Books That Predict The Future

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by DAHayden

David Brin's EARTH has an impressive list, from the Wikipedia entry:

Brin claims at least 15 predictive hits in Earth including:
The World Wide Web (including it as being a major news-media outlet, complete with videos and discussion forums) and blogging. (Brin did not predict the URL, rather using a clumsier numeric form of address.)
E-mail spam and sophisticated personalized filtering software.
Reduction of expectation of privacy.
Time limits on secrets both personal, corporate, and governmental
Levees breaking on the Mississippi.
The dissolution and partitioning of the Soviet Union (though most contemporary scholars later claimed that they were fully aware of the Soviet Union's impending collapse by 1989).
Global warming associated sea level rise and severe storm seasons.
Subvocal input devices.
Artificially created black holes considered seriously.
Crisis habitat arks for endangered species, with a view to later restoration to the wild.
Eyeglass cameras.
The erosion of personal privacy.
Eyeglass overlays on real environments.
Personality profiling through brain imaging.
Art sculptures on a geologic scale.
Decline of delivered mail.
Lawyer software.

I'm not going to be quite as harsh in my analysis.

I was researching solutions to The Greenhouse Effect just before Earth was published. It was pretty obvious to me that Brin had read the same papers. IIRC some predicted something like a global average rise of like 4-7 degrees (sounds small, but it's a global average). From there, you get certain models and statistics that predict sea level rise. Based on that, and changes in climate zones, you get consequences like levees breaking in Mississippi; not a hurricane, rather too much rain resulting in overflow/overwhelming of levees.

He also speculated on current environmental trends, such as the ozone hole: everyone wore extreme sunscreen, except a sun worshipping cult. (Return of Paganism would be another prediction!)

He also had a group raising money for the Trillion Trees Project. That came straight from one paper I'd read about solving the Greenhouse Effect. Simple: plant a trillion trees worldwide! They would provide enough of a carbon sink to offset the greenhouse emissions at some predicted level. In all the papers I'd read, that stuck with me because I thought it the only viable solution; super awesome to see it in Brin's book!

While the Web had not yet taken off, Brin was a professor at UCI, and had access to e-mail (uci.edu) -- unlike most of the world at the time. SPAM already existed at that time, so he would have been aware of it, and again expanded on current trends.

He was on the Internet himself at the time (it was purely educational, government, and a few companies at the time) and speculated on it reaching the masses... which I thought the most impossible thing of all.

Anyway, I loved the book along with many of his others. (My big disappointment was meeting him in person, and him being a total weirdo.) His "Appendix" at the end of the book actually had historical examples of environmental disasters perpetrated by the likes of the Romans. We've been at this wrecking the environment thing for a long time, and I found that really enlightening.

-Pie

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by soondai

In the Bachman Books, Stephen King had a high school shooting rampage (Rage), reality TV (Running Man), and a hijacked jumbo jet being crashed into a symbolic sky scraper (Running Man again).

OMG! Terrorists (domestic and foreign) are reading Stephen King for ideas!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by EatingPie

R.U.R. or Rossum's Universal Robots, by Karl Capek

It predicted just about every robot-vs.-human story ever written. They all follow the basic "fear of what we created" theme, popularized by the Terminator series and The Matrix series.

Not all: There are plenty of robot stories and programs/movies that don't depict robots as "fearful creations," including Star Wars, Caves of Steel, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Questor Tapes, the Wild Cards series, Astro Boy, 8th Man, Ghost In The Shell, Silent Running, the Hal Spacejock series, etc.

In fact, I'd nominate Silent Running as depicting robots as non-threatening subservient drones, devices we are beginning to see in industrial and healthcare areas.

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Not all: There are plenty of robot stories and programs/movies that don't depict robots as "fearful creations," including Star Wars, Caves of Steel, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Questor Tapes, the Wild Cards series, Astro Boy, 8th Man, Ghost In The Shell, Silent Running, the Hal Spacejock series, etc.

In fact, I'd nominate Silent Running as depicting robots as non-threatening subservient drones, devices we are beginning to see in industrial and healthcare areas.

Go Silent Running, one of the most under-rated SF films, at least now rated as a classic by many...

[EatingPie]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Not all: There are plenty of robot stories and programs/movies that don't depict robots as "fearful creations," including Star Wars, Caves of Steel, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Questor Tapes, the Wild Cards series, Astro Boy, 8th Man, Ghost In The Shell, Silent Running, the Hal Spacejock series, etc.

In fact, I'd nominate Silent Running as depicting robots as non-threatening subservient drones, devices we are beginning to see in industrial and healthcare areas.

Ahem. Um. In my defense, I specified "robot-vs.-human" stories for a reason. These almost universally follow R.U.R. to some extent, even Metropolis!

There are benevolent robots, yes indeed. I'm very aware of the 3 Laws, and even benevolence gone mad.

Interestingly, even your citation of Star Trek: TNG still owes much to R.U.R.. The question of data as property -- as slave -- versus an autonomous, free entity is exactly the spark of conflict in R.U.R.: machines tired of being enslaved (property) desire freedom.

-Pie

[Pinecone]

In "Inherit the Stars" by James P. Hogan, the character opens his briefcase on a flights (suborbital) and uses the screen to place a video call. Hmm, sounds a lot like Skype on a laptop. Written in 1976.

In "Between Planets" Heinlein describes a stealth method against radar, that is part of today's stealth technology.

MANY others.

But SO MANY misses also.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by EatingPie

Interestingly, even your citation of Star Trek: TNG still owes much to R.U.R.. The question of data as property -- as slave -- versus an autonomous, free entity is exactly the spark of conflict in R.U.R.: machines tired of being enslaved (property) desire freedom.

Ahem. Well, I was reacting to your "fear of what we created" theme. I interpret that as a "technology run amok" theme, clearly not the same as the slavery theme.

I agree that the slavery theme is also strong in many stories, going back to R.U.R. And the ST:TNG episode you referenced did indeed touch on that slavery issue. The two themes, when put together, manage to encompass most robot stories, but there is still a third theme--robots as a new species--that touches on cooperation, competition and integration into society (Asimov's "R. Daneel Olivaw" stories illustrate that theme, as well as most of the ST:TNG episodes, and another I just remembered, Tek War).

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

In "Inherit the Stars" by James P. Hogan, the character opens his briefcase on a flights (suborbital) and uses the screen to place a video call. Hmm, sounds a lot like Skype on a laptop. Written in 1976.

The 1935 movie The Tunnel (aka The Trans-Atlantic Tunnel) features videophones in planes. Metropolis (1926) also presented a videophone. It's worth noting that, in terms of Metropolis' robot, it didn't exactly "run amok"... it was programmed to incite the workers to riot, and it did its job as well as any human could have done.

[Pinecone]

Yes, video phones were mentioned prior, but that is the first I remember of a screen in a briefcase lid, that allowed one to make a video call. Much more similar to a laptop than the stationary video phones.