[ednite]

It is always fascinating to see how much influence authors and scientists have had on each other throughout history.

You sometimes see clear examples of how fiction fuels technology, and sometimes technology inspires fiction.

As a writer who hasn’t been published yet, I find that most of my stories start by imagining where today’s science might take us next, though every now and then, I catch a glimpse of something that feels truly original.

I'm curious if others here feel the same. Is the future mostly written by visionaries in fiction, or by the engineers and scientists bringing it to life? Or maybe it’s a union, intended or not, between both sides.

[protocolture]

>Is the future mostly written by visionaries in fiction, or by the engineers and scientists bringing it to life?

I find Charles Stross' blog to be quite informative.

He has a tendency to predict a thing, write a book demonstrating how it will be good, and then absolutely hate the real world implications of the technology.

Famously he picked up Nick Szabo's old whitepaper on smart contracts, and envisaged a world where the technology would be used to disrupt an evil US government. Making it too hard for them to examine complex business structures.

By the time we got smart contracts, he was dead set against their use. And has written a lot about how corporations are in fact evil AI running on the operating system of the government.

He also has a variant of crypto currency in one of his novels, used to trade at light speed (so incredibly slowly) against distant space colonies. He is quite anti crypto, and I believe if such a system were deployed he would be quite against it.

The problem I guess is that its fun to imagine a thing, but not as fun always to live with it.

[GolfPopper]

>And has written a lot about how corporations are in fact evil AI running on the operating system of the government.

I would say his view of them is more Lovecraftian than "evil", but here's the speech (as a blog entry): https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-yo...

[BirAdam]

In general, people being people, it is always safe to assume that some will use a thing for its best purpose and others for its worst possible purpose.

[protocolture]

Pretty much.

I also get the impression that as people age they place an increasing value on safety and comfort. Change is the antithesis to that.

[eikenberry]

Also good to remember that groups of people are not people, they think and act differently than any of the individuals that make them up.

[ednite]

That’s an interesting point you make, and a great example with Charles Stross. It’s a good reminder that ideas and inventions can have surprising real-world effects, sometimes not what the creators hoped for.

I’m dreading the day I hear, “I’m sorry Ed, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” (kidding).

[cmrx64]

as a high schooler I took a summer class in “reading & writing scifi” offered by MIT Junction. it was very influential on my intellectual development and after that I focused myself on learning software and electronics, the only crafts I saw that could give me the power to pull parts of the visions into the present.

a few weeks ago I started on a focused read of historical scifi, in chronological order, that had something to say about intelligent machines and AI. I feel like the best story for our moment might be “The Master Key,” where a boy wise beyond his years rejects powers too advanced for humanity to adapt.

all my interest in building https://rbg.systems came from wanting the sort of powerful, resilient, reflective software systems that show up in fiction all the time but are so far from the reality. it’s pretty boring stuff to try and reach something like the ship described in Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson.

[knodi123]

> “The Master Key,” where a boy wise beyond his years rejects powers too advanced for humanity to adapt.

For those stumbling by- that's a 1901 novel by L. Frank Baum, who also wrote The Wizard Of Oz! Here's a synopsis: https://oz.fandom.com/wiki/The_Master_Key

[cstever]

For those intereseted. Here's the link to "The Master Key" on Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21526

[kataklasm]

In a similar vein, I really liked "Robot" by Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg, first published in 1973. It doesn't really mention AI itself, but it is about the relationship between humans and artificial life/intelligence. The central theme is the question of knowing if you're "real" in an artificial world. Not the easiest read and can be quite dark at times, but one of my favorite works of classical science fiction. Very underrated!

[ednite]

That is interesting. I might have to find some time to check out the book. Thanks for sharing your experience.

[aadhavans]

I feel the same way, although I think technology's inspiration on fiction is stronger. Today's fiction, as you said, is simply tomorrow's science.

[ednite]

Thanks for your comment, that’s exactly what I was wondering about.

For me, I actually tend to see things the other way around where authors often inspire tech. Example, engineers who watched Star Trek as kids and ended up designing the first flip phones. Sometimes we build things simply because technology finally makes them possible, and only later do we realize it’s straight out of a story we grew up with.

Especially when a whole generation grows up with the same sci-fi stories, certain ideas just start to seem “normal” or even become things people expect to see for real. A kind of relationship between our collective dreams and the inventions that follow, i guess.

[em-bee]

while i agree in principle, you seem to make it sound like without a science fiction story, some things would not have been invented. but i disagree with that. the thing is that science fiction is the imagination of humans of how the future could look like but new ideas in tech come from the same source. that is, while star trek may have predicted phones and tablets they were not invented because of star trek. they would have been invented anyways simply because it is part of the imagination of humans. just like multiple authors can come up with the same plot lines or settings, multiple people can invent the same tech.

science fiction represents the full breath of human inventiveness, and tech inventions the part that can realistically be built. in that sense the first airplane was also inspired by historical scifi

basically, someone has an idea, and either, like you, they write about it, or, if it is realistic enough, and they know how to do it, they set out to build it. and any idea that is written about but can be realized (and is practical enough to be useful) will eventually be realized. but ideas are cheap, and i feel we give far to much credit to people having an idea because a thousand others probably had the same idea, but only a few write about it and a few more are able to build it, while the remaining 995 stay silent and do nothing about it.

what makes scifi interesting is to predict inventions that at the time can't yet be realized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_existing_technologies_...

so i credit star trek not for inspiring the tablet, but for predicting it, and more so, for popularizing the idea. the flip phone less so, because the original communicator is just a wireless handset with a cover. very different from what a flip phone actually does. (you'll notice that the flip phone is not listed in the above wikipedia page, and even the tablet has been described more than a decade before it appeared in star trek TNG)

[ednite]

I get what you’re saying, and it makes total sense. I’d lean toward it being the best (and worst) of both worlds: sometimes stories spark inventions, sometimes inventions spark stories, and we can probably agree it’s rarely just one-way.

In my case, my imagination pulled me into writing, where I conjure things up, so I definitely feel that inspirational side, even if the ideas themselves aren’t always “original.” To the creator, though, they can feel original.

As I write fiction, I notice I often end up predicting futures where humans might go next. So you’re right, writing can be as much about prediction as inspiration. But I also like to think that, every now and then, a truly new paradigm emerges, something unpredictable, that most people didn’t even realize was needed until it existed. Sometimes, society doesn’t know what it needs until it’s already here.

Thanks for the link, really interesting list!

[em-bee]

related discussion: How Common Is Multiple Invention? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44195783