Is Real life catching up with SF?

piperclassique · 03-11-2012, 08:43 AM

Seems to me that the interval between some aspect of our life being "maybe sometime in the future" and "this is what we do" is getting shorter. Arthur C Clarke forecast that all phone calls would become local calls and invented the geosynchronous satellite. Cory Doctorow invented whuffie, which seems awfully like this forum's Karma. For the one, fifty years from concept to reality. For the other, less than ten.
Some of the early SF seems clunky compared with right now, even. So, how long until SF is contemporaneous with our newsfeeds?

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.

piperclassique · 03-11-2012, 03:08 PM

Ah well, it were but an idle thought about the whuffie... I'll have to miss out on the science channel though, no television and not enough bandwidth on our satellite internet to get it that way. Despite which, I am posting this from an ipad that's talking to my mobile phone in the corner by the window. This is in rural France where we are so far from the nearest phone substation that our landline is actually a radio link. We get our water from a well (yes, there is a pump) and I often take the donkey cart to go shopping. So it can be something of a nineteenth century lifestyle but with some interesting anomalies. Oh, and the wood for heating the house gets sawn with a chainsaw, not by hand. We do have mains electricity! I think the biggest difference to the lifestyle here, compared with say 1900, is the availability of easy travel by car or by air, coupled with the internet for entertainment and access to information. Of course, in 1900 there were seven people living where now there are only the two of us. Rural depopulation came in with the tractor. Sorry to witter on so, but the change in daily life does fascinate me.

curtw · 03-11-2012, 03:50 PM

I think I could use about six months of your life to catch up on my "to be read" books and "to be watched" DVD's. :-)

ficbot · 03-11-2012, 04:34 PM

I was watching some early Star Trek TNG the other day and it hit me how the communicator system they have looks very much like wifi. It's wireless and can be accessed by tiny wearable devices, and it has locators in it much like what we would call GPS. The common issue they had where 'interference' of some kind would block the communicators, or where they would be 'out of communicator range' is the same as having weak wifi signals or being our of wifi range. And of course, there were the iPad-esque tablet devices on which they would read documents and do their data collection and other work...

piperclassique · 03-12-2012, 01:21 PM

Quote:

I think I could use about six months of your life to catch up on my "to be read" books and "to be watched" DVD's. :-)

Certainly! Of course, reading only happens in the evening, or if the weather is _really_ bad, but I manage three books a week more or less.

Quote:

And of course, there were the iPad-esque tablet devices on which they would read documents and do their data collection and other work...

Of course! I knew I had seen one somewhere about thirty years ago!

Freeshadow · 03-12-2012, 11:41 PM

I think payment by prestige (your whuffie idea) appears 1st in a story by Jack Vance, I forgot its title, but 't was playing in a society where people wore masks and communicated partly via music instruments. (were there more stories playing there?)

piperclassique · 03-15-2012, 06:23 AM

Freeshadow, I think you are right, but I can't remember either and I haven't got that much of his already (and there was a lot, or I should say is a lot, as he is still around)
I would like to read this, so does anyone know roughly where I should start to look? The series at least?
TIA

03-11-2012, 08:43 AM	#1
piperclassique A garbling groftpot Posts: 993 Karma: 9234667 Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: France Device: Oasis, Voyage, Kobo mini, Samsung tablet, phones, whatever.	Is Real life catching up with SF? Seems to me that the interval between some aspect of our life being "maybe sometime in the future" and "this is what we do" is getting shorter. Arthur C Clarke forecast that all phone calls would become local calls and invented the geosynchronous satellite. Cory Doctorow invented whuffie, which seems awfully like this forum's Karma. For the one, fifty years from concept to reality. For the other, less than ten. Some of the early SF seems clunky compared with right now, even. So, how long until SF is contemporaneous with our newsfeeds?

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.

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03-11-2012, 03:08 PM	#3
piperclassique A garbling groftpot Posts: 993 Karma: 9234667 Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: France Device: Oasis, Voyage, Kobo mini, Samsung tablet, phones, whatever.	Ah well, it were but an idle thought about the whuffie... I'll have to miss out on the science channel though, no television and not enough bandwidth on our satellite internet to get it that way. Despite which, I am posting this from an ipad that's talking to my mobile phone in the corner by the window. This is in rural France where we are so far from the nearest phone substation that our landline is actually a radio link. We get our water from a well (yes, there is a pump) and I often take the donkey cart to go shopping. So it can be something of a nineteenth century lifestyle but with some interesting anomalies. Oh, and the wood for heating the house gets sawn with a chainsaw, not by hand. We do have mains electricity! I think the biggest difference to the lifestyle here, compared with say 1900, is the availability of easy travel by car or by air, coupled with the internet for entertainment and access to information. Of course, in 1900 there were seven people living where now there are only the two of us. Rural depopulation came in with the tractor. Sorry to witter on so, but the change in daily life does fascinate me.

03-11-2012, 03:50 PM	#4
curtw Outside of a dog Posts: 871 Karma: 4457646 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Houston, TX Device: Kindle Voyage	I think I could use about six months of your life to catch up on my "to be read" books and "to be watched" DVD's. :-)

03-11-2012, 04:34 PM	#5
ficbot Wizard Posts: 2,409 Karma: 4132096 Join Date: Sep 2008 Device: Kindle Paperwhite/iOS Kindle App	I was watching some early Star Trek TNG the other day and it hit me how the communicator system they have looks very much like wifi. It's wireless and can be accessed by tiny wearable devices, and it has locators in it much like what we would call GPS. The common issue they had where 'interference' of some kind would block the communicators, or where they would be 'out of communicator range' is the same as having weak wifi signals or being our of wifi range. And of course, there were the iPad-esque tablet devices on which they would read documents and do their data collection and other work...

03-12-2012, 11:41 PM	#7
Freeshadow temp. out of service Posts: 2,815 Karma: 24285242 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Duisburg (DE) Device: PB 623	I think payment by prestige (your whuffie idea) appears 1st in a story by Jack Vance, I forgot its title, but 't was playing in a society where people wore masks and communicated partly via music instruments. (were there more stories playing there?)

03-15-2012, 06:23 AM	#8
piperclassique A garbling groftpot Posts: 993 Karma: 9234667 Join Date: Feb 2012 Location: France Device: Oasis, Voyage, Kobo mini, Samsung tablet, phones, whatever.	Freeshadow, I think you are right, but I can't remember either and I haven't got that much of his already (and there was a lot, or I should say is a lot, as he is still around) I would like to read this, so does anyone know roughly where I should start to look? The series at least? TIA

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