This was the year after “Blade Runner” (1982), and the year of 1989’s “Cyberpunk 2020.” I have heard that there will be a video game based on the latter coming out this year, except the year in the title is now 2077.
Yet we do have a kind of cyborg capacity in these smart phones with internet access almost anywhere. It’s transformed how we think and what about, not always for the better. Hip and knee replacements have gotten better: I often compete alongside guys with one or both, and they seem to perform just fine. I read that the Olympics have had to bar some prosthetic legs because they give too big an advantage to runners. Chemicals are frequently banned for the same reason.
So it’s not quite what we had imagined from the 1980s, but it’s not completely different either. I open the floor for further discussion along this line.
I read that the Olympics have had to bar some prosthetic legs....
ReplyDeleteWe do, though, have men with chemical prostheses competing in women's sports, so there's that.
And folks of either gender with self-esteem problems using each other's bathrooms.
Eric Hines
I think one thing we need to think about are limits to the ability of the human to be augmented. Google Glass was an interesting phenomenon, because it largely failed- not in operation but in adoption. Partly it was people didn't want to engage someone who was potentially recording them, but also it seems most or many people didn't want to have a layer of technology constantly between them and the world. It affects engagement, and can overload our senses to the point that we have difficulty focusing and accomplishing anything useful or fulfilling. It's an interesting problem.
ReplyDeleteThat may be an engineering problem. Technology works best when it is invisible. Google Glass might fail where cybernetic eyes could succeed: because they would seem to the user like eyes, and to those who saw the user the same. But they’d see far better, and might augment the display of reality in useful ways.
ReplyDeleteFor that matter we accept even heavy-handed technology if it is smooth enough and useful enough. Glasses themselves for example: cosmetically obvious and ugly, easy to misplace, uncomfortable, but we wear them all the same.
To an extent, I think the path to making us "better" with technology lies along the path of replacing body parts. We've got better and better--in the sense of more and more precision-based function--limb replacements to the point that leaf-spring feet and ankle prostheses let folks who've lost those limbs not just walk along, but run effectively.
ReplyDeleteWe're making remarkable progress with prosthetics letting people hear and see after they've been functionally deaf or blind.
Making us better in some sense will succeed, for good or ill, as a next step, not as a current step.
That next step, though, will need to have along with it not just raw improvement, but an ability to use the improvement effectively. Take that hearing or vision, for example. For the most part, we get along just fine with what we hear and see. Increasing the sensitivity of those senses (I'm not sure how much more we can increase visual sensitivity; it only takes a single photon to trigger a rod in our retina) would bring only limited "improvement," but increasing the range of sensitivity also would bring along a potful more data that our brains would have to learn to filter effectively lest we become significantly poorer off due to overload. And it may be that our brains, evolved along with evolving sensory input, would be unable to do the added filtering.
Eric Hines
I just want a laser rifle, powerful enough to write graffiti on the moon. Plus a flying car, designed by Stelio Frati. And sexy space babes. That's not too much to ask of the future, is it?
ReplyDeleteI used to hate glasses. Sucks to be blind without. But night time woods running and sticks that would have come out my neck without eye protection and metal shards being scraped out of my eyeballs has really enhanced the appeal. Glasses rock!
" but increasing the range of sensitivity also would bring along a potful more data that our brains would have to learn to filter effectively lest we become significantly poorer off due to overload. And it may be that our brains, evolved along with evolving sensory input, would be unable to do the added filtering."
ReplyDeleteThis. Our brains *already* toss out a huge portion of the raw data coming through our optic nerves, because it's already overwhelming in it's entirety. Instead we have 'algorithms' that help us determine what's most likely important, and focus on that. To the extent that augmented visual perception would be useful, it has to be directed and specific, and something that the user would want to focus on. Until we have software that can intelligently edit all the raw data to give you what is likely relevant, I have a hard time seeing how something like that would work.
Now auditory improvement, I can see some use for. My Dad's hearing aids already are also a Bluetooth phone headset, for example, and that's pretty cool.
I still want my flying cars.
ReplyDeleteWhat about sexy space babes? Or sexy space dudes... for the distaff half of humanity ?:)
ReplyDeleteThere you go, assuming someone's pronouns, again.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
My Dad's hearing aids already are also a Bluetooth phone headset, for example, and that's pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but that's not making your Dad better; it's making his tool better. Roughly akin to adding a nail puller to the back of the head of a hammer.
And it wouldn't do curmudgeons like me much good. I let calls to my landline go to my answer machine so I can hear who's calling before I'll answer, and calls to my cell go to voicemail if I don't recognize the number. I don't need all that extraneous ringing in my ear, with an added decision to make. It's a terrible problem to have....
Eric Hines
"Or sexy space dudes"
ReplyDeleteA cursory review of Analog Magazine circa 1960 will show there is no shortage of buff'n sexy Space Dudes. Also Sexy Space Babes with an amazing ability to survive in near vacuum sans spacesuit.
From what I hear, this year it’s not babes but a space baby that’s all the rage.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year everyone!
ReplyDeleteI don't know about space babes or dudes, but what about space hounds? That's gotta be a thing in the future.
I always wanted a space robot hound as a kid, but really as an adult, what’s wrong with real dogs?
ReplyDeleteI grew up with a real dog. Supposedly napped with her puppies when I was a newly mobile baby, and I was away at college when she died.
ReplyDeleteShe was a really terrific watchdog, too, though a terrible sentry. Everyone--everyone--got loud enthusiastic barking if they so much as looked cross-eyed into our yard. But way too friendly. We'd know the burglar was coming, and if we waited, we'd see her looking for pets from him.
Eric Hines
I have heard that there will be a video game based on the latter coming out this year, except the year in the title is now 2077.
ReplyDeleteThe one made by CD Projekt Red I presume.
I just want a laser rifle, powerful enough to write graffiti on the moon.
Did you know that they were beaming signals from the Apollo moon missions back to Nixon and Cape Kennedy, at 30 frames per second, live streaming, using 1960s technology and a receiver/transmitter on power scale of a few watts? Using an angled dish not much bigger (or even smaller) in transmission, than direct TV's dish.
What people don't know is where the 21 trillion (yes, that is the official number now, due to failed SecDef audits) that DoD has been missing for some time now.
Black RnD. That future technology Disney talked about? The USA already had, but they canceled the disclosure of due to reasons. The alternative is that the tech never existed... which is also valid but raises another bigger issue. Without the technology, how did man stream live video at 30 fps from the moon?
Also, 8 second time lag? Nope, not to the moon and back. So either the USA had ftl technology or things were never as they seemed with Apollo.
with an amazing ability to survive in near vacuum sans spacesuit.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's little different from today's lack of working spacesuits.
They work underwater fine though. Vacuum experts may understand that water pressure and vacuum is a little bit different.
They don't actually need vacuum suits, even if they did work. If you were in a vacuum and you had a choice of being in a space suit, unhelmeted, or a pollo shirt, which would you choose for days on end?
ReplyDeleteISS NASA chooses shirts. Must be an Air Force thing.
There's been a number of Naval insiders talking about the US-German research programs into anti gravity. Although, it goes back to Nikola Tesla, so this is 1930s, not 2030s... haha.