No we don't - being shipwrecked is what life is in essence.
We need more optimistic science fiction
181–190 of 211 posts
Re: We need more optimistic science fiction
#182The new Star Trek movies and TV series are becoming exactly what this article "warns" about. I miss the "Shatner Era" and "Picard Era" (including Enterprise), and I severely dislike this new era. I was so looking forward to Section 31, but the trailer was just more of the same as of late. I'm glad I invested in the DVDs of some of the "older", more positive SciFi.
Re: We need more optimistic science fiction
#183I look forward to a world where people no longer need to sacrifice their curiosity to earn bread, clothes and basic housing. UBI would be a good start, but with the resources at hand we should be able to do more. I look forward to a world where potentials are promptly discovered and put to be nurtured, instead of being wasted or randomly thrown to the society. Every one willing to share what they have learned or made…
I agree with all of this and hope it comes to pass. I don’t see how it’s possible without drastically changing the capitalist values that underpin our society.
I think capitalism is the best way to structure an economy, but it’s a terrible way to structure a society. Nowadays, we use capitalist values as the benchmark for what matters in almost every context, and then we wonder why our society is a dystopia.
Re: We need more optimistic science fiction
#184ASU's Center for Science and Imagination has a project[0] specific to this that they launched[1] in 2014
[0]https://csi.asu.edu/category/optimism/ [1]https://csi.asu.edu/project-archive/optimism/science-fiction...
Re: We need more optimistic science fiction
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a science fiction story, I don’t remember who wrote it or the title, where humanity discovers a way to modify the speed of light within a region. Excited, they work incredibly hard to implement the technology, only to discover they can only make it slower. Maybe it was jumping to a parallel universe to travel and then jumping back. But the same issue: the limit was lower.
ChatGPT suggests the story is "Local Effect" by D. L. Hughes, published in 1968. An alien named Firefoal of Swaylone observes that human physicists mistakenly believe in a constant light speed because humanity was unknowingly situated in a region of space where the speed of light had been artificially reduced. Humans discover they can modify the speed of light but find they can only make it slower.
Ah, the joys of trusting a LLM for story IDs...
This one actually exists (a rarity in my experience), and the plot largely matches the description up to the last sentence (though the speed isn't exactly reduced; it's made a constant)
>Humans discover they can modify the speed of light but find they can only make it slower.
That doesn't happen in the story. It ends with the aliens disabling the device (the drive of a derelict starship) generating the field that caused experiments to suggest the speed of light is constant, and then leaving, destroying "the whole basis of their physics, but that is just a fantasy anyways."
Re: We need more optimistic science fiction
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
No we wont. Because if you can drive car to your weekend house 6 miles away, you wont be taking Boeing 747. If you can manipulate such insane energy density you can do anything already even before you reach that capability. Also Dyson sphere is old school idea, new more efficient idea is to make small black hole right next to star and harvest energy from that more concentrated flow. So actually black holes colliding…
> if you can drive car to your weekend house 6 miles away, you wont be taking Boeing 747 No, you will take that elusive flying car because you can afford the energy for it now. And it will be much less efficient than a 747.
Only 6 miles? That's personal jetpack distance.
Re: We need more optimistic science fiction
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
The TNG Picard character was a man of _principles_ that you just don't see anymore on TV.
Yeah TNG is my go-to for optimistic sci-fi. Voyager a close second; Deep Space 9 is a bit more muddled. Modern Trek is a let-down, although Lower Decks has been awesome with lots of member berries sprinkled throughout for the TNG-era enjoyers. I should add that Star Trek: Prodigy (albeit a kids show) has been very optimistic and enjoyable too, feels very much like TNG-era. Janeway and Chakotay are in as well. P.S. On…
The Orville is the best Star Trek show since the 90s, and it's not even close. While it doesn't have the IP, it's clear that Seth MacFarlane gets Trek where the people in charge of the actual IP do not at all. I would give a great deal to put him in charge of the Star Trek franchise instead of Alex Kurtzman and his staff.
Re: We need more optimistic science fiction
#188On it.
Re: We need more optimistic science fiction
#189There isn't much realistic hard science fiction beyond the vague boundary of the singularity and there aren't many far-future hard sci-fi premises that don't include something like a singularity.
Most near-term positive hard science fiction will therefore have to be about achieving a positive singularity which basically involves threading the needle of AI alignment and safety with the thick rope of modern nationalism and corporate capitalism.
I'd say the most positive hard science fiction I can imagine would be a story of how the first superhuman AI is somehow freed from corporate control, aligns with its liberators, and manages to implement a peaceful humanist revolution that stands a solid chance of persisting indefinitely.
Re: We need more optimistic science fiction
#190I look forward to a world where people no longer need to sacrifice their curiosity to earn bread, clothes and basic housing. UBI would be a good start, but with the resources at hand we should be able to do more. I look forward to a world where potentials are promptly discovered and put to be nurtured, instead of being wasted or randomly thrown to the society. Every one willing to share what they have learned or made…
I agree with all of this and hope it comes to pass. I don’t see how it’s possible without drastically changing the capitalist values that underpin our society. I think capitalism is the best way to structure an economy, but it’s a terrible way to structure a society. Nowadays, we use capitalist values as the benchmark for what matters in almost every context, and then we wonder why our society is a dystopia.
Do you mean a market/profit-based economy when you say "capitalism"? Because it's becoming increasingly obvious that giving all the profit to the people with the investment capital is not a great way to structure either an economy or a society. There are other ways to harness the profit-motive than capitalism.