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Science fiction is futuristic, but it's not futurism
Submitted by Capt. Xerox on October 29, 2009 - 9:35pm.
A lot of people confuse science fiction for futurism. One is an entertainment that uses trappings of the future to tell a story about today where the other is an effort to extrapolate trends in order to predict possible scenarios for the future.
Canadian author Karl Schroeder spoke recently about his involvement with futurism as part of an assignment for the military for planning future wars and how it influenced his work.
Being a futurist sounds like a great gig. It's a bit like being a fortune teller. If your predictions are vague enough it leaves you wiggle room years later when you try to assess your accuracy. In the end, most predictions are about as accurate as those far-out Popular Mechanics cover stories from the 40s and 50s about flying cars.
Sure, they look amusing today, but we're still making outrageous predictions that will undoubtedly be laughed at by our kids. Here's one called SkyTran which is a personal transporation system that will whisk people across the continent in no time. Put your hand up if you really think something like that will come to pass?
How about cars in the future? Probably, but will they look like these concept vehicles? I'm guessing they won't.
Back in 1980, Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine asked its readers to guess what the future would be like in 2010. The winner would be announced three decades later, in 2010, to win $2,010. The winner predicted home computer terminals that would be connected to each other, sort of like the internet. I'll bet you most of the other entries were way off base. The editor was saddened at how optimistic everyone was about the future and it's not nearly as rosy as we had hoped.
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Futurist or Think Tank?
"Being a futurist sounds like a great gig. "
Kind of like my fantasy to become a member of a "Think Tank". Think for 8 hours with a 1 hour lunch break, then go home and watch TV for the evening. You would be too tired to want to think about anything else.
If you think about the subject on your off hours, do you get to charge overtime?
[DreamProductPlacement] The Future = (The Present)^2
re: If you think about the subject on your off hours, do you get to charge overtime?
heh good one omnibus.
I think William Gibson hit on the correct procedure to deductive-Futurism when he said that when he wrote his Cyberpunk Sprawl novels (Burning Chrome, Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) he wasn't predicting the future, he was raising the present to the power of 2.
Which is why, I think he got it mostly right.
Likewise, if we extrapolate current trends, and use your example, I would bet that the future will contain _a model_ where: WHEN money is made from within the human mind, it'll be _the corporations_ that make the bulk of the money from our minds/mental real estate.
Tangentially related, I recently had a surreal dream in which Ronald Reagan appeared wearing a black business suit with a large Planters Peanuts logo emblazened across the back of it.
(Q: why Carter'esque peanuts instead of Reagan jelly beans? - Ed)
A: Go Away Ed.
(alright then - Ed)
Because I would swear it was bloody product placement in my dream!
Worked too, that was a couple of weeks ago, and just today I spent $6 on a large bottle of Planters Peanuts, something I haven't done in aeons.
I wasn't hypnotized or the like, I was consciously curious as I couldn't remember anything about their taste other than that I used to love them as a kid. And rationalized that I needed to add the large distinctive bottle to my childhood pop-culture keepsake collection. You know, sit it next to the large cool-aid jug and the like.
I'm not seriously asserting externally implanted dream product-placement took place here, but I am asserting product-placement in dreams can be quite effective if handled properly. From personal experience.
So for my part, I imagine we can extrapolate that it will one day exist.
I think extrapolation is probably one of the best ways to do deductive-futurism, if your goal is to be correct, more times than not.
But it is only one of the elements, there are other items to it that aren't touched on here, some of which are fairly new and require an ability to parse issues, as well as the much more difficult, and much more interesting imo techniques of examining human psychology and relating it to a future product, and of course, the most difficult of all, thinking outside current trends.
I with you, I love think tanks! connect a bean-bag bubble-room think-tank to a lab that can develop what the participants are dreaming up nigh on immediately? and I'd be in nirvana, I doubt I would ever leave that room!
(note to self, invest in catheters - Ed)
[Pathud]
The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.
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