skill fable is the go - to genre when you ’re looking for a glimpse of the time to come . Joel Achenbach make a persuasive face in the SundayWashington Postthat the best agency to stay in front of the dizzying pace of technological progress is to keep up on your Star Trek and take what Arthur C. Clarke pen to spunk . He also quotes Foresight Nanotech Institute President Christine Peterson , who says , “ If you await out into the farsighted - term time to come and what you see see like skill fiction , it might be awry . But if it does n’t look like science fiction , it ’s definitely improper . ”
Achenbach ’s gunpoint is impertinent , if unsurprising . His thoughts on why American politicians tend to avoid the subject of the futurity are specially clear - headed :
Peterson has one good word : Read science fable , especially “ hard science fable ” that sticks rigorously to the scientifically possible . “ If you look out into the long - condition time to come and what you see looks like skill fiction , it might be wrong , ” she say . “ But if it does n’t look like science fabrication , it ’s decidedly wrong . ”
That ’s exciting — and a niggling scary . We want the blessings of skill ( say , cheaper Department of Energy reservoir ) but not the terrors ( behemoth spawned by nuclear actinotherapy that destroy entire cities with their fiery breath ) .
Eric Horvitz , one of the sharpest mind at Microsoft , spends a bunch of time recall about the Next Big Thing . Among his other duties , he ’s President of the United States of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence . He thinks that , sometime in the decades ahead , contrived arrangement will be posture on living things . In the Horvitz horizon , life is score by robustness , flexibleness , adaptability . That ’s where computers need to go . lifespan , he says , shows scientist “ what we can do as engineers — good , potentially . ”
Our ability to monkey around with life itself is a admonisher that ethics , religion and old - fashioned common horse sense will be needed in abundance in decades to fare ( see the essay on page B1 by Ronald M. Green ) . How smart and flexible and rambunctious do we require our computers to be ? Let ’s not mess up around with that Matrix clientele .
Every forward - thinking individual almost ritually brings up the mortality emergence . What ’ll happen to society if one daylight people can stop the aging process ? Or if only plentiful the great unwashed can halt bring older ?
It ’s interesting that politician rarely accost such thing . The futurity in general is something of a fishy subject . . . a picayune goofy . Right now we ’re all centre on the next primary election , the summertime pattern , the Olympics and their political implications , the declension election . The political cycle enforces an vehemence on the immediate rather than the authoritative .
The Future is Now , Washington Post
Photo : IMDB
FuturismPoliticsSci - Fiwashington Charles William Post
Daily Newsletter
Get the best technical school , science , and cultivation tidings in your inbox day by day .
News from the hereafter , save to your present .
You May Also Like
