It's not so much a technology prediction, but Back to the Future predicted the "Biff future" pretty well.
Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
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Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#42The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson, 1995) had many eerily prescient visions but I've always liked some of the more subtle ones: the "Neo-Victorians" who put extra value on handmade goods in a world where anything can be printed foreshadowed Etsy and the modern "artisanal" everything, the use of pictogram based language foreshadowed rising use of emojis, the Primer as a source of education accessible to anyone foreshado…
Another of his books Snow Crash, which is kind of precursor to Diamond Age had some pretty interesting predictions.
I read somewhere stuff like Second Life, Google Earth etc were directly inspired by Snow Crash.
There's some other themes in Snow Crash we are just starting to see as well:
-Government difficulties with taxation of digital goods and currency
-Companies competing to attract drivers/messengers etc (basically the uber/gig ecconomy)
-For profit surveillance and commercialization of intelligence data
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#43In Ender's Game there is a description of an Ansible, a personal handheld device used to communicate, join to public forums, read news and influence in political discussions.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#44The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson, 1995) had many eerily prescient visions but I've always liked some of the more subtle ones: the "Neo-Victorians" who put extra value on handmade goods in a world where anything can be printed foreshadowed Etsy and the modern "artisanal" everything, the use of pictogram based language foreshadowed rising use of emojis, the Primer as a source of education accessible to anyone foreshado…
Another of his books Snow Crash, which is kind of precursor to Diamond Age had some pretty interesting predictions. I read somewhere stuff like Second Life, Google Earth etc were directly inspired by Snow Crash. There's some other themes in Snow Crash we are just starting to see as well: -Government difficulties with taxation of digital goods and currency -Companies competing to attract drivers/messengers etc (basica…
> -Government difficulties with taxation of digital goods and currency
Cryptonomicon covers this, too. Arguably so does REAMDE.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#45In Ender's Game there is a description of an Ansible, a personal handheld device used to communicate, join to public forums, read news and influence in political discussions.
That's not what the Ansible was, but I don't want to actually describe it in case someone here hasn't read Ender's Game yet, since it's pretty pivotal to the plot.
Also, Ender's Game was written in 1984 - the idea of networks wasn't so new then, but I agree that Card had a very prescient take on Locke and Demonsthenes' influence over world politics.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#46Robert Heinlein, 'Between Planets' 'A few hundred yards further on Lazy shied again, not from a snake this time but from an unexpected noise. Don pulled him in and spoke severely. "You bird-brained butterball! When are you going to learn not to jump when the telephone rings?" Lazy twitched his shoulder muscles and snorted. Don reached for the pommel, removed the phone, and answered.' Nothing unusual there - except th…
_Space Cadet_, 1948, references pocket phones as well, with this funny bit about avoiding them - Tex Jarman looked at him understandingly. "Your folks always worry, don't they? I fooled mine -- packed my phone in my bag." The phone usage in Between Planets involved call signs and was clearly projected from Ham radio practices at the time. My favorite phone technology miss was their total absence from Gibson's _Neurom…
Your quote is very hard to read even on desktop - can you surround the quoted text with asterisks instead of indenting it?
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#47I think you mean stuff that has mostly come to be but first I wanted to throw one out that I really want, an ansible. If we could find a way to communicate faster than light (especially if we could figure out instantaneous communication regardless of distance) just imagine what it would do for space exploration! Instead of waiting 2 years to retrieve seconds of data recorded as New Horizons sailed by Ultima Thule we could have the data real-time or nearly real-time.
If you could figure that out, I think it alone would result in us learning more about our solar system in a couple of years than we have to date. You could send small probes at pretty much everything you wanted and either have a very small amount of buffer memory or just transmit it real time back. You could also have real-time, or much closer to real-time, control of rovers!
Stuff that has come to be:
- Small portable computers (tablets, smart phones)
- Personal communicators (cellular telephones, smart phones)
- 3D printing
- Video phones
- Westinghouse M-27 Phased Plasma Pulse Rifle for fighting Sky... wait we don't have this one yet.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#48Asimov in "The Caves of Steel"; Earth has a huge population that lives in huge cities, therefore it needs powerful computers as it has to track/police its massive population. Asimov guessed in 1953 that computers are a surveillance tool! "R. Daneel came to his desk with a sheaf of papers. "And those are?" asked Baley. "A list of men and women who might belong to a Medievalist organization." "How many does the list in…
The comment about "three hours" was of course supposed to impress you with the sheer speed of it- but I can't help thinking it would take only minutes today!
Unless you worked for some orgs I've worked for where info was siloed in different systems that didn't talk to each other well, and nobody wanted to spend the resources to unify or coordinate it all.
Re: Ask HN: Favorite technology predictions in science fiction?
#49It's not so much a technology prediction, but Back to the Future predicted the "Biff future" pretty well.
The character of Biff was partly influenced by "that person", according to Wikipedia. (Warning: Naming the person gets one instant negative moderation points.)