41–50 of 66 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's using it as a tool to think about the implications of space colonies - with the major point being that he believes that space colonies must implement some level of high fidelity individual tracking and monitoring for security purposes / that people would likely accept that loss of privacy for various reasons.
"Life in space would require privacy sacrifices"
Maybe it's just the stuff people end up linking, but Stross's blog always seems so negative. It's a bit of a drag.
Dystopia has always been a glorious part of our culture, in the UK and in Europe more generally. From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, through HG Wells, Joseph Conrad (the Machine Stops), Orwell, JG Ballard, not to mention Pink Floyd, Chris Morris and When the Wind Blows. We love it, the discordance between what might have been and the plastic shittiness of what is, and we hate that Hollywood happy ending bollocks where…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's using it as a tool to think about the implications of space colonies - with the major point being that he believes that space colonies must implement some level of high fidelity individual tracking and monitoring for security purposes / that people would likely accept that loss of privacy for various reasons.
"Life in space would require privacy sacrifices"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dystopia has always been a glorious part of our culture, in the UK and in Europe more generally. From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, through HG Wells, Joseph Conrad (the Machine Stops), Orwell, JG Ballard, not to mention Pink Floyd, Chris Morris and When the Wind Blows. We love it, the discordance between what might have been and the plastic shittiness of what is, and we hate that Hollywood happy ending bollocks where…
Regarding The Machine Stops, I think you mean E. M. Forster: http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow. You've managed to generalize across 300 million people in one go. Congratulations, that has to be a record. If you're aware that your stereotypes are just stereotypes could you try a little harder next time? Nothing worse than being aware of the failings of your arguments but using them anyway.
Out of interest - where did you get 300 million from? I believe its about 742 million for Europe as a whole and about 507 million for the EU. Or was there some Eurostat poll I missed and we really do have 300 million cynical people here.... :-)
And of course, we're all super optimistic :-)
Of course, what we call Reaganism in the US, they would call Thatcherism in the UK/Scotland. So much for progress, hail stupidity and greed forever!
The future has less power than expected. From the beginnings of the industrial revolution up to the first oil crisis, new energy sources were discovered, exploited, and scaled up. Space travel requires insanely high power levels, and it was assumed back in the 1950s that those were coming. They weren't. In the last 50 years, there have been no new power sources. We're still mostly on oil, coal, natural gas, and hydro…
Incredible little movie, well worth watching.
Quite neat to see how many of these features we already have today and which ones we definitely do not and probably never will.
The future has less power than expected. From the beginnings of the industrial revolution up to the first oil crisis, new energy sources were discovered, exploited, and scaled up. Space travel requires insanely high power levels, and it was assumed back in the 1950s that those were coming. They weren't. In the last 50 years, there have been no new power sources. We're still mostly on oil, coal, natural gas, and hydro…
Look at Philae - because it didn't contain a fission source, it's stuck without the capability to replenish it's power source. What would have happened if we weren't scared to death of nuclear power?
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/the-bittersweet-taste-...