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Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

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Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#101

Post by jerf »

tadfisher wrote: post #73
ChuckMcM wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion here demonstrates the problem. So lets take a moment and think about what we see vs what we do. So if you take the Internet and extend it to its logical next step we've got 20 - 40gbits of bandwidth between everyone and everyone else. We've got parallel rendering pipelines and physics simulation such that you can render a scene that is indistinguishable from reality to our poor brains, and then you can…

What makes you think this isn't our present?

Probably the best argument there is Occam's Razor. A heuristic it may be, but it has proved useful many times. Though I've often wondered if it truly has that much cosmic power, or if it becomes useless at that scale.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#102

Post by jebblue »

I think we're tired, the future is here and it's exhausting. Doing the work of the present future is challenging and interesting but it wears us out. 130 years ago there were no airplanes, no telephones, almost no electricity, no production computers, no cell phones, no MP3 players, no CD/DVD players, no phonographs, no movies, no production cars. 130 years is just barely beyond the life span of the longest living human beings.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#103

Post by jonny_eh »

saurik wrote: post #93
randallsquared wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New technology like transwarp beaming? :/

(I suggest you re-watch the 2009 movie.)

But why is that in this new timeline? Was there a line in there about Eric Bana bringing it back from the future? I thought Scottie just invented it.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#104

Post by raldi »

jes5199 wrote: post #91
mortenjorck wrote: post #79

Relevant William Gibson commentary: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11502715 "In the 1960s I think that in some sense the present was actually about three or four years long," he said, "because in three or four years relatively little would change… The present is really of no width whatever." Our sci-fi present is making sci-fi harder to write.

except that this article was written in 2010 (three years ago!), and not much has actually changed since then.

Except the tablet revolution, massive leaps forward in translation and speech recognition, an electric vehicle being named Car of the Year, multiple states passing self-driving car legislation, featherweight wearable computers that project an image directly onto your retina, a private company successfully docking a spaceship with the ISS, discovery of the Higgs Boson, large-scale entanglement in a quantum computer, a man jumping from a balloon at the edge of space while millions of people watch live over the Internet, an SUV landed on Mars via a sky crane, a computer crushing the world's best Jeopardy players, wireless video calls via a pocket computer...

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#105

Post by maxerickson »

weavejester wrote: post #100
togasystems wrote: post #53

Can anyone suggest a good, current futurist author?

Charles Stross and Greg Egan are two that spring to mind, though Egan's writing is quite heavy going.

The introduction to Toast has some interesting thoughts on issues faced by current futurists:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/toast/to...

(The intro in the collection, not on that page. Click through to whichever format...)

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#106

Post by erifneerg »

hosh wrote: post #86
gutnor wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, more likely the technology will get to the point where we download ourself in a machine or virtual VM - no need for keeping the brain in a jar. That leads to plenty of interesting Asimov like thinking, except instead of AI and Robot, it would be us vs virtual us. Also what happens with buffer copies, backup. How do you define being human at all ? Or even more basically the very concept of time become weird. It…

Much of the above are depicted in depth by Peter F. Hamilton's books, such as the Pandora's Star or Fallen Dragon .

I was thinking of Daniel Suarez's Freedom (TM) book when I read this thread.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#107

Post by randallsquared »

saurik wrote: post #93
randallsquared wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New technology like transwarp beaming? :/

(I suggest you re-watch the 2009 movie.)

It's the major technology that wasn't in TNG, DS9, or Voyager, or the TNG movies... Unless you're arguing that the 2009 movie shouldn't be considered to have any continuity with those, in spite of authorial attempts to ensure that it does? But that doesn't seem to have been your argument. :)

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#108

Post by olivier1664 »

saurik wrote: post #37
jherdman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You saw the same movie, but you missed his point: this is the same future that folks in the 70's were predicting, and not one as his own generation sees it.

If it wasn't the same future as predicted in the 70's, it wouldn't have been Star Trek: they may have thrown away all of the later canon, but they couldn't just start over... it wouldn't be the same universe.

Ok for Star Trek, keep the universe. But the point is still valid: movies (and science fiction) do not propose up to date prediction of the futures.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#109

Post by Steko »

jonny_eh wrote: post #103
saurik wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I suggest you re-watch the 2009 movie.)

But why is that in this new timeline? Was there a line in there about Eric Bana bringing it back from the future? I thought Scottie just invented it.

Scotty & Spock figured it out near the post-TNG timeframe and future Spock gives reboot Scott the solution.

Just as an aside there's a hilarious Cracked post about how transwarp beaming obsoletes the Enterprise.

Re: Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema

#110

Post by ChuckMcM »

tadfisher wrote: post #73
ChuckMcM wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion here demonstrates the problem. So lets take a moment and think about what we see vs what we do. So if you take the Internet and extend it to its logical next step we've got 20 - 40gbits of bandwidth between everyone and everyone else. We've got parallel rendering pipelines and physics simulation such that you can render a scene that is indistinguishable from reality to our poor brains, and then you can…

What makes you think this isn't our present?

That isn't the question though, once you know you are living in a simulation what happens? This was a very interesting question that was raised in the TV show Caprica (a Battlestar Galactica prequel series). If you know it is a simulation then you can just do what ever the heck you want, reboot/restart when necessary. Doesn't make for interesting cinema or literature as the question of future value / future outcome vs present action / inaction is what creates tension.
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