Futurismic

Alref Nordmann writes in IEEE Spectrum of how technological progress is, contrary to the promises of singularitarians like Ray Kurzweil, actually slowing down:

Technological optimists maintain that the impact of innovation on our lives is increasing, but the evidence goes the other way. The author’s grand mother lived from the 1880s through the 1960s and witnessed the adoption of electricity, phonographs, telephones, radio, television, airplanes, antibiotics, vacuum tubes, transistors, and the automobile. In 1924 she became one of the first in her neighborhood to own a car. The author contends that the inventions unveiled in his own lifetime have made a far smaller difference.
…
Even if we were to accept, for the sake of argument, that technological innovation has truly accelerated, the line ­leading to the singularity would still be nothing but the simple-minded ­extrapolation of an existing pattern. Moore’s Law has been remarkably successful at describing and predicting the development of semiconductors, in part because it has molded that development, ever since the semiconductor manufacturing industry adopted it as its road map and began spending vast sums on R&D to meet its requirements.
…
there is nothing wrong with the singular simplicity of the singularitarian myth—unless you have something against sloppy reasoning, wishful thinking, and an invitation to irresponsibility.

This is the same point made by Paul Krugman recently. Nordmann points out that most of the major life-changing technological changes of the past 100 years had all already happened by about the 1960s, with the IT revolution of the last fifty years being pretty much the only major source of technological change[1] to impact him over his lifetime.

This arguments suggests that the lifestyle of citizens industrialised countries will remain fairly stable for a lengthy period of time. It raises the serious point that the best we can hope for vis a vis technological change over the next few decades will just be incremental improvements to existing technologies, and greater adoption of technologies by people in poorer countries.

This would be no bad thing of course, but the suggestion that Ray Kurzweil’s revolutions in nanotechnology, genetics, biotechnology, and artifical intelligence may not arrive as early as Kurzweil predicts is pretty disappointing.

It could be that, to paraphrase William Gibson, the future is in fact here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

[1]: By “major source of technological change” I mean things like antibiotics, mass personal transport, and heavier-than-air flight. There certainly have been improvements in all these areas in the last 50 years, and much wider adoption, but these have not had as great an initial impact.

[from IEEE Spectrum, via Slashdot][image from Matthew Clark Photography & Design on flickr]

Here is a fine exploration of the differences and similarities in the use of artificial intelligences in Philip K. Dick and William Gibson’s writing:

Turing, whose purpose is to prevent AIs from developing too far, mirror the bounty hunters in Androids — the sole purpose of each is to control and destroy rogue intelligences, although in both novels their roles are shown from very different perspectives. In Neuromancer Turing are genuinely afraid of AIs: “You have no care for your species,” one Turing agent says to Case, “for thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons”.

Both Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Neuromancer portray artificial intelligences as lacking in empathy, but in different ways and for different reasons.

But would a human equivalent AI necessarily be lacking in empathy? Are humans as empathetic as we’d like to believe?

[via this tweet from SciFi Rules][image from agroni on flickr]

The reluctant but charming crown prince of cyberpunk William Gibson got asked to write a piece for New Scientist on the future of science fiction.

The Future of Science Fiction? We’re living in it. Those “Future History” charts in the back of every Robert A Heinlein paperback, when I was about 14, had the early 21st century tagged as the “Crazy Years”. He had an American theocratic dictatorship happening about then. I hope we miss that one.

Amen. Go read the whole thing; it looks to be part of a “Sci-Fi Special” at New Scientist, including pieces from Stephen Baxter, Ursula K Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Atwood and Nick Sagan.

Interestingly enough, Ms Atwood mentions that she knew a young man whose opinion she asked “was sci-fi fan because he said he liked Oryx & Crake“. Y’know, that novel she swore blind wasn’t science fiction.

Just in case you hadn’t noticed, the good folks at io9 have an interview with the nigh-legendary William Gibson, who I’m sure needs no introduction to Futurismic readers. Here he is explaining why he thinks people describe his work as dystopian:

“None of us ever live in dystopia. That’s an imaginary extreme. They just live in shitty cultures. And these societies [in my books] seem dystopian to middle class white people in North America. They don’t seem dystopian if you live in Rio or anywhere in Africa. Most people in Africa would happily immigrate to the Sprawl.“

Click on over; plenty of brain food in exchange for five minutes of your time. [image by fugin]

I have a bad relationship with the movie industry – they have a terrible habit of taking books I love and murdering them on screen. I had a rant about it when I first heard someone had optioned William Gibson’s Neuromancer, but Jason Ellis has just pointed out the fact that they’re actually casting it already.

Being somewhat detached from the cinema world, I have no idea who Hayden Christensen is, or whether he’d be any good as Case (or indeed as anyone). But there’s a microcosm example of why good books die when they leap to celluloid, in the commentary at this film fan site where Ellis found the news:

“I’ll be honest and admit I’ve never read NEUROMANCER and my rudimentary attempts to try and understand the plot have only confused me. But it seems very much a precursor to the Matrix with the book even referring to “the matrix.”" [my emphasis]

Face, meet palm. I’m guessing there’ll be a lot of explosions and bullet time to keep the slow readers happy. [Image lifted from linked article at JoBlo.com]

Anyone care to suggest a book-to-film conversion that really worked, with the obvious (and in my opinion unique) exception of Blade Runner?