Science Fiction

[Ashy]

On Saturday I saw a bit of a science fiction film that was made in the 1940s I think, in which a time traveller arrives in the 25th century and is asked to identify himself.

The inquisitor looked him up in a big book. 

I don't think anyone would use a book that size even today, the science fiction writers never predicted electronic information retrieval systems.

[Scrumpy]

Perhaps we will revert back to big books... Perhaps there will be a great disaster..

[klondike]

I want to know where my flying car is.

The pace of change is accelerating as we head for. The Singularity

[Michael Rolls]

Those were the days

[Ashy]

Perhaps we will revert back to big books... Perhaps there will be a great disaster..

I was wondering that myself. Suppose the science fiction writers got it right? Maybe our dependence on computers will be a passing phase.

[klondike]

Unless we bugger up big time it won't be happening. The trend is towards ever more computerisation.

[Scrumpy]

I was wondering that myself. Suppose the science fiction writers got it right? Maybe our dependence on computers will be a passing phase.

Perhaps computers will have a war amongst themselves and destroy each other ..

[klondike]

Without them we'd all starve now. Same if some big solar flare took out the power grids. Even the Russians destroying enough undersea cables could screw us. If they started on that in earnest our safest option would be to turn the place into glass but that would never happen. Everything now depends on communications and computers to work. We haven't got enough geese left to make all the quills and there is no chance we'd have enough paper even if we did.

[Ashy]

We have already passed the point predicted by Marx and others that machines would be so big that only machines could build them. We now have machines so small and/or so complicated, that only machines can build them.

We've gone past factories generating their own steam, to factories using electricity and moving to wherever electricity is cheapest. 

And I think Swift predicted that politicians would get more and more stupid.