tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) (01/06/89)
In article <10330108@accuvax.nwu.edu> bob@accuvax.nwu.edu (Bob Hablutzel) writes, and having writ, moves on: >I think the point is that there are two kinds of science fiction: science >fiction based on enhancements to currently available technology, and >science fiction based on new technologies. The first kind (cheap, tiny >mass storage devices, extremely fast machines, and, 60 years ago, nuclear >bombs) are reasonable things to wait for. The second kind (anti-gravity >machines, natural language recognition, and mental control devices) require >serious breakthroughs before they can become available, and you have to >decide if you're going to wait for them or not. Whoa! How on Earth were nuclear weapons in the 1930's enhancements of currently available technology? The answer: they weren't, they were breakthrough technology based on currently available SCIENCE (not technology). Going on that criterion, anti-gravity machines will be a 1990's technology, since there have been known solutions to general relativity for years that create a repulsive anti-gravity force (you take a dense torus and rotate it inside-out at high velocities; one side of the hole is a classic "repulsor field"). My point is that simple-minded ways of approaching the problem of prediction will always fail. The only thing one can say for certain about future technology is that it will be immensely complex and unpredictable. Some plausible seeming things, like Heinlein's rolling roads, will never appear; some wildly implausible things, like nuclear weapons, will appear very early. -- Tim Maroney, Consultant, Eclectic Software, sun!hoptoad!tim "The time is gone, the song is over. Thought I'd something more to say." - Roger Waters, Time