Predicting the Future via Sci-Fi

welsh

welsh

Junkmaster
Not the Sci-Fi channel, which really shows terrible movies-

How far can Sci-Fi predict the future? Should it?
How important is it to you that the science of Sci-Fi be realistic?
Futurology
The rights and wrongs of science fiction

Jun 8th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Three tests to evaluate visions of the future

THE idea that robots must be carefully programmed to prevent them from harming humans will be familiar to readers of Isaac Asimov's “I, Robot” stories. As it happens, real-life “robo-ethicists” are now grappling with the same question (see article). So did Asimov's tales accurately predict the future?
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Which is actually a pretty cool aspect of Asimov's I Robot.

Not exactly. In his stories, robots were ubiquitous, but computers were unusual, large and expensive—much as they were when he wrote in the 1950s. Today the opposite is true: computing power is cheap and it is the mechanical parts that make robots expensive and rare. On the other hand, the giant, oracular computer brains able to answer any question are not unlike Google. And although Asimov's “positronic” brains do not exist, positrons are indeed used to probe human brains in positron-emission tomography (PET) scanning.

So Asimov's record was mixed. He and other writers of science fiction can provide glimpses of the future, but they are often wrong. And yet their mistakes are not random. When trying to sift science fiction's accurate predictions from its erroneous ones, it is worth applying the following three tests.

First, is the imagined world really an allegory for some aspect of the present day? George Orwell's “1984”, published in 1949, was about post-war totalitarianism, for example. The ethics of cloning and its consequences for personal identity, the cause of much debate today, has likewise inspired several recent sci-fi books and films. Imagined futures that are really thinly disguised commentaries on current affairs are not chiefly concerned with reliable prediction. Yet look in the periphery of such allegorical tales and you can find some surprisingly accurate vaticination. The versificator in “1984”, for example, a machine that generates music to keep the masses happy, is not unlike the systems used to predict pop hits today.
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Or even the Musak you get in the department stores with the messages "don't steal" in the background?

The second test for evaluating a sci-fi scenario is whether it makes the mistake of assuming that technology alone shapes the future. For although the future path of technology can, to some extent, be extrapolated from existing trends, the social forces that help or hamper its adoption are far less predictable. The advance of genetic engineering has been held up as much by social objections as technical ones. Conversely, unforeseen social factors meant that mobile phones, strikingly absent from much early 20th-century science fiction, spread faster than even technologists predicted.
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Which would suggest that economics also matters. Cell phones spread faster in countries with weak initial telecommunications infrastructure than those with- compare Vietnam or Brazil with the US.

Innovation, but not as we know it
The final test is to ask whether a prediction is compelling enough to become self-fulfilling, by inspiring inventors to implement it. Science fiction does not exist in a vacuum; it is particularly popular among people of a technological bent and frequently provides the motivation for real-life innovation. Two devices found in science fiction—the universal translator able to understand any alien tongue, and the space elevator capable of lifting payloads into orbit—have both been taken up by researchers, though they still have a long way to go. “Star Trek” has been particularly influential. It is credited with popularising automatic sliding doors—and where do you think they got the idea for those mobile phones that flip open?
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And where would you be without your mobile phone?
 
Something I've often wondered about: how much can Sci-Fi be credited with being a self-defeating prophecy?

While there are some cases where Sci-Fi authors simply misinterpret trends or fail to factor certain issues in, e.g. Asimov's I, Robot where computers are rare and wonderous things while robots are ubiquitous failed to factor in the invention of the advances that led to the miniaturization of computers as well as their mass production, is one thing. But can 1984 be credited -- at least to some extent -- with having staved off -- at least to some extent -- it's own prophecies/speculations?

I would hesitate to put to much weight on the impact of speculative fiction in this regard, but it might have some impact. The reason I say this is that people don't see their own behaviour from the same angle they do in literature/film. For instance, a potential juror might be appalled at the behaviour of some of the characters in 12 Angry Men, but then go ahead an commit errors in exactly the same vein that they did. Just like some of the most ardent "defenders of freedom and democracy" (i.e. the people I work with) are in fact some of the most draconian fascists imaginable.

At any rate, I love speculative fiction -- as opposed to Space Operas -- and while I'm not sure how much they bring about or help stave off their speculations I enjoy them for the thought-provoking -- and often subversive! -- pieces of literature that they are.

OTB
 
How important is it to you that the science of Sci-Fi be realistic?
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It would have to be pretty damn important considering that it's called Science-Fiction and not Science-Fantasy.
 
I'm a huge fan of naturalistic Sci-fi. (Examples: Alien movie series, the new Battlestar Galactica, Enterpise.) It makes the world they are trying to portray much more realistic. If a movie is going to predict the future, it will be a naturalistic future.
 
Have any of you folks read Verne's "Paris in the 20th Century"? No? Allright, it's not a fantastic book. The plot that is, the setting is amazing, something to give the brainless anime artists material to drool over for the next century.

He 'predicted' lifts, aerial subways, cell phones, computers and other modern gizmos, along with the automated urban society we live in.
 
Aliens has its own problems. For instance, where a Xenomorph generates the biomass to replace all of that slime it loses.
 
it's scifi brady, you're free to explain it as you wish. for instance: an advanced condensation process. (ergo: he gets the slime/liquid out of the humidity of the air)

anyhow, it's scifi. things can remain unexplained or even totally wrong. no one gives a damn except geeks living in their parents basement tracking down all the errors in the movies (+ an explanation in full essay form on how it should be).
 
Heinlein actually had a pretty good track record as far as his social predictions went. He wrote an article, revised one in the 70s, and then in the 80s where he revised his predictions and awarded himself a score 60%. Wikipedia touches on his predictions

I'm just waiting for the religious extremism he predicted happening in North America in the 2010s...

The one thing he commented on was that it was impossible to predict the serindipidous uses of technology - such as the use back seat of a car for highschool dating purposes (or the internet for trading naked photos).

Personally however, I prefer my speculative fiction to place the storyline above realism - Heinlein mastered the art of doing both, but still his storyline came first. SciFi is supposed to be about ideas, and sometimes you have to go to absurd lengths to describe them. I'm sure Asimov never thought we'd really be living in The Caves of Steel.
 
Something I miss today is the "Space Era" promised by Sci-Fi. With the end of the space race we don't see anything new. The last mission to the moon happened in 1972 and there is no construction of new orbital stations since the ISS. And the rise of robots didn't happened too. Not to mention we are not driving/piloting flying cars. Other things that were not so prominently shown in movies and became reality is the internet and mobile phones which were a great mark of the 90s. I'm very pessimist about space exploration. I don't see any great event in the near future capable of triggering a new space race.
 
Latly I've read quite a bit of Ben Bova, with most of the stories of space exploration being driven forward by a massive climate change called the Greenhouse Cliff. Basically, he writes about how the greenhouse effect turns from a slow change, into an immediate change, causing a global change. He originally wrote about this in 1993, and it seems that more and more support is going towards this as something that may happen.
 
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