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Let's put the future behind us

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Re: Let's put the future behind us

#51

Post by jacquesm »

r00fus wrote: post #50
Animats wrote: post #37

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…

So from just your comment, my take is different - essentially, nuclear power was demonized, mismanaged and ignored. We have the technology to have an abundance of terrestrial power to do most things if we'd only embrace nuclear power. 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 being demonized is one problem, another problem is that it is simply very hard to do in a distributed manner without getting into a proliferation nightmare.

So embracing nuclear power is a bit harder than it may seem from a technological point of view. Also, since we can currently only use fission, shielding will always lead to nuclear power being almost exclusively used for heavy stationary projects or at best something that floats such as a very large nuclear powered boat. In those cases the weight isn't a huge factor.

Re: Let's put the future behind us

#52

Post by cwp »

r00fus wrote: post #50
Animats wrote: post #37

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…

So from just your comment, my take is different - essentially, nuclear power was demonized, mismanaged and ignored. We have the technology to have an abundance of terrestrial power to do most things if we'd only embrace nuclear power. 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…

Agreed.

I've had this argument many times with my left-leaning friends. People who are worried about pollution or climate change should be demanding that we switch over to nuclear power as quickly as possible.

Sometimes I wonder if technical advances have outstripped our collective ability to deal with them. Specialization is required to make progress, but it means that nobody really understands the choices we have when it comes to technology. And although it's possible for specialists to design, build and operate something like a nuclear power plant, actually doing that requires the broader public to understand and support it.

Re: Let's put the future behind us

#53

Post by nitrogen »

gaius wrote: post #22
mazork wrote: post #5

The article was interesting, but am I alone thinking that those tenebrous, click-baity titles are bad ?

Also while I enjoy his writing, I feel it's in bad taste to submit your own stuff. It seems pushy.

If you are not an established name like cstross or jacquesm, who else is going to submit your stuff?

Re: Let's put the future behind us

#54

Post by angersock »

lisper wrote: post #28
spacefight wrote: post #16

When I read the intro, I thought he's going to write about modern luxury cruise ships.... not too far off.

This. If you've never been on the Oasis of the Seas (or her sister ship, the Allure) it's worth checking out. Not nearly as dystopian as the article imagines.

Oh, from an environmental standpoint, they're still quite there.

Re: Let's put the future behind us

#55

Post by DanielBMarkham »

"They've actually made wearing a tracking tag a rewarding experience. Of course it's entirely voluntary, keeping count of entrants and exits can be justified as a safety measure, and it saves you from having to carry cash around in your swimsuit ... but, but, tagging...After you stop spluttering with indignation, you realize that it's an inevitable part of this package..."

I am still waiting for this experience, where I realize that humans must be tagged and tracked like animals. So far it hasn't come.

We've taken combat-trained soliders -- many times with live weapons -- and put them on airplanes and flown them around the world. Nobody needed tagging. We've had random groups of strangers thrown into lifeboats after various maritime disasters. Nobody needed tagging. We have all kinds of examples where one bad individual might cause great harm to others, yet taqgging was not an answer.

The only reason we're talking about tagging now is because the tech is here. It's convenient -- and much easier than trying to figure out how to have a civil society. Screw getting governments more responsive: just treat all of the citizens as potential criminals.

The Panopticon is not the answer, for ludicrously simple reasons that any half-educated person should be able to ascertain.

Re: Let's put the future behind us

#56

Post by DanielBMarkham »

jacquesm wrote: post #31
waterlesscloud wrote: post #2

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.

This comment too, is negative and a bit of a drag. It's a very hard trap to avoid. Try harder! (cue meta meta comment...). I have to really force myself to see the positive side of how all this technology that we have is being used. The tools we have built to exchange information are being used to track us both by industry and governments, the software development environments are getting more and more complex and fr…

I think the trick here is _cautious optimism_. Yes, bunch of things suck really badly, and there is serious danger lurking on the horizon.

But we're also increasing the power of the individual to rise above all sorts of problems with pervasive learning and commerce opportunities. You help a billion people live ten years longer and receive a decent education? You've done probably more good than allowing some western countries to become police states.

It's all relative. As an artist, I find it much more important to keep finding flaws in my work and improving, but I can't do that to the extent of missing out on smelling the roses.

Or -- yeah bud, but things still suck! :)

Re: Let's put the future behind us

#57

Post by digi_owl »

jacquesm wrote: post #51
r00fus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So from just your comment, my take is different - essentially, nuclear power was demonized, mismanaged and ignored. We have the technology to have an abundance of terrestrial power to do most things if we'd only embrace nuclear power. 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 being demonized is one problem, another problem is that it is simply very hard to do in a distributed manner without getting into a proliferation nightmare. So embracing nuclear power is a bit harder than it may seem from a technological point of view. Also, since we can currently only use fission, shielding will always lead to nuclear power being almost exclusively used for heavy stationary projects or…

I think proliferation comes under "mismanagement".

This in the sense that rather than opting for a different fuel and matching reactor for the civilian use, the civilian plants were in essence scaled up military submarine reactors running on the very same stuff that went boom.

Basically the idea seemed to be to use civilian uses to amplify military capacity. End result was a mixing of roles that one is hard pressed to untangle.

Re: Let's put the future behind us

#58

Post by digi_owl »

lisper wrote: post #27
justincormack wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or is that from They Might Be Giants, the World Before Later On (also 2004)? Or is there an earlier source? I'm trapped in a world before later on I'm trapped in a world before later on Where's my hovercraft? Where's my jet pack? Where's the font of acquired wisdom that eludes me now? We're trapped in a world before later on We're trapped in a world before later on Where's our telray? Where's our space face? Where ar…

You got your tricorder and your communicator -- both in one box no less! (And smaller and wizzier than they were originally imagined!) You can even get a phaser if you really want one: http://www.wickedlasers.com And we're making pretty good progress on the holodeck. Sure, we're still waiting for warp drive and the transporter, but still we're batting over 500. That's not too shabby.

Communicator, yes. Tricorder, dunno. Not enough sensors really. Then again, there is the sensordrone that may help with that.

Re: Let's put the future behind us

#59

Post by jschwartzi »

mcguire wrote: post #14
waterlesscloud wrote: post #2

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.

I'm a little unclear on the point of this article. Is it that the future is here, but it's way different from you thought it would be, or that universal surveillance is universal?

I think it's the sudden realization that utopia and dystopia are ideals, and that reality is always some combination of the two.
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