etc.). All hosted by Ridley Scott. And they did discuss acceleration.

What I'd like to see is something dedicated to how reality has OVERTAKEN speculative fiction in some areas. In William Gibson's Neuromancer, written in 1983, a character in 2020 or so is able to sell 8 MB of RAM to get enough cash for a drug fix. That's right, Megabytes. Not even Gigabytes. At Amazon.com this morning, an 8 GB flash RAM stick sells for $7.99.

But I hate to bust your bubble--Doctorow didn't invent whuffie--Slashdot and kuro5hin had Karma systems a good 5-6 years before he wrote about it.

03-11-2012, 01:04 PM	#2
curtw Outside of a dog Posts: 871 Karma: 4457646 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Houston, TX Device: Kindle Voyage	You should look for the science channel's Prophets of Science Fiction miniseries, which covered this in great detail. It included episodes dedicated to individual writers, including Clarke (communications satellites, etc.), Mary Shelley (organ transplants, etc.), H.G. Wells (atomic weapons!), Philip K Dick (virtual reality, etc.). All hosted by Ridley Scott. And they did discuss acceleration. What I'd like to see is something dedicated to how reality has OVERTAKEN speculative fiction in some areas. In William Gibson's Neuromancer, written in 1983, a character in 2020 or so is able to sell 8 MB of RAM to get enough cash for a drug fix. That's right, Megabytes. Not even Gigabytes. At Amazon.com this morning, an 8 GB flash RAM stick sells for $7.99. But I hate to bust your bubble--Doctorow didn't invent whuffie--Slashdot and kuro5hin had Karma systems a good 5-6 years before he wrote about it. Last edited by curtw; 03-11-2012 at 01:12 PM.