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Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures

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51–60 of 78 posts

Re: Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures

#51
post #5

In the novel Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, the government employs science fiction writers to help them understand the invading aliens and predict what they'll think and do.

The US Government convened Hollywood action film writers and producers to speculate on terrorist attacks they hadn't foreseen: https://www.foxnews.com/story/army-looks-to-hollywood-for-sc... https://www.wired.com/2007/03/foiled-by-foia-/

How about a mass hackjacking of flying cars?

Re: Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures

#52
post #45

Other posters have noted that this isn't new at all. One could almost say that what's been predicted by futurologists over time is what Sci-Fi can see. To me, what's interesting is the ways the lens of Sci-Fi can distort one's ideas. The flying car is the most classic, wrong science fiction prediction ever (even if it should come to pass). The way that the flying car fails is that ground motion doesn't translate dire…

I know the flying car is a terrible idea and it's not practical or great, but the little boy inside of me still wants it every day!

What about getting a gyrocopter?

Re: Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures

#54
post #52
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the flying car is a terrible idea and it's not practical or great, but the little boy inside of me still wants it every day!

What about getting a gyrocopter?

It has to be silent(ish)! and and and it should work with reverse-gravity something something :-)

Re: Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures

#56
post #54
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about getting a gyrocopter?

It has to be silent(ish)! and and and it should work with reverse-gravity something something :-)

Well it's not antigravity but this sound-blocking tube might help make ducted fans quieter:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90316833/scientists-have-discove...

Re: Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures

#57

Other posters have noted that this isn't new at all. One could almost say that what's been predicted by futurologists over time is what Sci-Fi can see. To me, what's interesting is the ways the lens of Sci-Fi can distort one's ideas. The flying car is the most classic, wrong science fiction prediction ever (even if it should come to pass). The way that the flying car fails is that ground motion doesn't translate dire…

One of the most incongruous anachronisms I've read in sci-fi was in Asimov's Second Foundation, Arkady Darrell is introduced writing in a diary with a device that (IIRC) telepathically reads your mind and converts it to text. She starts daydreaming, and as a result her daydreams are transcribed into the diary. Then she has to start the entry over again because it's ruined.

It's ironic that 50,000 years in the future, when humanity is spread across the Galactic Empire, the future course of history can be predicted based on human psychology, and devices can mind-read to text, that they still hadn't invented word processing. As a kid reading it in the 90s, it was amazing that the main character would be seriously peeved off by something that was a solved problem to me.

Re: Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures

#58

Other posters have noted that this isn't new at all. One could almost say that what's been predicted by futurologists over time is what Sci-Fi can see. To me, what's interesting is the ways the lens of Sci-Fi can distort one's ideas. The flying car is the most classic, wrong science fiction prediction ever (even if it should come to pass). The way that the flying car fails is that ground motion doesn't translate dire…

One of the most incongruous anachronisms I've read in sci-fi was in Asimov's Second Foundation , Arkady Darrell is introduced writing in a diary with a device that (IIRC) telepathically reads your mind and converts it to text. She starts daydreaming, and as a result her daydreams are transcribed into the diary. Then she has to start the entry over again because it's ruined. It's ironic that 50,000 years in the future…

Asimov's way of writing was very typewriter-centric, so maybe it's not surprising that he in particular would fail to imagine word processor-like technology:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov#Characteristics

Re: Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures

#59
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most incongruous anachronisms I've read in sci-fi was in Asimov's Second Foundation , Arkady Darrell is introduced writing in a diary with a device that (IIRC) telepathically reads your mind and converts it to text. She starts daydreaming, and as a result her daydreams are transcribed into the diary. Then she has to start the entry over again because it's ruined. It's ironic that 50,000 years in the future…

Asimov's way of writing was very typewriter-centric, so maybe it's not surprising that he in particular would fail to imagine word processor-like technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov#Characteristics

Second Foundation also came out in 1949, before the stored-program computer was invented. Computers at the time were room-sized electromechanical devices used for codebreaking or artillery calculations; there were no more than a dozen or so in the world, the general population was unaware of them, they couldn't be used interactively, there were no plans to use them for text (a typical diary entry wouldn't have fit into the EDSAC's memory anyway), and the idea that a computer could fit in your pocket and let you edit anywhere within a document probably seemed stranger than the idea of spaceflight.

Re: Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures

#60
post #5

In the novel Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, the government employs science fiction writers to help them understand the invading aliens and predict what they'll think and do.

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (and other sci-fi writers) were engaged by the Reagan administration to counter the USSR during the cold war, leading to the "stars wars" Strategic Defence Initiative. Niven and Pournelle stated in a documentary that this was the cause of the collapse of the soviet union.
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