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Original_Intent
SFN Regular
USA
609 Posts |
 Posted - 11/12/2006 : 10:50:28
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Futurology
quote:
WELCOME to the FUTURE,
where advancements and changes in biology, electronics, engineering, and society result in many different futuristic scenarios that synergize into scenario-books.
Peace
Joe
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Edited by - Original_Intent on 11/12/2006 10:50:48
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2006 : 11:27:17 [Permalink]
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This may just be the whining of an old man, but in my experience, the future ain't what it used to be.
When I was a lad in the 1950's, the future held an unlimited supply of vat-cultured chicken heart in every pot, and two fission-powered helicopters in every garage. No lesser authority than Walt Disney (Walt Disney!) promised a huge, permanent, rotating-torus space station in Earth orbit. Robots would do our every bidding, an not just build more polluting cars and vacuum our carpets poorly. Five huge IBM computers would provide data processing to all America. A teletype terminal in every home would let us access the contents of every library in the world, and retrieve the next month's (accurate) weather forecast.
Sure, there were parts of Heinlein's Future History that I did not especially look forward to living through, but at least we came out the far end of the Interregnum as a space-faring species.
I'm still fascinated with the future, but have learned to distrust it. The same bitch-goddess that gave us the PC and the Internet also gave us 9/11 and George W. Bush.
I wonder if there's anything to the predictions of the "technological singularity"? If so when might it happen? Are people ever going to be able to upload their minds into computers, and should they?
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 11/12/2006 11:34:20 |
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