The Sword and Laser discussion

Does anyone else think that a bunch of tech that's described is completely unrealistic in 20 years? I don't think we'll have any hovercars by that time, nor the weird self-mutilation of having transparent skin. I mean it's already 2011 and we still don't have Windows 2009 three dimentional desktops!
This sort of thing bothers me in a book that's meant to portray a sorta realistic world with all real countries, institutions, etc. Is it only me or does this bother anyone else?

A bit off topic, but what is even the advantage of having hovercars that hover a few inches off the ground? The only thing that I can think of is that roads won't need to be maintained anymore since potholes wouldn't cause any problems thus saving lots of money, but would anyone want to live in a city with completely unmaintained roads?

Back when I was a kid, I was promised by "futurists" that we would all be in flying cars by the year 2000. I want my flying car, dammit!

F--- hovercars.

I chuckled a bit when they said that they were watching CNN (really?) and that they'd "tape" the footage.

Jon wrote: "Back when I was a kid, I was promised by "futurists" that we would all be in flying cars by the year 2000. I want my flying car, dammit!

F--- hovercars."

I'm 50 and I was told in elementary school that we'd have hover cars and cars that could run for 1000 years on a cup on nuclear fuel by 2000. I haven't seen it yet.

I'm only up to chapter 9. I think what got me about the tech was how the characters were using videotape in 2009. We did have DVD's by 1999 when the book was published, didn't we? Couldn't he have foreseen digital video recording devices?

Even more jarring than the tech is the fashion. In 2009, a salmon jacket is the height of fashion for a 40 year-old man and no one under 30 wears jeans that are blue, only bright colors. A pageboy is the trendiest male hairstyle. Really? I kind of think leaving out the fashion details would have been an excellent idea.

Jon wrote: "Back when I was a kid, I was promised by "futurists" that we would all be in flying cars by the year 2000. I want my flying car, dammit!

F--- hovercars."

Reminds me of the beginning of The Unincorporated War, when Justin Cord first finds himself in the future. Of all the things he sees, it's the flying cars he loves more than anything else. "Flying cars! Flying cars! I can't believe I'm really seeing flying cars, just like they always said we'd have in the future." (sorry, not even remotely an exact quote, but you get the idea).

Oops - sorry, that was the first book, where he first saw the flying cars.

Thinking about how much things have advanced in the last 20-30 years makes me super excited for the future. Where we are going we may or may not need roads.

I'm about halfway through so far.

We may not have 3D Windows 2009 or whatever it was but we do have 3D TV and there is no question in my mind that we could have a 3D operating system in the next ten years or so. I can't imagine actually wanting one but we could have it.

I also don't see the point of hovercars. Or flying cars really. It seems like the benefits don't really outweigh the costs. The simple logistics of hundreds of millions of people flying would be insane.

And while it would reduce some travel times, like a morning commute into the city or whatnot, I'd think cross country travel times would still be an issue.

But the thing that intrigued me the most so far was not in the story but in the words. I'm reading on a kindle and there are some words that are pretty clearly hyphenated to fit on paper pages. And I just read a bit in a bookstore with mention of print on demand but no mention of e-readers or tablets.

Technology usually advances in small ways.

Some of the tech that's proposed does seem far-fetched. But 10 years ago who would have thought we'd be carrying around pocket-sized computers capable of watching movies, making video phone calls, and remotely connecting to our home computers and home security systems (your smart phone can do all that). Heck... my crappy Sony X10 has a faster processor than the old desktop PC my parents have been using to check their Juno email for the past few years.

Weird self-mutilation is already here, imo! ;-) And I'd wager it won't be too long before someone is taking the cutting edge research on turning rat fetuses transparent to do stuff to the human body for cosmetic purposes.

Our computers and GUIs, while still basically the same as 20 years ago are always changing in miniscule ways bringing us closer to imagined future-tech. Look at touchscreens those table-top embedded touch dispalys, then look at the LCARS from Trek. We're pretty much there on that tech.

It's the oil-based tech that we won't see advance rapidly, in my opinion. Yeah... I subscribe to the conspiracy theory on that topic: oil companys and governments are holding back advancement in new types of energy because they're still making butt-loads of money from oil. He who controls the oil, controls the world.

I also don't see the point of hover-cars. It'd be darned convenient if only a few people had them. But once everyone has them, our traffic jams will just be at different altitudes.

Sporadic Reviews wrote: "Some of the tech that's proposed does seem far-fetched. But 10 years ago who would have thought we'd be carrying around pocket-sized computers capable of watching movies, making video phone calls, ..."

The Apple Newton was announced in 1992 and available in 1993. Sure it couldn't do anything todays tablets can do but frankly, the desktop I had in 1993 couldn't do anything todays tablets can do.

Sporadic Reviews wrote: "Some of the tech that's proposed does seem far-fetched. But 10 years ago who would have thought we'd be carrying around pocket-sized computers capable of watching movies, making video phone calls, ..."

Ahem... There used to be this show called Star Trek and this comic strip called Dick Tracy...

It all depends on how hover traffic is handled, we've got planes that are advanced enough to pretty much take-off, fly, and land on auto-pilot, just those abilities to a hovercar with a centralized control. Allow the option for manual control at ground level, but must go auto-pilot at any altitude, especially in high congestion areas. Maybe allow a manual option in rural and cross country for people who have had flight training. Include safety features like hover mode for emergencies or if car loses contact with central control, emergency lanes between flight tracks for the car to drop or raise to when it goes to emergency hover, mesh-networked sensor on cars to help avoid obstructions, rapid emergency routing to hospitals, etc. Done right it could be amazing.

@Tina and @Rasputin - that's exactly what I'm saying. Yes we've had small computers since the 80s, but they weren't capable of much. Trek is set in the future and some of futuristic tech from that show is here now, even smaller and more capable.

Sure, fiction (Trek, Dick Tracy, et al) has been showing us "futuristic" tech in today's settings, but having tech as imagined in fiction in-hand hasn't been a reality until very recently. Handheld computers capable of so very much, combat drone craft, insect-sized drones ...and so much more that we take for granted now that just a few years ago would have seemed futuristic in fiction.

The OP was asking if anyone else thought some future tech presented in fiction seemed unreasonable. I think some of it is unreasonable; I also think some of the future tech in fiction is reasonable extrapolation from today's tech,; and I think some tech presented in fiction is too mundane or not imaginative enough considering what we have today.

@Snokat - that sounds reasonable. Though I'm not creative enough to imagine who'd pay for the infrastructure for that - let alone for a similar ground-based auto-drive system. (I keep imagining that Doctor Who episode set in New New York in the enclosed freeway.)

I think you're over-thinking the infrastructure issue. The flight control part may take time and money to initiate, but it would be fairly easy and cheap to institute. All the pieces already exist: quality mapping software, gps chips, cheap radar for vehicles (my company semi-truck has radar on the front that will warn me when traffic is slowing, and even control the speed and apply braking), and microchip readers. All that is really missing is a control system to put it all together. No need for major road redesign, use gps and mapping to plan trips, radar for safe spacing and speed, and add microchips with exact gps location inside the reflectors on the roadway for night lane markers and a way to read them as you drive. More advanced systems can be invented later and installed during road constructions, but the reflector idea would get things going quickly.

I admit flight control would be harder, but not impossible. Just more radar sensors, an altimeter, and maybe larger reflectors placed every 1/2 mile and a way to read them and read distance to trianglate you location.

There may be other problems to solve, but on paper, at least, the pieces are there, just need to start putting them together.

We already have commercial planes that practically fly themselves and google developed a car that dives itself.

It's very possible I'm over-thinking the infrastructure issue. I live in a city where nothing of importance ever gets done because of crappy politicians. But I digress ;-)

I put over 40k miles a year on my car. I'm driving every day. A lot. Frankly, I don't want a hover car at this point. If you think driving is difficult today, add an element of crashing to your daily commute and driver safety becomes an even more serious concern than it is right now.

Once our driving can be handled by computers, then I'll look forward to hover cars :)

The VCR tapes in the book's 2009 were very distracting to me, especially given that digital video must have been entering the mainstream at the time the book was written. The transparent skin mutilation I thought was interesting - I could buy that as a possible genetic engineering/implant fashion possibility. But that someone's future self during the flashforward viewed a tv ad for genetically engineered 'designer babies' with boredom suggested a greater cultural shift toward total acceptance of *wholesale* human genetic engineering than I would expect in that short of time.

The hovercars weren't described in enough detail, in the parts I've read so far, for me to decide if they're unrealistic or not.

I liked the tidying-up bots crawling around future Gaston's walls and ceilings. I need some of those.

technological issues aside, who's not entirely thrilled with the idea of having a hovercar bottleneck occurring over his house? if we ever get the tech down, it will be limited to military and rescue primarily... for a bunch of reasons.

As to the 'writing tech in the future' topic... my heart really goes out to contemporary science fiction authors. The rate of technological change (classic definition of acceleration) we are undergoing now is the greatest in recorded history. and it will never be this slow again. if you can't tell i am a big proponent of Kurzweil.

one prime example -- greater than human (or different from human) intelligence. in a lot of speculative fiction i am reading this topic comes up again and again. the ramifications of >human intelligence have got to be really tough to write about in detail... an incredible exercise in imagination. this is why i'm 51% laser at heart.

anyway cool thread...

I haven't read the book (not sure if I will, still debating) but I was listening to the podcast and wanted to drop in with some of my thoughts on future tech. I'm a web designer and keep my nose pretty close to any tech/science advancements just out of curiousity.

For a start, regardless of how much science fiction loves the concept, flying cars will never happe. At least, not in the way people think. As someone who can fly a plane I can tell you it takes a lot of coordination and concentration. I can't see the majority of people doing that. Texting is bad enough when you only have 360° to worry about but what if you have the full 720°? Pilots have to constantly be looking all over the place. Not to mention the dangers of someone flying while impaired in any way!

Now, self-driving cars and possibly even self-driving cars are on the way. Maybe not 20 years out (the automotive industry is notoriously slow to advance) but in time it will be a standard feature.

Personally, I don't feel bad for contemporary scifi writers in the least. They just have to do their research and not worry about the dates. For example, with computers there are two main directions we were going: gesture-based and thought-based. Gesture is here and is going to become the norm (thank you, Apple) while thought-based computing is still a ways away.

Now, where this gets fun is that things like the UI in Minority Report are possible today. And no, I don't mean with the Kinect. That's more a gimmick than a fully-fledged UI. Give it 15 years and that could easily be a common addition to any computer. You know... If we can get over the "gorilla arm" issue. (So called for what happens if you have to hold your forearms up for extended periods of time to do any gesture-based navigation.)

The other thing any tech writer can know for sure is that just about everything that could go digital will go digital in the next 20 years. How much society will integrate that is up to the write but it's not going to be all and it's not going to be none.

One comment on the podcast was on tablets. They aren't a new idea. They weren't even a new idea in the 90's. Or the 80's. Or the 70's. The first real popularization of the idea, as far as I know, was Douglas Adams back in the 60's.

Taking all of this into account, if I were to guess what the tech future would be like in 20 years it would be a tablet-based device that could also do mid-air gestures while streaming wirelessly to any compatible screen. This would allow for a portable device as well as for it to be used for more advanced tasks and gaming.

I can't decide if keyboards are going to go the way of the dodo and be replaced by something else. Voice recognition is very good right now but it can't be used privately or in loud spaces. Thought-based systems would be ideal but are still a ways off.

Personally, the one fiction story I've seen that I think holds a good chance of being somewhat accurate is Ghost In The Shell. Computational devices are very cloud-based with direct input from your brain. You can interface with a myriad of external device from a table or phone to a full external hub. As far as I know they never go out of their way to set a date on anything just that it's the "relatively near future". Given when they were written it seems to imply 50 years out and a great deal of the tech demonstrated is plausible.

It's 2011 and not only were we supposed to be to Jupiter by now, we were supposed to go back again and have Jupiter turn into a star. Nope, still low Earth orbit with a few flings to the moon a long time ago.

And that, right there, is why I love XKCD. Besides, I'd rather faster ground travel. A high-speed rail system that covered the entire earth and then orbital shuttles to get me over great distances.

Heck, I'd settle for ACTUAL 4G wireless. Not the marketing term that every company uses but the actual ISO spec that defines what it really is.

I imagine the draw of hover cars is the diminished use of fading resources - rubber, oil, and whatever else.

Yeah, I don't understand that one. It takes significantly more energy to make something fly than it does to push it along the ground.

Doug wrote: "Yeah, I don't understand that one. It takes significantly more energy to make something fly than it does to push it along the ground."

It would depend on the technology used. I would think that you could use electromagnetism to make a vehicle "hover" as well as keeping it on a set path. If such vehicles were solar powered, you could save considerable resources. The key would be inventing a reliable, long-lasting battery that's eco-friendly. I don't think it would even be likely to make hover cars that use gasoline. They would be too heavy. Remember, there is a difference between hovering and outright flying.

the dude who wrote hyperion did a cool reboot of the flying carpet. got around the power issues by somehow using the variations in earth's magnetic fields... can't remember the exacts but he wrote a tight little piece of techno-futurism to explain it.

Several books, TV and movies show the ability to manipulate gravity. I say forget the hover cars and lets jump straight to that.

Robert J. Sawyer, predicted this year's physic Nobel winners.

"In FlashForward, I predicted this year’s Nobel Prize winners in Physics"

http://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=3008

Craig wrote: "Robert J. Sawyer, predicted this year's physic Nobel winners.

"In FlashForward, I predicted this year’s Nobel Prize winners in Physics"

http://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=3008"


Awesome!

Just as long as he continues to be wrong on the whole car crash/falling down stairs/plane crash thing. Guess I need to get to work on that book where I correctly predict that I win next week's powerball.

Jenny wrote: "Craig wrote: "Robert J. Sawyer, predicted this year's physic Nobel winners.

"In FlashForward, I predicted this year’s Nobel Prize winners in Physics"

http://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=3008"

Awesome!"

Nice point Ken! (Sorry, Jenny, I clicked the wrong reply link)

Sandi wrote: "Doug wrote: "Yeah, I don't understand that one. It takes significantly more energy to make something fly than it does to push it along the ground."

It would depend on the technology used. I would..."

The problem, as I see it, has little to do with the technical limitations. I'm sure those could eventually be eliminated as technology progresses. My issue is the idea of a billion multi-ton vehicles hurtling through the sky in the control of people who can barely drive down a road without hitting something.

Think about it this way: For those of you who grew up in the country think of all the times you lost control while driving, were in a car that los control while driving, or knew someone who had. Now imagine that for every one of those times instead of having friction slowing you down you only had 7,000 feet of, hopefully, open air.

If it was 100% automated so that all you did was give the system a destination and it figured out the rest, then I'd be OK with it but otherwise you'd find me moving to the most remote part of the world I could find and putting up AA guns.