
Today's Inventors Need to Read More Science Fiction (2013) - ohjeez
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/why-todays-inventors-need-to-read-more-science-fiction/279793/?single_page=true
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jhallenworld
People need to read more HP Lovecraft:

Advanced alien race developed a biologically based generic machines
(Shuggoths)- but eventually they developed free will and rebelled. (Also same
race accidentally developed all life on earth).

Humans will be able to travel to the stars, but only by having their brains
extracted and stored in small jars (allowing the mass to be small enough for
another alien race to carry). Once at the destination, the brains can be
connected to electrical devices which allow them to speak and perceive.

Also a warning against search engines: "The most merciful thing in the world,
I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We
live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity,
and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining
in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing
together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of
reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad
from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new
dark age."

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vlehto
The good: Scifi demonstrates how outsider perspective is often valuable.

The bad: Faster horse problem. You don't leard what people actually want or
need. You learn what people might think they might want.

For "new" ideas I like to read failed concepts from the dawn of the technology
in question. You will find stuff that was conceived by masters of their field,
but which failed for some relatively minor reason. Those minor reasons might
not be true anymore.

~~~
Lordarminius
How in general do you find such material?

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vlehto
Patents and sometimes books and old magazines. I like guns and I found "weird
old gun concepts" book from local library.

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urza
I am currently reading Permutation City by Greg Egan and I highly recommend it
to anyone interested in ideas how our future might look like regarding AI and
virtual reality. So far superb read.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City)

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pmlnr
Everyone needs to read more science fiction.

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nxzero
Yes, making an educated guess about how tech will impact a culture and the
individuals within it is important; no, reading fiction is not a good way to
do this.

Studying fields like ethnography and anthropology would likely to give you the
tools to model the future than cherry picking fictional narratives of the
future.

Dynamics of mass social engineering would also be of use:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(politica...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_\(political_science\))

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hartror
With driver-less cars I don't think I've read an article or heard a podcast
that deals with the subject and doesn't talk about the its possible impacts.

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kordless
In the future, maybe we'll figure out telling each other what to do isn't the
thing we should do. Maybe everyone will do whatever they want to do, and
whatever it is they do will be interesting to someone else just because it was
unique.

That's the science fiction future I want to live in!

~~~
jamesrcole
Come on, it's not like they're commanding people to do something. They're
making an argument why doing it would be beneficial. What's wrong with that?

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cmurf
War Stars, The Superweapon and the American Imagination by H. Bruce Franklin

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Animats
Inventing is dead, killed by the anti-patent lobby. It's really hard to make
money by inventing any more unless you do a startup, which is a different
skill set.

~~~
FiatLuxDave
I don't agree with the downvotes, but I disagree that inventing is any more
dead now than it has ever been. As far as I know, successful inventors have
always needed the startup skillset. If you look at historical inventors'
stories, it is very rare to see the classical case of an inventor who builds a
prototype, patents it, and the world then beats a path to their door. Instead,
typically an inventor will partner with someone who has more business skills
than themselves and they develop a market for it together. That sounds a lot
like a startup to me.

Considering how the vast majority of patents end up protecting intellectual
property which is worth nothing, the real barriers to professional inventing
don't seem to be in the patent arena, but in the business arena. It has always
been hard to sell an invention to a large company for commercialization. At
least today the option of making an invention-based startup which could then
be acquired by a big corp provides a business path. If there is a problem with
that path, it is only that startup funding seems to focus on internet
marketing more than actual invention these days.

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Animats
_" It is very rare to see the classical case of an inventor who builds a
prototype, patents it, and the world then beats a path to their door."_

Yes, that's a problem. There are some notable successes, though. A famous one
is the electronic florescent lamp ballast, that little piece of electronics in
the base of CFLs. It took a lot of litigation, but the inventor finally won
and made over $100 million.[1]

It used to be easier to sell inventions to big companies because they feared
an injunction, putting them out of business. That went away in 2006, with the
decision in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange. Previously, it was possible to get a
permanent injunction, as Polaroid did against Kodak when Kodak tried to move
into instant photography. Kodak had 30 days to get out of the business and had
to buy all the cameras back.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/01/business/award-to-
lighting...](http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/01/business/award-to-lighting-
inventor-upheld-on-appeal.html)

