
Star Trek, tech companies, and the death of futurism in cinema - estenh
https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer-technology/7e7dc993b4fd
======
snowwrestler
I guess I was watching a different movie, because I saw:

\- advanced handheld medical scanners and treatments

\- a genetically engineered human with super strength, health, and
intelligence

\- suspended animation that keeps humans alive for centuries

\- artificial gravity

\- faster than light communication and travel

\- materials strong enough to maintain structural integrity after falling from
space and plowing through a city

\- matter transference across light years

I think the issue here is that author only paid attention to the elements that
seem familiar, and dismissed the rest as fantasy. Of course handheld
communicators and tablet computers were once fantasy too.

~~~
ChuckMcM
The discussion here demonstrates the problem.

So lets take a moment and think about what we see vs what we do.

So if you take the Internet and extend it to its logical next step we've got
20 - 40gbits of bandwidth between everyone and everyone else.

We've got parallel rendering pipelines and physics simulation such that you
can render a scene that is indistinguishable from reality to our poor brains,
and then you can project all the moving pieces between any group of people.

So in a plausible future everyone is sitting inside a brain jar experiencing a
'shared world' in what is not unlike a giant World of Warcraft type
experience, including the ability to do magic, conjure things out of thin air.
While nutrients feed what's left of our bodies.

Is that exciting? Does that make for dramatic movies? No. But sadly it is the
current path we are on.

~~~
tadfisher
What makes you think this isn't our present?

~~~
ChuckMcM
That isn't the question though, once you know you are living in a simulation
what happens? This was a very interesting question that was raised in the TV
show Caprica (a Battlestar Galactica prequel series). If you know it is a
simulation then you can just do what ever the heck you want, reboot/restart
when necessary. Doesn't make for interesting cinema or literature as the
question of future value / future outcome vs present action / inaction is what
creates tension.

~~~
DanBC
The tension could come from others not knowing they're in a simulation. Oh,
The Matrix.

As always, Gren Egan has done this stuff too.

------
doktrin
I had this very thought while in the movie theater. However, I chalked it up
to being a re-launch of a franchise with a _very_ established lore and
universe.

This isn't just a "movie about the future". It's _Star Trek_. With legacy
comes baggage. I'm sure there's a small encyclopedia detailing the available
technology at the time the movie takes place, as well as potentially canonical
books, stories, graphic novels, etc. In this context, the writers have limited
wiggle room in which to dream up "tomorrow's technology".

On the flipside, it's also a bit inspiring to see that some of that which was
considered sci-fi less than a generation ago is now hum-drum reality.

~~~
vec
Plus since it's (kinda) supposed to be a prequel to NextGen/DS9/Voyager it has
to cram itself into that thin wedge between more futuristic than now and
noticeably less futuristic than we imagined a decade ago.

~~~
Zimahl
Let's talk about this thin wedge (hopefully without spoilers). I understand
that this is a relaunch of the series but I think they did it wrong. It
probably would've been blasphemy to throw it all out the door, and
'historically' the same things can happen but they really should be ignoring
everything from TOS.

Will we see VGER? The monolith from 'Voyage Home' (ST4) must make an
appearance, right? I mean we have to assume that whales are still extinct in
the alternate timeline. Will Praxis explode resulting in 'Undiscovered
Country' (ST6)?

~~~
gnaritas
I think you missed the point of the reboot, Vulcan was destroyed, the time-
line forever altered, this crew isn't going to re-live the events of the
original crew.

~~~
Zimahl
Is that really true? Avoiding spoilers apparently this most recent movie has
proved otherwise.

Vulcan being destroyed doesn't stop VGER and it doesn't stop the monolith. It
probably does change the Klingons so maybe 'Undiscovered Country' doesn't
happen.

------
mmanfrin
I think Star Trek is a bad example, as it's seen as such a prime example of
'good' that it's hard for modern directors/producers to deviate too much from
the original feel of the material (beyond modern cinematic tropes).

Prior to seeing Star Trek, I watched Oblivion, which seemed to me full of
futurism -- it had a ship that had a novel (to modern cinema) ship design,
'drone' design, antagonist design. I think we live in a world that is quickly
gaining the capability of creating our ideas, so those things that were
fantastical in the 70s but trope today are not as easy to devine today.

I was just thinking the other day that I sincerely enjoy how Scifi is quickly
becoming a mainstay of modern film, because it means more scifi films to
invent some novel idea of the future. You really should not be basing your
assumptions of modern cinema off of a _remake_.

~~~
msglenn
I found Oblivion to be an homage to some of the best sci-fi over the past few
decades (Moon, The Matrix, Independence Day), an effect that was ruined by the
feeling that it took itself too seriously to _realize_ it was an homage.

In terms of derivative sci-fi, I think Oblivion really reinforces the author's
point.

------
lambdasquirrel
In immigrant circles, we lament this notion that the first generation works
its ass off, the second generation studies its ass off, and the third
generation parties its ass off. I think that what we see in cinema is kind of
linked.

America post-WWII worked and studied its ass off. Then it defeated the
Soviets. You ask people today though, what they think of the future, and I
think that the picture is bleak not merely because of the economic malaise,
but because people don't know what to strive for.

In a competitive sense, who are we fighting? Our ostensible enemies are (1)
the lunatic fringe of Islam and maybe also Christianity, and (2) China/India,
depending on who looks more fearful in any given year, except the West also
trades and intermarries with those cultures. I think the kicker is that
Westerners don't even fetish after Chinese and Indians the way they used to.

Now in a purely constructive sense, what does the future hold? Well we've
already seen that the tech industry simply isn't providing jobs for most
people the way that manufacturing did. And why should it? Lets face it, our
culture is not one that really values math or science or engineering. Most of
you weren't popular when you were kids, am I right? It's not nice to hoard all
of the pie, but it's not easy to share it on these terms either. The best
programmers are supposedly 10x-100x better than the average ones, so even if
more people did get into tech, they'd probably be discouraged and see it to be
insurmountably difficult, and they might be right.

Tech has increased the productivity of workers in the West, but it has not
necessarily increased the well-being of the average person, and that's what
cinema was originally made for. It is a mass media. It caters to the common
man, and the common man probably thinks better of the past than the future. I
think it isn't surprising then that the latest Star Trek actually feels
strangely like a retro-future, or that the tech in it is just shiny polished
toys. I think that's the real danger here, that in tech, we will simply just
relegate ourselves to making shiny toys for people, and all they do is
consume. That's probably not the path to a healthy future for our society.

It may be instructive to look at a series like Firefly, or even BSG. When
people are feeling down, they want to be empathized, and Firefly assuages that
in a way. In the future, even if things all go to hell, some people will still
make it out, by the ties they share and their ingenuity.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
>but it has not necessarily increased the well-being of the average person

2000-2010 was the greatest decade in all of human history for upraising the
standard of living of the human race as a whole. The attitude in this entire
comments thread sickens me.

~~~
AJ007
Human history is a story of people nostalgic for the past, believing things
are going to hell, oblivious to improvements.

When I was born two big countries had nuclear weapons pointed at each other
with the very realistic possibility of exchange. Everything we built could be
eradicated in an hour or two. We are quite better off.

~~~
gizmo686
I'm reminded of a history class I had relatively recently. We were talking
about the cold war, and the issue of modern terrorism came up. My history
teacher made the point that, looking back, many people are nostolgic because
in the cold war, the president could pick up the phone to the soviets and talk
to someone rational.

I doubt anyone at the time thought that.

------
yid
This is a great point. I was wondering what about the new Star Trek movie made
me unhappy, beyond the Michael Bay-esque explosions and off-topic banter
between characters, the annoying contemporary compulsion to be "dark" and the
fact that the plot was drawn out in crayons. This is it!

The original Star Trek blew my mind -- warp speed, teleportation, colored
people on the bridge! Even TNG had the replicators and the AI computer and
Data. What do we get now? Tired, topical tropes of terrorists and characters
recycled from the Wrath of Khan. For a recycled franchise, there isn't
anything mind-blowingly new.

~~~
devindotcom
You went to a recycled franchise expecting something mind-blowingly new?

It's an action-oriented big-budget Star Trek blockbuster - you go to see
spaceships crashing into each other. Intelligent sci-fi rarely sells enough
tickets to justify a budget in the hundreds of millions.

I don't really like the reboot either (wrong tone entirely if you ask me) but
you can't say you could expect much after the first, right?

~~~
yid
I actually didn't think the first one was as awful as this one. Perhaps it was
because of the novelty.

~~~
tmzt
Missing the grand thought experiment of an emotion-driven Spock, they just
passed over the character development entirely.

------
michaelfeathers
There's still a lot of ground to cover with the future. For one thing,
everyone assumes minimalism. I can imagine a very lush future with ornate
decoration. We could have a renaissance triggered by nearly cost-free
manufacturing.

Another vision of the future might be excessively biological. Sci-fi authors
have depicted bio-engineered worlds, but cinema doesn't seem to do much with
the idea. An old favorite of mine in this area is 'Existenz' by David
Cronenberg, but then bio has always been his thing.

Cinema can also do a lot depictions of the future that seem flat out
impossible today. For example, imagine identity being fragmented such that
people can simultaneously be and experience life in many places at once. I'm
not sure how that would ever be possible, but maybe it doesn't have to be
explained. It could just be a piece of technology that appears to as as magic,
much like a teleporter.

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
TOS showed technology, but the technology rarely interfered with people being
people as we know them from every day life. People in TOS had replicators; we
have fast food.

The coming next generations of technologies may well remake our species is
ways that make everyday experience difficult to understand and distracting to
narrative story. They may be intellectually interesting, but it would be
difficult in a movie. From third paragraph illustrates the point.

I do like your first point, with respect to Star Trek. Certainly we can have
both minimalism and exotic baroque lushness, sitting side by side.

------
msluyter
I don't necessarily disagree with the article so much as view it as tangential
to the movie's real problems. What I missed most was that grandly optimistic
vision of humanity; the idea that we could transcend its baser, violent
instincts and rise to become something nobler. Into Darkness seems somehow...
smaller than that -- cops & robbers writ large. Of course, I guess that's true
about a lot of the Star Trek movies, so perhaps this is just my nostalgia for
the most philosophically engaging of the ST:TOS episodes showing.

------
campusman
This article brought up a good point. But while Star Trek is a vision of the
future from the past, there is plenty of SciFi out there from very talented
people with extremely fertile imaginations that is just waiting for some young
filmmaker to take a chance on and deliver us a new Star Wars or Star Trek type
franchise. The books I have run across in that have been published in more
recent years cover everything from hard scifi that could be a reality today
with a ton of money and the will to engineer it into existence, to the really
fun theoretical stuff out there on what could be...

I myself have a preference/hope to live in the universe that Peter Hamilton
conjures up in Pandora's Star. Its everything that got me into Star Trek as a
kid and so much more. That is just one of many books that give me hope for our
near and distant future and what could be...even if a bunch of it seems as far
from reality for us as iPhones were in 1969.

------
wvenable
I think we can see where the future is going well enough to know what it's
going to look a lot less like the Enterprise and a lot more like the Borg.

It just doesn't make for good cinema.

~~~
bishnu
Talking computers, ubiquitous tablets, massive electronic knowledge store all
seem pretty Enterprise-y to me.

Beyond that, the Borg definitely make for good cinema.

Lots of wrong in that post ;)

~~~
wvenable
> Talking computers, ubiquitous tablets, massive electronic knowledge store
> all seem pretty Enterprise-y to me.

That's the present, not 100 years in the future.

> Beyond that, the Borg definitely make for good cinema.

Not if we're the Borg.

------
jadell
Of course when you take out convenient and safe space travel, it's easy to say
there's nothing to strive for, technologically. Try having the same opinion
while leaving space travel in the conversation, especially with FTL travel.
And infinite non-polluting energy sources. And superior medical technology.
And the end of hunger and poverty. And dozens of other innovations in the Star
Trek world that are pipe-dreams right now. There's plenty left to invent and
innovate. If all you focus on is furniture and hand-held devices then you're
not thinking big enough, and you will be disappointed.

Personally, I think the fact that you didn't even notice the more world-
changing advances in the background to be a credit to the movie; a world like
that was so believable that you didn't even notice how far away it actually
is.

------
guimarin
OP is not alone. I saw the trailer for elysium and immediately thought,
Rendezvous with Rama ( 50 yrs old ). For me, part of the problem with
envisioning a future that is so much 'more' than what we have today, on the
order of how Star Trek was in the 60s, is a consequence of how much our
scientists understand 'limits' today than they did then. Elevated freeways,
and floating cars, simply aren't practical given our understanding of physics
and energy. The most practical 'sf' that we've seen lately is about human
simulation, and as far as the big screen goes, that's pretty boring. Also
correct me if I'm wrong, but since the transistor, we've seen three waves of
digitization, digitization of tools ( calculator ), digitization of human
society/social interaction ( message-boards -> facebook ), and finally we are
beginning the third and final stage, digitization of ourselves ( quantified
self, implantable bio-tech ). This 'second renaissance' if you will seems to
end with human virtualization ( after which no reasonable extrapolation seems
plausible ).

From a SF big-picture sort of movie archetype, this stuff seems pretty tired,
thin and boring. I think we are only beginning to understand the societal
implications of the first two waves of digitization, and even the most
hardcore dystopia hasn't yet captured all the avenues of the third. Seems to
me, Hollywood can only make blockbusters profitable, and the type of SF that
we are envisioning now is a lot more subtle.

------
obviouslygreen
Reading the comments here, then most of the article itself, I couldn't help
thinking "so what?" I like the older Trek and it was clearly impressively
ahead of its time, but the new ones (despite the fact that I really enjoyed
the reboot, at least the first film) aren't intended to be anything more than
action movies with reheated characters.

On finishing the article... I'm closer to siding with the author. I don't know
if it's the rational-rather-than-nostalgic way it's written or what, but it
does make me feel like we're selling ourselves short, and it definitely wakens
an old question: What _might_ the future look like, if it changes as much as
we've seen things change since that venerable original series?

I don't think looking to the tech industry is fair; that is and always has
been about business. But Hollywood is sticking to the safe franchises even
more than they ever have with the advent of comic book movies (another thing
I've enjoyed some of, but they've been done to death several times over).
There have been some really good science fiction series in the last decade,
but in the vein of this article, I can't really think of any that really
pushed the envelope in terms of futurism with technology.

I actually find this a bit more inspiring than morbid, though. What could be
coming? Childlike wonder, here I come! :)

~~~
ryusage
When I try to think of scifi that really seems like "the future", I have a
hard time thinking of any movies. But I can think of some novels that fill the
role. The one that comes to mind most immediately is Neal Stephenson's Diamond
Age, which revolves quite a bit around super advanced nanotechnology and AI. I
could see a film adaptation of that being fairly awesome.

------
akeck
Of the recent Sci-Fi movies I've seen, I find that Ghost in the Shell feels
the most like what I think the medium term future will be - Highly uneven
distribution of ever more sophisticated tech and a much more gritty day-to-day
existence.

~~~
intrazoo
Ghost in the Shell is the greatest thing ever. The same director that did the
series did Eden of the East which is fun and near term sci-fi. But, also,
Dennu Coil might be a series worth checking out. Nowhere near as epic as GitS,
but it explores near term AR tech in a thematically interesting way (as well
as being a neat case study in movie/show making (due to the whole AR thing)).

Disclaimer: I have not yet finished the series, it is animated, it does not
seem to have the type of accuracy that GitS has (but still interesting!), it
stars kids, and is somewhat family friendly.

~~~
camus
If you like japanese cyber punk checkout

Goku Midnight Eye Cyber City Oedo AD Police

~~~
intrazoo
Thank you, will do!

------
smrtinsert
I mention this alot to friends as well. We need new sci-fi concepts just like
we need new super hero concepts.

Think about how outdated a bat signal is, why can't batman check for tweets?

~~~
noblethrasher
The Bat Signal is more secure.

1\. It's inherently asymmetric (Batman can observe the message but messengers
cannot observe him).

2\. It's highly unlikely to be forged.

~~~
m0nastic
1.) Twitter is also asymmetric

2.) I'm pretty sure that what seemed like a good third of the sixties Batman
TV show episodes involved Batman showing up to the Bat Signal only to have it
have been a trap. (and yes, I consider the TV show to be the canonical
Batman).

~~~
noblethrasher
Fair enough on point 2. But he'd have to be careful about viewing his Twitter
account wouldn't he?

------
trekky1700
It's a movie set in an already defined universe, you can't just start adding
new technology because we invented the cell phone. There's still a bloody lot
we're missing, and just because those things are way above the comprehension
of a non-physicist doesn't make them any less inspiring. It'll just inspire
future generations to become physicists, to build things like transporters,
artificial gravity, phasers, warp drives and huge spaceships. Just because we
have tablet computers doesn't degrade the rest of the inspiration Star Trek
still provides, and I think that's where this article completely misses the
point. If you look at faster than light travel as a 70s idea, there's
something seriously wrong with your view of the future.

------
polemic
Perhaps it could be articulated as an obsession with the physical and
technological. 70s futurism revolved around the amazing materials and
electronic advances of the time. That continues today, but we have a much
better handle on how that technology is shaping our lives. In other words,
'future-tech' is not futurism (any more).

There are other inspirations out there. Hannu Rajaniemi's maths/crypto heavy
scifi draws gives us a glimpse of new ways to think about personality, privacy
and culture. The Fountain's future parallel provides a very different view of
a potential space traveller, and Isaac Asimov's collective work spans so many
cultural diversions that have fallen out of fashion just waiting to be re-
imagined.

------
pseudometa
Spoiler Alert, HCI elements will plateau at voice control and touch displays.
Why? Because the human body is what it is. It isn't going any further than
that until it jumps to something matrix style, but that movie has already been
made. Alien Computer Interaction however could offer some interesting
opportunities.

Forget hoverboards and dick tracy watches, Star Trek still has plenty of
imaginitive technologies that don't yet exist. Between cold fusion, warp
drive, teleporters, transcoders, etc... there is still plenty of good tech to
make an entertaining movie with.

~~~
icebraining
[http://www.frontiersin.org/human_neuroscience/10.3389/fnhum....](http://www.frontiersin.org/human_neuroscience/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00072/abstract)

------
jack-r-abbit
I think today's films still have futurism but we don't want to see it as that
because they predict the future will be a burned out and destroyed Earth with
us living elsewhere. And that is depressing.

~~~
icebraining
Dystopias have always existed; a few decades ago it was nuclear holocaust, now
it's ecological destruction, but visions of a destroyed Earth are nothing new.

~~~
sukuriant
Could the dystopian future : happy future ratio be a valid metric for how our
society feels that society and the future itself is going? If so, then perhaps
we, the general public, no longer (or infrequently now) see a happy future,
but a dystopian one, at least in the next 200 years

------
jonnathanson
Apropos of nothing, Google Glass is remarkably similar -- right down to the
design details -- to the navigation glasses used by the bad guys in in Star
Trek: DS9. The resemblance is uncanny enough that I have to believe _somebody_
at Google was inspired by the show.

More apropos of the topic at hand: sure, the current version of Trek could be
said to be lazy in its futurism. And futurism was certainly a big part of the
original Star Trek. This is, after all, the series that gave us such geek
staples as the replicator, the transporter, phasers, warp nacelles, and so
forth. Even the "cell phones" used in the show were, back in the '60s,
freaking crazy by the standards of their day. In a very real sense, yes, it's
a crying shame that the new interpretation of Star Trek is not making the bold
leaps forward that its predecessor did.

On the other hand, this new interpretation of Star Trek is an attempt at
returning an increasingly greying, idiosyncratic, and narrowing universe to a
broad audience. It's about mass appeal. It's about emotional storytelling. In
some respects, I don't fault Abrams's Trek for not reveling in futurism the
way the original Trek did. Abrams has very different strategic goals in mind.

------
cglee
The latest Star Trek movie was meant as a prequel, so if the movie showcased
advanced tech that's not in the original, it would look weird to the Trekkie
purists.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The latest Star Trek movie was meant as a prequel

It was a sequel to the immediately previous Star Trek movie, which itself was,
by its own terms, later in _causality_ (though earlier in _time_ ) than the
last appearance of Spock (or, for that matter, Romulus as an existing planet)
in the earlier canon (and, also, later in both time _and_ causality than the
most recent TV series.)

The latest Star Trek movie isn't a prequel to anything, since none of the pre-
existing canon follows it in causal sequence, its a sequel (though an
alternate-universe-earlier-setting-date sequel, for some of the earlier canon)
to the earlier canon.

~~~
camus
> The latest Star Trek movie isn't a prequel to anything, since none of the
> pre-existing canon follows it in causal sequence, its a sequel (though an
> alternate-universe-earlier-setting-date sequel, for some of the earlier
> canon) to the earlier canon.

what? ;)

I think there is only one universe. But since it is infinite , there is an
infinite copy of ourselves in different times ( since in different places far
away from each other). So it is a prequel from the 2009 point of view, but a
sequel from the old Star Trek P.O.V.

------
jebblue
I think we're tired, the future is here and it's exhausting. Doing the work of
the present future is challenging and interesting but it wears us out. 130
years ago there were no airplanes, no telephones, almost no electricity, no
production computers, no cell phones, no MP3 players, no CD/DVD players, no
phonographs, no movies, no production cars. 130 years is just barely beyond
the life span of the longest living human beings.

------
bluetidepro
I would argue that that's actually what the directors want, though. They want
you to feel like the technology is something you can relate to. It makes you
way more immersed in the film when you can relate to the emotions of the
characters and their surroundings. If everything is too far futuristic, I
think it doesn't allow you to focus on the movie's plot, but makes you over
think small things. Things the director doesn't want you to spend time
thinking about.

Also, I could easily see the opposite of this article being written if the
movie was indeed doing what you asked for, from the technology and futurism
standpoint. For example, if everyone just teleported everywhere (or something
crazy like that), people would just call it ridiculous and fake. They would
just complain that the movie doesn't relate to a realistic future.

I, personally, loved the new Star Trek, and thought it was incredible. I think
they hit a great balance of innovation and futurism, but also still made it
relevant to things we see everyday (iPhones, minimalistic designs, etc).

------
romanovic
> If we spent the last thirty years inspired by what we saw in Star Trek,
> what’s going to inspire us for the next thirty?

Futurism isn't lost in the Star Trek reboot. The tech seen in the new Star
Trek movies, rather than diminishing futurism, serves to show us that the
future that Star Trek introduced to us these past few decades is _just around
the corner_. They are using devices we are now starting to see every day, and
some tech that we can imagine our children using in the very near future.

Maybe that's not as exciting to some, but to have that mix of technology and
design from the present day feels like a confirmation that a lot more Star
Trek tech might become reality within our lifetimes :).

------
question-all
Obviously this person hasn't seen Continuum

------
theviciousfish
Is it possible, that we can only see so far into the future of technology
because there is only so far it can go? We assume that we will keep up this
rate of innovation forever and continue to evolve intellectually until....
what?

Perhaps the future holds something much more important for our lives than more
advanced technology. Perhaps the future will be defined by a greater
understanding of our universe through different means, through non
technological means.

------
mortenjorck
Relevant William Gibson commentary:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11502715>

    
    
      "In the 1960s I think that in some sense the present was 
      actually about three or four years long," he said, "because 
      in three or four years relatively little would change… The 
      present is really of no width whatever." 
    

Our sci-fi present is making sci-fi harder to write.

~~~
jes5199
except that this article was written in 2010 (three years ago!), and not much
has actually changed since then.

~~~
raldi
Except the tablet revolution, massive leaps forward in translation and speech
recognition, an electric vehicle being named Car of the Year, multiple states
passing self-driving car legislation, featherweight wearable computers that
project an image directly onto your retina, a private company successfully
docking a spaceship with the ISS, discovery of the Higgs Boson, large-scale
entanglement in a quantum computer, a man jumping from a balloon at the edge
of space while millions of people watch live over the Internet, an SUV landed
on Mars via a sky crane, a computer crushing the world's best Jeopardy
players, wireless video calls via a pocket computer...

------
Aardwolf
We went from big CRTs to flat touch screens. What more do you want? A flat
touch screen is a pretty practical form, unlike a CRT, so it is kind of the
reached target of an evolution imho.

Surely gimmics like screens in tshirts, glasses, and what not may appear as
well, but a flat hard device simply is a good useful form.

I also never saw them charge their devices by plugging them in the wall.
There's something that's pure sci-fi for us: actually long lasting batteries.

~~~
icebraining
We're very far from the target of the evolution. The screen is still
_physical_ , it's not even an in-air projection yet.

And having a screen is itself redundant when you have glasses with true 3D
overlaying, where you can just make a screen appear wherever you want with the
size you want.

------
coley
> If we spent the last thirty years inspired by what we saw in Star Trek,
> what’s going to inspire us for the next thirty?

I think video games, AAA and indie titles alike have got this covered for me.
What inspires one man does not inspire another.

It's interesting that we don't see many portrayals of the future of the web or
internet either, considering how large of an impact it has had on humanity in
the past 20 years.

------
togasystems
Can anyone suggest a good, current futurist author?

~~~
weavejester
Charles Stross and Greg Egan are two that spring to mind, though Egan's
writing is quite heavy going.

~~~
maxerickson
The introduction to Toast has some interesting thoughts on issues faced by
current futurists:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/toast/to...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/toast/toast-intro.html)

(The intro in the collection, not on that page. Click through to whichever
format...)

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shn
I think theme of action movie is taking over sci-fi genre by the storm.
Repackaging a legendary sci-fi movie into an action packed one does not give
justice to Star Trek's reputation. I am not saying that action is bad but it
should not be the most vibrant component but sci-fi, what this article trying
to point, should be the one.

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zipppy
I tend to have an opposite reaction -- I get annoyed with futurism that is
unrealistic compared to how far in the future the story takes place.

Even Star Trek is completely unrealistic - it takes place less than 25 decades
from now. There's no way we have space vehicles so advanced so soon.

(edit: even ignoring 'warp speed')

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icebraining
People alive today still don't believe we were able to get to the moon; what
makes you so sure about your predictions?

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hcarvalhoalves
Scale perhaps?

Moon is 380,000 km away. The nearest galaxy is 1×10^18 km away.

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zipppy
Scale for sure. Not just in terms of how far they were able to travel, but how
big everything is and how many resources they would take to build, not to
mention time.

Even if we knew exactly how to build everything in the movie, it would still
take a TON of time to build it. Now start in the future and work backwards --
it's simply unrealistic.

That isn't to say that we won't have tons of things even 100 years from now
that we can't imagine currently. I just tend to think the unimaginable is more
easily attained than the evolution of those things already made.

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joyeuse6701
I see the point, the movie doesn't really push the envelope as much as it
could have when it comes to future science. Signal to Noise would be a pretty
awesome book to translate and see the tech. I'd say that would be the future
that would inspire me to work in the engineering field.

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sbierwagen
Star Trek isn't interested in predicting the future, because most of the stuff
just beyond the horizon is either deeply scary or plays havoc with plots that
depend on putting the characters in danger.

If you have a hundred backup copies of your mind all over the solar system,
what do you care if one of you gets killed? How can you possibly write a
plausible plot that includes a weakly godlike AI that doesn't involve it
instantly solving any problem that faces the protagonists? How can current
audiences relate to a world where the population of the Earth is 100 trillion,
all of them running as uploaded minds on computers?

(Disclaimer, I'm not a fan of Star Trek: <http://bbot.org/badtranscript-
startrek2.html> )

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r00fus
Read Altered Carbon [1] - this book addresses this question.

[1] <http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40445.Altered_Carbon>

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sbierwagen
For plot reasons, the world of Altered Carbon only lets you run one copy at a
time, offsite backups are very expensive, (even though individual stacks are
so cheap that literally every person in the world has one installed?) and the
time between backups is 24 hours.

In the real world, there's no reason to expect any of these limitations to
exist. It makes more sense for backups to be cheap(ish) and taken every five
minutes.

SPOILERS:

Altered Carbon also addresses the nightmare scenario of state vector theft
very well; if the bad guys have a copy of your mind, they can torture you to
death, over and over, forever. But in the real world, the precise mechanism of
capture used in the book would be unlikely: if you thought you were about to
be kidnapped, you'd just suicide, (using a explosive charge in your brain) and
let one of your backups figure out what happened.

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r00fus
I also thought that the book didn't go into the deep effects of having sleeves
and backups, as simliar as Star Trek doesn't go into full effects of
transporter technology (terrorism of non-warp stations/planets via transported
explosive/poison would be unstoppable - forcing the development and
pervasiveness of passive transport shielding - think faraday cage)

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JoeKM
I agree with the author. We should not be content with just silly iPads!
Silicon Valley please start thinking "actual future" and give us some
replicators and holodecks. Especially holodecks.

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jfoutz
I guess i'd hold up the culture series, and the diamond age as my vision of
futurism. Those are both decades old though.

Any suggestions for something written after, say, 2005?

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r00fus
Does it need to be written after 2005? Fire Upon Deep/Hyperion-Endymion/The
Matrix (all 90's works) all posited Humans vs. AIs as a central theme, and I'd
say that's another interesting take - has all sorts of frankenstein's monster
implications, creator/creation contrasts.

In case you're wondering about more recent Sci-Fi, I googled it, and here's a
good listing of interesting concepts:

[http://io9.com/5929436/10-recent-science-fiction-books-
that-...](http://io9.com/5929436/10-recent-science-fiction-books-that-are-
about-big-ideas)

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scotty79
Iain M Banks, Culture - commonplace AI of human level and above in form of
drones and larger entities. Pretty please.

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CleanedStar
In the opening issue of the National Review, William F. Buckley said the
magazine "stands athwart history, yelling Stop". When their political
antithesis ended in the early 1990s, the book that probably best summed up the
establishment intellectual view of the time was one which said we were at "The
End of History".

I think comments such as these bookending the Cold War speak for themselves.
The tendencies of monopoly capitalism have been written about for over a
century. Romney's slam of Tesla is part of all that (please don't say Romney
was against Tesla due to government breaks - it's more difficult to name a
large company not getting government subsidies than one which does get one,
including Romney's own Steel Dynamics). The Democratic party is so near this
position as well to be almost indistinguishable from the GOP.

