SciFi history?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

And real-life people should avoid saying things like, "640 KB is more memory than anyone will ever need," ha ha.

I fell headlong into this hole with one of my novels. When I rewrote it for updating, I increased the memory mentions significantly. I need to update them again. I'm seriously thinking of writing something like:

"How much memory does it hold?"

He told him. The amount of memory was at least thirty times the largest amount of memory he could imagine in such a device.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I fell headlong into this hole with one of my novels. When I rewrote it for updating, I increased the memory mentions significantly. I need to update them again. I'm seriously thinking of writing something like:

you can try:
More memory than all computers from the Microsoft campus in Redmond combined.
More memory than the main weather simulation computer for the US Navy
More memory than all the computers in MIT artificial Intelligence department

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

And real-life people should avoid saying things like, "640 KB is more memory than anyone will ever need," ha ha.

You have to remember that the CPU used in the target machines back then couldn't see more than 1MB of memory. The decision to restrict conventional memory to 640KB was IBM's, who chose to put drivers and other system functions above that line. And Lotus 1,2,3 promptly forced everyone to upgrade to a full 640KB to accommodate the enormous worksheets they were creating. (And Lotus bought an early competitor to get access to the "sparse matrix" technology they had developed to economize on RAM usage.)

The defining factor is probably economics, not technology, and the question is "How much memory can you afford?" We're seeing serious attempts now to replace disk drives with moving parts with solid state drives based on flash memory. It's still too expensive to entirely replace disks with flash, but hybrids are increasingly common.

The one assumption you can make when using computers in your story is that whatever technology you use to "future proof" it, you'll probably be wrong. Better, all told, to just show your characters using the devices, and don't pop the hood and start talking about how they work, unless the how is critical to the story.
______
Dennis

[Penforhire]

Oh, I remember those times well. Just before that era I was hobby-programming microprocessors using dip switches and single multi-segment LED for the output. I completely understand how Bill Gates felt when he said that and I agreed with him. Turns out we were both wrong in an epic manner.

I can't say what the bandwidth and memory requirements of software will be like twenty years from now. But I am imagining uploaded consciousness (at least lobsters, lol) or complete telepresence and those will take stunning amounts of bits or qubits or whatever form the data will take. I often wonder if we'll go back to analog.

Dennis, isn't popping the hood one of the basic requirements of hard SF?

Steve, that is an awkward bridge to cross. The best answers do seem to avoid specifying a value but then the reader has a hard time envisioning the amount of data you want to impress them with. Perhaps describing the technology (e.g. ferromagnetic, optical disk, nanoscale cross bars, optical cube, atomic entanglement) rather the meaurement of bits is better indicator of just how advanced your hardware is?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Steve, that is an awkward bridge to cross. The best answers do seem to avoid specifying a value but then the reader has a hard time envisioning the amount of data you want to impress them with. Perhaps describing the technology (e.g. ferromagnetic, optical disk, nanoscale cross bars, optical cube, atomic entanglement) rather the meaurement of bits is better indicator of just how advanced your hardware is?

Frequently, yes. Fortunately, I was doing a little of both, so I could emphasize one and downplay the specifics of the other, and still get the impact of the moment across.

[DMcCunney]

Thinking about it a bit more, the late SF writer, editor, and critic Damon Knight talked about first and second order idiot plots.

A First Order idiot plot only worked because the protagonist was an idiot. A Second Order idiot plot only worked because everyone in the book was an idiot.

(A poster elsewhere when I mentioned this asked if there were Third Order idiot plots that required the readers to be idiots.)

In many stories, the plot only works because the protagonist lacks a crucial bit of information. An awful lot of stories fall on their faces because she could have found out by simply talking to someone. If she knows she's missing critical data, and doesn't ask, well, she's an idiot.

Granted, people not talking to each other can be a critical part of the book. How many romance novels depend on the fact that the boy and girl don't simply talk to each other until it's nearly too late? But romances depend in large part on setting, and the reasons why the boy and girl don't simply talk to each other may be critical parts of the story.

So while it's not specific to SF, and can apply to any work of fiction, you have to guard against idiot plots. If the plot hinges on what the protagonist doesn't know, it better require more than simply talking to other characters to repair the lack.
______
Dennis

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I completely understand how Bill Gates felt when he said that and I agreed with him.

Except he never said that.
Never ever ;-)

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Thinking about it a bit more, the late SF writer, editor, and critic Damon Knight talked about first and second order idiot plots...

So while it's not specific to SF, and can apply to any work of fiction, you have to guard against idiot plots. If the plot hinges on what the protagonist doesn't know, it better require more than simply talking to other characters to repair the lack.

My friends and I discuss this issue a lot... it seems most television and movie dramas these days depend on nothing but lack of communication. Nobody's really a good or bad guy... they're just all afraid to share, and as a result, all Hell breaks loose. Lack of communication creates conflict. (Maybe we should add that to the Rules of SF thread... or maybe not.)

Look at the TV show Lost... simple honest communication between all parties would have ended that show in about nine episodes. I think it's a telling statement about our society today, unfortunately.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Oh, I remember those times well. Just before that era I was hobby-programming microprocessors using dip switches and single multi-segment LED for the output. I completely understand how Bill Gates felt when he said that and I agreed with him. Turns out we were both wrong in an epic manner.

Oh, it was more or less correct at the time. It simply ignored the process of development. At the time, you largely could get along in 640K. For that matter, before the IBM PC, people largely got along in 64K, that being what the previous generations of microprocessors could access.

I can't say what the bandwidth and memory requirements of software will be like twenty years from now. But I am imagining uploaded consciousness (at least lobsters, lol) or complete telepresence and those will take stunning amounts of bits or qubits or whatever form the data will take. I often wonder if we'll go back to analog.

Isaac Asimov did a story where he speculated about "notched molecules" and "nudged molecules" as storage media, because of the enormous demand for storage capacity.

And what we're seeing now is mixed development, with new generations of processors having digital and analog processing circuitry on the same die.

Dennis, isn't popping the hood one of the basic requirements of hard SF?

Yes and no. It depends upon what hood you need to pop. "Hard" SF is normally considered SF whose science is one of the physical sciences, usually physics, though chemistry occasionally takes a bow. But even there, how often do you actually pop the hood and explain the hardware in detail? The critical parts of the story revolve around what the hardware will let you do. Exactly how it does it may not be critical.

"The development of the Fraublisher Freneticizer made possible the creation of wormholes between a ship and it's destination, dramatically increasing the range and speed of interstellar travel..."

"All stations, status report!"

"Engineering reports Freneticizer nominal, Captain."

"Astrogation has completed plotting the coordinates of the destination, Captain. Downloading to Freneticizer now."

"Communications reports clearance to depart from base, Captain."

"Very well. Prepare to engage the Freneticizer on my mark for transit to Beta Omicron III."

There may be some hand waving in there about the new discoveries in physics that made the Freneticizer possible, but none of it requires popping the hood on the Freneticizer - only that you have it, and can use it to get from here to there instantly where here and there are an arbitrary distance apart.
______
Dennis

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I fell headlong into this hole with one of my novels. When I rewrote it for updating, I increased the memory mentions significantly. I need to update them again. I'm seriously thinking of writing something like:

"How much memory does it hold?"

He told him. The amount of memory was at least thirty times the largest amount of memory he could imagine in such a device.

That's actually not a bad idea. It not only future-proofs your story, it also is a life-line for those readers who have no idea what constitutes a lot of memory and what is a small amount of memory.

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Better, all told, to just show your characters using the devices, and don't pop the hood and start talking about how they work, unless the how is critical to the story.

Yes, when Gene Roddenberry was creating the writer's bible for the original Star Trek TV show, he noted that in a cop show, when a policeman fires his gun, he does NOT stop and explain that the hammer strikes the firing cap, igniting a charge of gunpowder, which expands and pushes the lead bullet out the barrel.

So neither should a starship captain explain how his ray-gun works. Just let your readers know it is a futuristic kind of hand-gun and leave it at that.

[Jellby]

You could also invent new units:

"How much memory does it hold?"

"One hundred piti-kwiks."

"That much? I didn't think you could fit even four piti-kwiks in one of those."

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

In many stories, the plot only works because the protagonist lacks a crucial bit of information. An awful lot of stories fall on their faces because she could have found out by simply talking to someone. If she knows she's missing critical data, and doesn't ask, well, she's an idiot.

Yes, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle mentioned this in an essay about writing their novel THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE.

In the novel, everybody has what we would now call iPhones, complete with a species of Google. Therefore, they could not have first level idiots as characters, since they could easily Google any missing critical data. This was a rather impressive piece of foresight on the part of authors living in 1974.

They actually had the presence of a pocket computer as a critical part of the climactic final scene.

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Isaac Asimov did a story where he speculated about "notched molecules" and "nudged molecules" as storage media, because of the enormous demand for storage capacity.

Close, but not quite.
It was not Isaac Asimov. It was actually Hal Draper in his insightful story MS Fnd in a Lbry . But your point remains good.

Ebook: http://home.comcast.net/~bcleere/texts/draper.html

[Joebill]

Early computers had less than 64k.

Some had only 16 kilobytes and are now referred to as Big Iron because they weighed tons. Which might be why Traveller computers are measured that way.

I saw a conversation on a newsgroup about such computers a few years ago.

One guy said he had one in his basement. When asked he mentioned his heating bill in the winter, upper penninsula Wisconsin or maybe Minnesota i don't remember exactly, was very low due to all the heat the computer put out at idle.

His summer cooling bill was rather high due to the same idle wattage.

Some of the folks on there thing of 8 inch floppy drives as too modern to talk about. Yes, there were 8" floppies before 5.25 inch, before 3.5 inch floppies.

What is a floppy ?

Sorry, too modern of a comversation for me... :-)

Oh, okay. I have a 16 gig memory stick, and a 500 gig external USB hard drive. In 1989, I had an Amiga A1000 computer with 512 megs of ram, and it only had one 880Kilobyte floppy drive I booted from. I used a 1200 baud modem to log into the university system and read my BITNET email.

Only Compuserve was available then, and I couldn't afford it.

How times have changed.