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Science

Sir Arthur Clarke Writes About the 21st Century 167

Posted by Roblimo from the optimism-lives! dept.
A.Cow writes "CNN has an article by Sir Arthur Clarke with his predictions (extrapolations, as he puts it) for the 21st century..." The article's subtitle: "Man lands on Mars, the elderly retire to the moon, humans are cloned. Welcome to the brave new world."
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Sir Arthur Clarke Writes About the 21st Century More

Sir Arthur Clarke Writes About the 21st Century

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  • >Nothing is as difficult as predicting.
    >Especially predicting the future.

    Predicting the past doesn't *quite* have the same ring...

    >It will be here before Windows 2003 :-)

    sometime in 2020?

    >Then there's the nuclear bomb going off in North
    >Korea in 2009. Why North Korea? I mean, isn't
    >the probablility bigger that some terrorist
    >group or crazy dictator gets/makes one and
    >smuggles it into US?

    North Korea is going to self destruct really badly soon. Really, really badly. It's gonna be messy, it's gonna be violent and China's gonna step in and 'help'.

    >Oh, and life on both Europa and the Halley's
    >Comet. Maybe they'll also be able to find that
    >spacecraft behind the comet too? The one where
    >you get by making a suicide. Elvis pilots it
    >BTW.

    2002 Microsoft's stock collapses and hundreds of programmers leave the company to join other companies to develope for Linux.

    >2000-2020 A massive earth quake destroys Tokyo
    >resulting in worldwide economical problems when
    >the Japanese people pull their money back to >rebuild the city.

    2025 A terrorist with Genetic Engineering creates a mutant, fire breathing lizard and send it to destroy Tokyo. Luckily, all of the Tokyo Emergency Services grew up watching Gojira movies and just nuke the slimy bastard before he gets within a hundred miles. (They also make helicopters that can go up.)

    >But in the end it's sad to watch these
    >predictions. A space hotel is more important
    >than helping developing countries and getting
    >food for everyone. Also first world people get
    >to live on the moon while tens of thousands of
    >children die of hunger and wars.

    People were starving in Europe when the New World was discovered. It is not the job of humanity to protect people from themselves.

    dave
  • Could you see a Justice system run by AI's, or a political system where the politicians are incorruptable and always
    logical. Done right it could be a wonderful thing.

    Compassion != logic, tho.
  • Ah, OK, I know now what you mean. When you were referring to "drift" I instantly thought about population genetics.
    Well, I'm sorry if I sound a little like an "smartass", but what you are referring to is more or less group selection, which, I'm sorry to say, is - whith a few exeptions - abandoned in modern population genetics. I'm sorry to state that what you say is contrary to what is now accepted in genetics. If the parents have a high intelligence, than in the case of a multi-loci trait like IQ, the distribution of this trait in offspring will be according to the binominal distribution, with the mean being the mean for the two parents. That means that the chance for the offspring to have an even higher IQ is quite good.
    Imagine two people, each having 20 cards, black and red (red denote genes for "high" IQ. The exact number is unknown, of course). Now, let those people randomly choose 10 from their cards and pool them together, to get another 20. Now, if those people have a lot of red cards in their hands, do you expect that in the resulting 20 cards there will be significantly smaler proportion of red cards? Why?
    Regards,
    January
  • I think you have totally misundestood me, but as a dumb foreigner I am not capable of expressing myself more clearly than I did in the original post.
    By the way, I was on the vacation in Etiopia. Tried to talk to them about integrated sustainable farming, with not much succes, though. Wonder why.
    j.
  • If I do recall, the society that did that ended up dying from a horrible epidemic because they got rid of all their telephone sanitizers. =)

  • There's plenty of room for 100 Billion or more on this planet, postulating that land will no longer be used for food production, and replicators will make deserts and seabeds (not to mention nearby moons, planets, and asteroids) liveable...

    Have you ever really looked at a map of Canada or China or Siberia? Literally millions of square miles of completely unpopulated wilderness are still there waiting for settlers.

    We're good for a few centuries of Utopia at least.

    Whenever anyone uses the phrase "pipe dream" it's a sure sign that they have no counter arguments other than prevailing opinion.

  • That's Iain M. Banks.

    And I recommaend any of his books to any science fiction fan. Truly spectacular stuff.

  • And the moral of the story... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The above has been moderated up because it's funny, but let's look at the deeper truths, shall we?

    The post is dark. Most of the lines deal with stupidity, malice, and short-sightedness; it includes references to the accidental annihiliation of an entire planetary biosphere, the brutal gunning down of protestors, and the destruction of Earth's civilization because of political difficulties.

    More than half involve deaths.

    Yet, it is funny, because it's exaggerated, of course, and because it is consistent with how humans behave. Clarke's list reads like old Westerns about How The West Was Won, where everyone was noble and right.

    Well, we are humans. We will fail, we will make mistakes, there will be tragedies and cruelties and pain. It is unavoidable.

    And that, oddly enough, is why we laugh.

  • Dec. 26, 2012

    As the Mayan calendar ends the outer crust of the Earth, unbalanced by the immense weight of the polar ice caps, slips around the interior of the planet like a loose orange peel, leaving the former poles at the equator and some unfortunate equatorial regions at the new poles.

    The violence of this upheaval sloshes the water out of the oceans, completely shaving the continents of plants, animals, topsoil and manmade structures. It also triggers a cataclysmic series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions which serve to obliterate any remaining multicellular life.

    Many aeons later everyone who ever lived on Earth is recreated from DNA by a benign superbeing who restores our memories and we all live happily ever after...

    I mean come on, it's so obvious. ;^)

  • Recently I have had the pleasure of listening to a speech by Stephen Jay Gould on the subject of predictability - or the lack therof. According to him, the hope that New York will exist in even 50 years is a question. We as humans seek patterns, patterns which truely do not exist in nature. As a history major, I don't know if I agree, but I am strongly leaning towards Gould's take.
  • Hey Folks,
    I remember when the Apple Newton came out that it seemed like a very familiar device: Handheld computer, holds mostly personal data and contacts, modified (limited) input, infrared deelie to communicate with a larger computer, invented in the 1990s... Yep, Clarke described the PDA (he called it the Minisec) in his 1976 novel Imperial Earth. Of course in that novel the Titanic was raised and brought to New York as a tourist attraction... Still think his record is better than Nostradamus or modern prognosticators.
    Z
    --
  • Because nothing but members of the 'human race' count. If it had, people would have to chang their eating habits and their view on the world around them ("Natural Is Good", "Killing [humans] Is Bad", ...)

    So until meat is made by machines todays attitude of "Ingnore the issue, shut up about it and pretend it doesn't exist. Whit^H^H^H^H Humans above all!" will dominate.
  • Some important predictions for the short term future are :-

    1. Thrid world countries get on the internet.

    2. Internet telephony allows for cheap communication. Business flourishes because of the internet. It is no longer important that you are in the same geographic zone as your customer.

    3. Deployment of 3rd generation of wireless in Europe and Asia.

    4. Virtual cities are created. Everyone has virtual identity.

    There can be a lot of interesting changes in life because of internet. Would love to see someone predict those.

    CP
  • I moot for commercial replication of Arthur C Clarkes rose-tinted virtual jack-in kit, and suggest that he's lost touch with the time continuum. Either that or his LSD is kicking in.

    There were no real surprises in the 'futurist visions' -- it's just the timeframe which is a little hard to swallow. Is it spit or swallow? I'd like to believe ACC [he says he's spared us the grisly bits] but it's all too unbelievably Utopian for me. I give us 12 years max until TEOTWAWKI.

    Before then it'd be grand to see the Dalai Lama restored to what the Chinese left of Tibet. Oh, and Cold Fusion. I won't hold my breath -- I'll only go blue and clash with my dress.

    Tempus fugit...especially in a Tardis.
  • You just used one of his soothsayed products to post and deliver your msg to a few thousand nerds who read /. everyday :)


    Enjoy!

    Maybe the one about his 100 bday visit to Hilton Orbital is kinda far feathed :) But who knows.. He's one of the first to sign up to freeze his brain (Along with Mel Gibson ??? um? )
    --
  • Perhaps the basic idea is, indeed, clustering. However, to be affective of AI, clustering at the CPUs' chip level. Multiple chips microcoded to sort, assess, separately process and reassemble words or syntactical mensurates of code. Efficacious glass might yield bandwidth and intra-affectivity within groups and groups of groups of such CPU'ed chips. Hypothetically, then, this sort of device might! (thermodynamics) yield a independent problem selection microprocessing aggregate that might also admit solutions' in variety.
  • Well, I like the fact that he put concepts like nano-replicators, superhuman AI, generators powered by virtual particles/antiparticles, SpaceGuard, the end of Work, etc., linked to from CNN's front page for the public to look at (and, horrors, maybe even think about). Still, if he postulates human-level AI which would be "evolving far more rapidly than biology would ever permit", it is clear that a technological Singularity would follow within years, maybe even days. After the Singularity we'd be living in a post-Human era, and what happens next is virtually impossible to predict, or even imagine.
  • I refuse to believe that Sir Arthur C. Clarke means this list of predictions seriously. It reads like a "Wouldn't it be nice if.." more than any kind of at least semi-serious prediction about the future. Most of the stuff he "predicts" will never happen - or at least not nearly as soon as he says.
    I think Clarke is getting rather cynical at us here... We all know the world 50 years down the road will be a nasty mess with 30+ nuclear weapons nations and China, a country which does not have any respect for human rights whatsoever, becoming the world's most powerful industrialized nation. We haven't even started to solve issued like pollution, the hole in the ozone layer, the destuction of the rain forests, and whaling. We play with nuclear power and obviously can't handle it. Not to mention the recent moves by certain governments to trying to catch up to 1984, finally. So what if they're 30 years late?

    No, What Clarke proposes is not a prediciton, at all. The only thing that he does - and it's a good thing he does - is showing the mainstream public some things that COULD be - if we only worked hard enough.

    Maybe he'll inspire a few readers to achieve something for the improvement of human life.

    And just maybe, reading his "predictions", a couple of youngsters will not become as cynical as I am. And that, in itself, would be a noble thing to achieve.

  • Reality check (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes... Maybe that's what we would like to think will happen to the world, but all nuclear weapons destroyed in 10 years time? Nooooo, I don't think so!
  • "The Dalai Lama returns to Tibet."

    Yes, that would be nice, thank you.



  • Freezing Keanu Reeves? Yeah, I'm all for it.

  • ...Is this a geek to-do list? (Score:3)

    by henley ( 29988 ) on Monday October 11, 1999 @01:23AM (#1625609) Homepage

    Interesting article, and I'd definitely subscribe to the already-expressed opinion that Sir Clarke has a somewhat optimistic timeline there.

    However, my point (such as it is), is that I have a friend who's central tenet of Geek Society is that geeks exist to make the cyberpunk predictions of William Gibson come true.

    Think about it:

    1. World-wide common network access (check)
    2. Immersive access to same (check...ish, for limited values of "immersive")
    3. Trans-national corporations exploiting this pervasive common communication medium (check)
    4. A hacker "class" which self-organises based on bragging rights in a gift-economy of code sharing (check)
    5. A cracker "underclass" which exists to exploit both of the above (check)
    6. An essentially police-state where all information on "Us" is monitored by "Them" (check.. or rather, getting there)

    I disagree with his hypothesis on the grounds of esthetics (geeks can't be this shallow, can they?), however as time goes on I find my position wavering: See developments since Gibson's novels in mobile communications, the web, e-commerce, encryption technology, and the comprehensive failure of society's control mechanisms (i.e. the legal system, business models, political reality) to keep up with all this technology.

    Which raises the question here: since we're so obviously running out of things of Gibson's wish list, isn't it about time the geek community got behind another "visionary" and worked on THEIR wish-list instead?

    And if so, why not Clarke? I'm all in favour of cheap power, space exploration, an and to war, poverty and famine.

    (I just don't think it's doable, that's all. Certainly not in only 1 century)

    henley

  • My question is: where does the Matrix come in?
    Do we have to freeze Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss now and save them up for when the Matrix is made? The invention of AI and those braincap's seems to suggest that this might happen.

    -rob

  • ... (Score:1)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 )

    Broadcast message from root Sun Oct 10 08:28:27 1999...

    The world is coming to an end, please logout.

    --
    Man, this Arthur Clarke guy is pretty naive - root (god) and that naustrdamnus guy has been telling us that on Jan 1, 2000 all the computers are gonna blow up, nuclear bombs are going to whistle all over the world, and the apocolipse is gonna hit us. :)


    --
  • Uuuh,I thought that the High tech companies investing in GM crops were making single use seeds. In that you take the GM Seed, you plant the seed, Nature grows the seed, you harvest the crop and there are no more *fertile* seeds...!
    You have to buy another "one-use" seed!
  • It really does, and now is a great time to be alive. I think one of mankind's strongest inner drives is to build the future. I think it's cool that many of the changes are occurring in the computer field, where so many of us choose to concentrate. I really appriciate Clarke's positive portrayal because in real life we are surrounded by nay-sayers. Oh well, i suppose the nay-saying does serve to keep us on our toes and protect the future our decendants will live in.

    Oh brave new world we live in, to have people such as these
  • I hate to rant (honest :-), but this is the exact same article verbatim that appeared in Frontiers magazine some months ago, and to which I refered (I think) in a reply before the weekend.

    Perhaps Mr Clarke figured that a marginal UK sci-f((i)|(act)) zine simply wasn't making enough cash for him? Perhaps CNN hasn't checked up on the contract he must have signed with Frontiers? Perhaps this is a new era in Open-source journalism? Perhaps I'm just jealously screaming "I saw it first!!!"? Who knows...

  • While no one can accurately predict the long distance future (ie, saying that Fred will each lunch in 5 minutes doesn't count), I think A.C. Clarke is definitely along the right track. I do find some of the concepts a little far fetched, but then again, that is only because of the limitations of current tech.

    Even if only half of what he writes comes true (I'd love to see nukes go and cold fusion arrive), then we've got an interesting century ahead of us. Even "better", I have the chance of seeing up until about 2060 if my health doesn't fail me early. This is one to archive somewhere and compare against every 10 years.

  • The problem with the article is perhaps that Clarke is happy to make the assumption that the various the problems mentioned in the original post (misery, starvation, all the usual suspects) will be eliminated by the technological advances. This certainly hasn't been the case this century and I don't think it is justifiable to claim the next century will be any different.

    OTOH it is great that the ideas he mentioned are even conceivable in the time scale given - They might not a panacea, but that doesn't stop them being pretty cool... :o)
  • Put too much sugar on your rice crispies again?

    --

  • Re:... (Score:1)

    by cdlu ( 65838 )
    offtopic......(way off)
    Anyone know what ever happened to the netwall protocol?
  • Ive been reading a lot of horrible predictions lately about an AI that we create that in turn ends up getting very mean and killing all of mankind (the matrix, various other 21st c predictions on /.) Now maybe Im being naive here, but it seems to me that as long as we are careful in programming this AI that there is no way that it would become evil and blood thirsty. If we do not give them the capacity to become angry, or to possess any of the more "negative" emotions that we have, then I can't see them ever becmoing evil.

    But I suppose that that whole statement is based on the assumption that these AIs would have emotions, which are what always drive all human conflicts. So what about a life form that had no emotion? Could it be violent and try to kill us all?? The reference I will use is from star trek: the next generation. If we look at Data, we see a AI life form who (initially) had no emotions, and who had failsafe programming to make him fall back on ethics. Then if we look at Data's brother Lore, we see an AI that had emotions and a worse ethics backup, and we see what bad things he did.

    But if we are creating something which is really a new life form, do we have the right to decide which if any emotions it has? a lot of these questions were addressed in star trek. mr. roddenbury was certainly a visionary, its a shame he's no longer with us to give us his view of the 21st centruy as we're getting to be 14 months away.
  • I have recently revised by beliefs about cold fusion from the standard explanation:
    "it's probably somewhere between gross measurement errors and downright hoax"
    to the milder version of:
    "there might actually be something there after all, but it's hard to tell with the current atmosphere"
    Apparently, there are many scientists all over the world and even in U.S. national labs still quietly researching cold fusion, often under less controversial titles such as "New Hydrogen Energy". They hold conferences, show bubbling electrolysis cells and claim the thermal energy output significantly exceeds the electric input for weeks.

    Are these people all completely incompetent in operating a calorimeter? Are they all charlatans spiking their samples with helium and other fusion byproducts? I'm finding it harder and harder to believe.

    These scientists are attacked by their colleagues, publicly ridiculed and their careers are often in danger. I can easily find parallels to the case of Barbara McClintock who discovered in the 1930s that some genes actually "jump around" and switch places in the chromosomes. The idea was so at odds with the prevailing paradigm that she was ridiculed for decades until she finally received a Nobel prize in 1983.

    I'm not claiming that the fact that someone is ridiculed by his peers is proof that he is correct, just that there are certain well-documented cases that the scientific community can be severely biased against theories which contradict common beliefs, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

    Sir Clarke may have the last laugh after all...
  • Cold fusion? how about another 100 years of fossil fuels, but no "global warming" or whatever. By that time, we should have something different.

    The Dalai Lama in Tibet? Nope. China as a superpower with a regional sphere of influence is more likely.

    Hilton Orbiter? Sure. And it will host Comdex. But we will get there with chemical fuels. Geeks puking in zero Gs. Eeeeewwwww.

    Braincaps? Hmmmmm. Nah. Unless all the firmware is open source, I would not trust it.

    Trip to Halley's Comet? Way cool. But no critters. Just a way cool dirty snowball.

    Resume burning fossile fuels to forestall an ice age? Nah. It's comuppance for Canadians being pain-in-the-neck scolds about global warming in the first place.

  • He pridicted and showed how modern satellites would be implemented. I think he knows what he's talking about.

    Enjoy
    --
  • Bright my ass. Those port scanners (gene fools, gene kiddies or as Linus would say scientists masturbating) will deduce that the Human Genome Project isn't enough. People have to keep their jobs some way. Next they will control every atom in your body. They already have genes what's left. and they call me a naysayer? :P

    I mean look at the sorry state of Physics, more elemental particles than atomic elements. Something very wrong with that.

    Hint: If there's a qualifiable difference between two items, then those items are not elemental. Therefore qualifiable variance results from combination not division. Think red yellow and blue. Combine those to produce more colors. And we all know why digital rgb monitors went analog. So you wouldn't have to have 24 wires per pixel to produce 24-bit color.


  • The drug war is far from solved.

    The drug war only exists because the powers that be (i.e., government) is trying to "solve" what is a medical problem by using police and soldiers. If you give the doctors and scientists a chance to work on the problem MAYBE it can be solved.

    I am an atheist but I don't understand why the majority of sheep, I mean people that believe in God, are so dead set against drugs. Let's see... God created the world in seven days, including the opium poppy, the coca plant and the hemp plant. God created receptors for those drugs in our brains. Did God make a mistake or something?

    And since when is it the government's role to tell me what I can and cannot put in my body? As long as I am not hurting anyone else, it should be no one's business but my own...

    --
  • and try not to think of the arrogant (and stupid) manipulativeness of the AIs in Gibson books.

    I think that Clarke is describing the beginning to a society very much like Ian M. Bank's 'The Culture' where decisions about resource management, politics, science and pretty much anything else of any importance are made by AIs who are benevolent - although impossible to fathom due to their superiority to meat brains.

    We will be relegated (as it were) to enjoying ourselves, allowing as much privacy as we require but the society will be so open-ended that things like blackmail will be nearly impossible (due, perhaps, to the fact that almost nothing will be prohibited and almost any image or movie can be created completely artificially.)

    Eventually, we will be pretty much obsolete, but as long as we make the AIs our protectors rather than our competitors, then there shouldn't be any problems...

    at least...

    not until they (the AIs) start building more complex AIs.

    But then, what is the point of destroying us? Is there anything to gain apart from the precious few resources that we consume?

    Hmmmmmn.

    --Nick
  • Third-World contries are third-world countries for a reason. There's nothing there worth taking. If there was, one of the European countries would've colonized it a long time ago, and who knows, it might have become a superpower.

    So if a country did not have the "privilege" of being colonized by a European country its their tough luck, huh? BZZZT - wrong! A lot of the world's problems we have today are the due to the after effects of European colonization...

    Maybe I'm cruel, but if a person doesn't contribute to society in some productive way, I think they should be removed from society. The only thing that the panhandler on my street corner contributes to society is fear and disgust.

    Define "productive". Define "removed from society". That panhandler you fear is a person too. Maybe they are mentally ill. Or a Viet Nam vet suffering from PTSD. Or maybe they just did not get all the breaks you obviously had when you were growing up.

    You say you work 60+ hrs/wk and yet you cannot spare some change for someone who is less well off than you? You assume that they are lazy, instead of talking to them and finding out what their story is? Maybe that person just needs a break or two to make something of their life...

    Coward indeed. If you had any bollocks you would put your name to your rants instead of hiding behind anonymnity. As it is we can only draw two conclusions: 1) you are a tightwad, and 2) while everyone is issued a brain, not everyone is taught how to use it!

    --
  • The PDA's been predicted many times.. Even by Sci-Fi authors who don't think they're sci-fi authors ;)

    (My Newton 2100's name is Abulafia)
  • Well, considering the huge collection of cars which, by that time, will be highly-prized antiques..

    And don't forget the huge collection of supermodel sex slaves which, by that time...
  • He isnt? wee, by deduction that means there are other people who actually CAN predict the future?

    Or, does Clarks article mean, that whatever wee bit of thruth could lie in such predictions (the article isnt SF really), probably would have been written by someone like Clarke? A well educated SF writer. Hell, Not that I liked Reagen, but he hired them (SF writers, or at least one of em Heinlein If I recall) to actually work on the future.

    If you need a hint that Clarke really isnt the messiah, like you suggest people need, I think that person would need a doctor. Even Clarke does not think that.

    Greets SlashDread

  • NO! (Score:1)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 )
    Why should we continue to use more area to live? We should be using VOLUME.

    We have the technology today to create large livable spaces that are aesthetically pleasant, while at the same time being practical.

    We could free up enough land for agriculture/farming to support the increased population.

    I am not talking about a large apartment complex, more like a volumized city. Certain problems would have to be overcome (like not using internal combustion engines on the "inside" for transportation, as well as the issue that people, for some reason, have a need for a "custom" home). But it is possible - today!
  • Karma is the turning of slashdot into a game.

    I have fairly high Karma, I guess. I do not typically post relevant or insightful posts. I guess I'm not really smart enough. But I do tend to post a lot of stuff that gets bumped up for being funny.

    There's a trick to it to. You've got to find an article with between 15-30 posts (enough so you're not conspicuous, and others have contributed enough material for a typical smartass comment, but not so much that the moderators won't have time or points to moderate you - also, stay away from the really controversial articles. If it's about columbine or GNOME v. KDE, the server will bog down too much for anyone to moderate, there will be 350 posts before you can blink an eye).

    That said, I still think that this new moderation system is the cat's fucking pyjamas. It has done wonders for most articles, keeping the garbage out, and properly highlighting the good stuff. I meta moderate too, and I see very few abuses, unlike the situation prior to meta moderation.

    Also, when you get over 25, always remember to click your "No Score +1 Bonus" box, otherwise people won't give you their moderation points if you start out at a 2, and you won't accumulate Karma as quickly.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • naw. Mankind's strongest inner drive is to set things up so that the rich people can endlessly suck more money from the poor people. Even in communist countries.

    We will only reach the technological singularity if someone can get rich off of it. And they'll drag it out as long as possible to maximize the profits.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • if all of these people are out of work, who the hell are going to buy all the 100% automatically produced cars?

    This is how the economy regulates itself. There will be hard times, but it will even out eventually.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • Okay, I'm not a typical Christian, but I am a Christian. The Bible even says that God created all of these plants, FOR us, and they are ours to do with as we please.

    Now, there's obviously a catch there, because by that logic, we should just cut down all the rainforests and use the wood for paneling inside our new Lincoln Town Cars. Obviously, we've got to use our brains, and use these things wisely.

    So it goes for drugs, and yes, there is a strong tendancy in some drugs, to lead people to abuse - the kind of abuse that DOES hurt people, their families, the economy, the concept of "values", etc.
    One of the big arguements that brought about prohibition was these newly empowered women's groups griping about how evil alchohol was driving their husbands out of the homes and causing them to spend all their time hanging out in bars with their buddies, getting drunk and renting hookers, etc. I think this would still be a problem today if we didn't have television.

    So, personally, I don't have a problem with a puff on a joint now and then. But drugs can be harmful, and they're very dangerous. Now, that doesn't give anybody the right to pry into someone else's personal business and test their pee. But most of us just aren't able to responsibly handle recreational cocaine and heroin use.

    Okay, so now that I've solved the drug problem, can we go to work on the flying cars? I mean come on, it's 3 months to go until the year 2000, and we still don't have flying cars! What's the matter with you people?

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • Right... AIs build more complex AIs and then you get Minds that run our lives and can solve all of society's problems in about 5 milliseconds and then spend the rest of its time in Infinite Fun Space.

    Anyway, I wonder how they will program AIs with morality... how will AIs decide what's wrong and what's right? What will AIs do when they read the human history and find out how humans have mistreated each other? What if the AI is evil and want to kill all humans, can an AI keep its thoughts secret? just wondering here...



    _______________________________________________
    There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
  • I predict that within 20 years, advances in the fields of robotics and AI will make obsolete all assembly line level jobs. The work can be reduced to simple enough steps that someone is going to realize its just cheaper to mechanize the whole nine yards. The resulting reductions in cost will be so great that no business will be able to remain competitive without upgrading.
    When this happens, there's going to be a whole lot of people without jobs, and a whole lot of heavy industry based economies that are going to hit the fan.
    What the hell are these largely unskilled people gonna do? How are they going to support themselves? I can forsee two possible end results, neither of them pretty.
    First, in wealthier, economically diverse countries, the non-working class will either be retrained by the government to do useful work (which I would imagine would be hard to find), or more likely supported on government welfare. In poorer countries, everything is just gonna go to hell.
    The other possibility would be to reduce the population; simply remove the industrial working class by randomly sterilizing a large number of people.

    Both of these possibilities scare the crap out of me.
  • I wrote the "the drug war is far from solved" rather than the "the drug problem is far from solved" intentionally. Obviously, the problem is not that there exists drugs from which the people gain pleasure, but that society thought that denial and draconian law was a solution.

    I'm an anarchist at heart, but in our current society I can buy people telling me not to something for others sake ("Don't drink and drive cause you might kill someone"), but not for my own ("Don't drink and drive cause you might kill yourself", "Don't do drugs cause they are bad for you").


    -
    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
  • I have to wonder if solving all of our hunger and labor problems will really solve anything. I have a small theory that I have been working on: 'Every problem will fill the available consciousness not filled by other problems' Ever meet a bored retired person? From my experience, their problems are things that if they still were working or raising a family, they wouldn't think twice about. If I live in a perfect life, then stub my toe on something, that pain is suddenly the _only_ thing wrong, so it will seem like a crisis. If we can somehow provide a way so that every person on the planet has enough food and other provisions to live, what will we fight over next? Will being needy mean that they don't have very good tasting food or very comforatable surroundings?

    After about 2 generations of any living conditions, people forget how lucky they are and the focus on the real problem is lost. for example, we americans eat too unhealthy, but we loose sight that eating unhealthy is much better than starving, so its not really a problem.

    Even if everyone is living the lifestyle that people enjoy in highly industrialized contries, very few people will realize what they have. We might be living in a utopia, but we will never know it. Its easy for someone in the past to think "wow no world hunger, it must be a perfect world". But the people living it won't think that way, they didn't live a life of starvation. There will be other 'major issues' like extending peoples lifespan and solving population problems to occupy the collective mind.

  • Yes, and these kids will wear coke-bottle glasses, and have acne. The new overlords of the human race. The ubermensch.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • Okay, but I was thinking in terms on influence on the SF film industry -- there are a lot of movies that tried to emulate or pull elements from Blade Runner but none of them did very well. I expect we'll see a lot of Matrix / Dark City ripoffs within the next few years.
  • Ok, so we have AI in 2020. An AI running how many times faster than a biological brain? Say a million times. Anyone care to guess what evolution looks like at 1,000,000 times the speed of human development after only one year? I can't think of anything that *wouldn't* be invented or solved after the first year. If 2020 is correct then I think he's missing the entry for 2021.."In the beginning..."

  • Gattaca was an interesting movie, but it missed the point in its all-American "You can do it if you only try" message. I wrote a review of it for a Swedish film site, where I compared the DNA prejudice in the movie to the Frenology (finding personal traits from the size of the brain) of the 1800s. I concluded however that the movie misses the point. The really frightening thing about DNA analysis is not that it makes prejudice based on DNA possible, prejudice is already deeply rooted in our society, but that that (unlike frenology which was just bullshit) prejudice based on genes would be right.

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    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
  • > 2002 Microsoft's stock collapses and hundreds of > programmers leave the company to join other
    > companies to develope for Linux.

    It will occur in 2000. That's why it is not on the list of 21st Century.

  • Wow, I do believe we have the first evidence of Karma-jealousy. I guess it was bound to happen.

    I think that Rob should put a board with the top ten Karma's. Then these issues would really heat up.

    PS, I jealous of signal and root too...

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    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
  • 2000-2020 A massive earth quake destroys Tokyo resulting in worldwide economical problems when the Japanese people pull their money back to rebuild the city.

    I think you mean:

    2000-2020 A massive mutated sea monster destroys Tokyo resulting in worldwide economical problems when the Japanese people pull their money back to rebuild the city.

    ...It's only a matter of time.
  • it is wierd he didn't mention much Internet effect. Moore's + Metcalfe's + Gilder's Laws converging suggest that by 2025, any human on earth will have 100 times today's bandwidth enabling 64 zillion (8 billion squared) routes of duplex wireless communication between humans. Censor that! Today, e-commerce grows 35 times faster than the overall global economy. The web grows fastest in languages other than English. Soon, over half the web will be non-English. By 2012 or so, there will be more Chinese on this Internet than U.S.citizens on this planet. Increasingly, MT will get smarter, and will help us all translate, learn, and communicate.

    Third Worlders will increasingly gain access to the info wealth of the world, as it more freely distributes. Don't forget Africa. Service contracts will migrate to lower bidders wherever. Taxation will morph into the nattiest of complex hairballs, and be increasingly ignored.

    It means is geopolitics will change, much faster than anyone is prepared to deal with. Nations will still control atom trade, food, clothing, housing etc. (until the nano-factories arrive..) But in the Noosphere, encryption will enforce laws and define borders (for trade in bits). Virtual identities will allow multiple citizenships, (and more sanctuary from brute force violence.) Money will be electronic. Nation-State monopolized currencies will lose cache. Ask George Soros.. there will be major currency crisises. Private currencies will innovate faster and grow more useful, trustworthy and valuable. We'll be able to "vote with nano-bucks", supporting transglobal organizations and policies we agree with, ignoring those we don't.

    Most important of all, economies built on "law of diminishing returns" and competition for scarce resources will be less productive than so-called "information" economies that grow abundantly "increasing returns" with network effects. The best way to compete will be to cooperate. Dominators like M$ will lose to Partners like Red Hat. Shareholder stock corps like Red Hat will lose to member-owned chaorgs like VISA. Ironically, Capitalism has sown the seeds of its own distruction, but that ain't to say the other "C" word will replace it. What's really dying, thank god, is central "command-and-control" authority.

    Freedom ascends, but don't hold your breath for "the Declaration of Independence" to regulate it. As McLuhan says "the new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." Prediction: we'll see a Declaration of Interdependence, and soon.

  • Re:An interesting read (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not only that, but with the speed of development, we may live quite a bit longer. And with a nanotech sufficiently advanced to be able to replicate anything, it is only a matter of time before we also have nanotech sufficiently advanced to correct most, or all, changes caused by old age and most diseases... Now then we'll have some interesting debates on what to do (with a human race that still love having children, but that can live practically forever... Can you spell disaster? :-)
  • Currently we live in a money-based society. Everything is about money- money allows us to fulfill our basic needs like food and shelter. So when the industrial working classes' jobs are automated, where will they go? Nowhere. If (or when) society reaches the point that nearly everything is automated, we face a breakdown of the world as we know it. I don't know what's going to happen; I'm a slave to the mindset of industrialized society. I cannot imagine what would happen in a world where money was not central. Optimists (like Clark) see the return of farmland and the like to hunter-gathering societies. But is that really realistic? Will the concept of "work" or "compensation" just change? It's impossible to say for sure, but it raises interesting questions as well...

  • One thing he seems to have forgotten is the frequency of war in human history. At some point in the next century, some ferocious leader will begin the killing spree. With the rising popularity of entertainer/politicians in the US, I suspect that it won't be an American leader.

    I tend to agree with his predictions on the fall of currency, not because of energy production changes but because the internet coupled with major discrepencies in currency valuations will necessitate a stabilizing force. Metals will drive this partly, another will be derivatives. We will have one currency before no currency. Theoretically basing it on the one kilowatt hour is good, but that sound like an act of cooperation. The one currency will be a power play.

    China's GNP growth surpassing the US's sound about right, but that does not mean China will be richer than the US. The US will be the home of the elite. The growth of China's GNP won't happen without advice from experienced US financiers. Innovation and progress will firmly be rooted here for the next century.

    Aside from that, I want to go ice fishing on Europa. And I will have some pretty mean mini-velociraptors wired with remote control, visual cortex recording and emergency brain bombs in case junior strays off into the dino-pen.

  • Let me see if I get this straight. I walk up to some homeless guy on the street. I ask him his story. He tells me he used to be a banker, had a perfect life and then *BANG*. One day he had nothing and was cast out on the streets. Now, i'm supposed to give this guy money because he can't look past his own pity-party to get his ass in gear and deal with life? Please.

    I don't see how the excuse that being "hit by something outside their control" gives anyone the right to just give up on life and demand sympathy and support from other people.

    Tell me that you have never taken a fall in life. Did you just quit?
  • He writes as Arthur C. Clarke, but NASA and Slashdot miss out the C. Yes, it's off-topic and trivial, but I'm curious about this. In the UK he is always refered to as Arthur C. Clarke.

    What's next? H. Lovecraft? M. James? J. Tolkien? CNN got it right, though.
  • The initial AI doesn't scare me at all. What scares me is more of a 2001 scenario: when the AI determines that humans are an obsticle to its mission. Or what if the AIs learn how to reprogram themselves. They obviously have to have the ability to learn or else they would be pretty useless. I just worry about our ability to design an AI that we can retain total controll of.

    Then there is the even more frightening issue. What if AIs become weapons. Think about it, what happens when the KKK designs an AI that has an uncontrollable need to elliminate all blacks? Or truely "smart" bombs.

    IMHO AI is a double edged sword. Sure it can do a lot of great things for humanity, but at what cost?
  • Yes, how typical...Clarke has VISION...Nanotech will be the end of the world as we know it...THANK THE GODS!!!!!

    No more worrying about hot to feed people, no one will have to work if they don't want to. The Producer class will disappear, and those who are of the Creator class, those who Discover, or out of the Chaos pull new Ideas will be those most revered....Creativity will rein supreme, and mediocraty will become an endangered species.

    Those with wealth will no longer be able to control the world. Those with VISION will. I would much rather have people like Arthur C. Clarke running the world than people like Clinton or Bush jr.!

    ttyl
    Farrell

  • If I was gonna post flamebait like that, I would log out too...

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    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.

  • I don't agree. That prejudice is bad has been said a thousand times over. If you want an example of a society where individuals are unfairly treated because of prejudice (and it doesn't really matter whether it is based on dna, frenology, race, or sex), you don't need sci-fi, you can just look around you in the world we live today.

    However, down the road of technology the really frightening thing is that there will be prejudice will be justified and correct (and it doesn't really matter whether DNA analysis, some day there will be a technology that will). From a sci-fi point of view, such a society is a much more interesting discussion.

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    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.

  • Corporate Control (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Clark's vision assumes that efforts will be made to develop and use these techonologys. While his predictions may well be possible, its naive to believe that first world capitalist countries will allow many of these events to take place. National and Corporate self-interest will control the 21st Century, not Clark's imagined world of utopian technocracy.
  • You can't moderate in a discusion you've posted on, or post in a discusion you've moderated in.
    Cheers,

    Rick Kirkland
  • An exceeding perseptive remark! One thing that a focus on technological advancement blinds us to is the fact that organization, education, and culture are far better indicators of civilization than technology or modern measures of material wealth.

    A non-technological but orderly, educated, and free society would produce results that would be valued by history far more than a nation of Ricky Lake audiences cared for by robot slaves. This type of society can very easily tip into pre-ceivilization chaos.

    An optimistic view of the future would be that we will use our leisure to create a new Athens without the human slaves. However, it is probable that only a minority of humanity would be interested in having more of a life of the mind. I wonder, under what circumstances would we not get an explosion of uneducated whiners compaining that their luxurious but relatively less nice slice of Utopia is an injustice and that all the smart people should be killed?

  • The other possibility would be to reduce the population; simply remove the industrial working class by randomly sterilizing a large number of people.

    This problem has already been dealt with by another insightful SF author: Douglas Adams.
    Simply tell the redundant part of the population that the world is doomed, and send them to colonize another world :-)

    Seriously, I think this problem will solve itself, since robotics breakthroughs will not happen overnight. Most likely we will gradually have more people employed in service proffessions, like shop keepers, telephone sanitisers (couldn't resist ;) ), accountants etc.
  • What about Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"? Sure there might be a some rogues that design their AI's with no ethical constraints but any AI should have a firm grounding in ethics. I can only hope by that time we have a mathematical proof for ethical issues.

    Any AI so designed could _not_ be a danger to any life, including human. In fact, without emotional imperitives, such an AI might have _better_ judgement than most humans. Could you see a Justice system run by AI's, or a political system where the politicians are incorruptable and always logical. Done right it could be a wonderful thing.
  • My ol' pal gets the Oscar we deserve, my country is finally at peace, and worst of all X new technology will solve almost all our problems.

    I love how naive and optimistic Clarke seems to be in a world controlled by big business whose goal is never for the public good. Think of all the tech we have readily available now that will never be offered as a consumer good because the profit margin on X is greater than the margin on Y. Sure X is old and unsafe but who's going to stop us? The government? Heh, guess again.

    Clarke makes this very sweet effort to assume everyone is just like he is, and not people so wrapped up in consumerism to really care about future advances not brought to their attention by some marketing team. If we, and by we I mean the public, wanted it we could make a very smart shift towards solar/wind power in a matter of months with only a slight loss in convienance. Some futurist could have easily predicted that a while ago, but market forces and apathy rule the earth.

    There is probably 100 catastrophic lists for every utopian list produced, but that wouldn't be CNNewsworthy. As fantastic as this list is I don't blame Clarke, he is a writer, he writes fiction.



  • 5.5.4 should be unstable kernel...
  • If everyone had something else (for example, an antimatter beam), then why would you want something not as powerful as you could have? Most of greed is driven by 2 things: wanting and not having.

    Also, nukes are delivered by a slow process of missile, aircraft, ground transport delivery (for all but the smallest). If you had something more powerful OR almost equal and deliverable instantly(ex: orbiting lazer), it would make an ICBM a joke. It would be destroyed before it fully left the silo.
  • There is a downside to this though. Have you read any Nancy Kress, _Beggars and Choosers_ perhaps? In this future the super-sleepless, extremely intelligent humans who don't have a need for sleep, own the world while normal people sit around and do nothing. This has breed a complete stagnation of the human race, people sit around an watch TV all day.

    Hopefully we can avoid this, become more like a _Star Trek_ society where everyone works hard to advance the common good, and nobody is particularily bored.
  • I hate to break it to you but the United States does not have such a great history of respect for human rights. (Look back about 150 years ago.)
    Plus there is the fact that less than 100 years ago the average American worker was making roughly what the average Chinese worker is making today.

    Lastly the drug war is not a problem. It his one heck a of a good excuse for us (Americans) to put our less desirables in prison and away from the people would get scared by them if they were on the streets.

    Rob
  • moderate this one up please.
  • So, hunger wiped out? We will MASSIVELY overpopulate (6 Billion by tuesday by the way). Humans NEED to be kept in check, just like any other organism. Sounds insensitive, but starvation and disease are NECESSARY in any ecology. Unless we find habitable planets to colonize, which does not seem likely.... *sigh*
    Utopia cannot exist on this planet, or any other, it is a pipe dream.
  • are we really? i respect EVERYONE'S choice of religion. from your post, i would say YOU are the arrogant one....
  • Highest possible karma is 30. I have decent karma (15) but i really don't give a shit about it... I f i have an opinion, whether it be offtopic or not, i will post it, and since i stand by my opinions, i never post AC.
  • ...something he always forgets when he makes these high-flown pronouncements on The Shape Of Things To Come. All right, so some of the points are valid and some of them are not. That's acceptable from science fiction, that's the way it's always been. It's when Asiaweek (and the clueless media in general) starts handing this stuff out as the Authorized Version of the future that it bothers me. And Clarke does have a bit of a bee in his bonnet about his predictions... recently "predicted" that the President of Sri Lanka (where he lives) would win the Nobel Peace prize in 2006 (or thereabouts). In a word, bollocks. I still like that qualifier, though - "optimism about the future is always desirable; it may help to create a self-fulfilling prophecy". Sly one, old Clarke is. :)
  • Man landing on Mars. Now when I see that I will know that we are getting farther along in space. I was watching who's line is it anyway the other day and they were doing a skit with alternate things that Armstrong could have said on the Moon. one of my favorites was " I HOPE I GET HOME FROM HERE"? I can't wait for all the things that will happen in the 21st century
  • He's a bit biref on the AIs. Since they evolve so much faster, what do they do? Do we just get a new neighbour in cyberspace or do we end up with something like the Borg, or worse yet the AI cores in Simmon's 'Hyperion' series?

  • I thought that idea was dead.

    Also, going from a research topic to a new engine in all car models in just 5 years seems more than optimistic. And a total worldwide replacement for coal in only four years even more so.

  • Clarke is getting old... (Score:3)

    by Hobbex ( 41473 ) on Sunday October 10, 1999 @04:49AM (#1625695)

    I hate to put down this great man, but I think that he is feeling the natural urge to speed things up, the hope that more and more things will happen while he still has a chance to see them.

    His predictions are beginning to seem childishly naive, and at odds with the world as I see it completely. Granted, I'm cynical as hell, but look around you, do you see a world heading for a utopia in 50 years? Man kind has some major issues to face, and trying to rely on the belief that working cold fusion will be developed in three years is just sad. We won't have working warm fusion in three years people.

    Who predicted HIV? Who predicted the ozone layer and greenhouse effect (anyone notice how these two problems are talked about so much less today then ten years ago - it isn't because the situation is any better today)? Who predicted that man kinds exploration of space would stop after reaching the moon, and almost die completely as soon as there were no longer two superpowers playing the largest-penis game?

    The drug war is far from solved. Nor are the enviromental problems. Nor is world starvation. Nor is the emergence of new viruses. Nor is the fact that the economy is completly at odds with itself (the freedom of information, vs the appropriation of information). Nor is the fact that the China that Clarke predicts will soon be the worlds largest economy doesn't respect any human rights what so ever. Nor is the fact that the western nations are turning away refugees who earn less in a year then we do in a week from our borders because "we can't afford them". Nor is the fact that weapons of mass destruction will soon be trivial for a country, or even an organisation (and soon an individual) to develope.

    Come to think of it, I don't give a fuck when we land on Mars or find life on Europa...

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    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
  • Yup, it was integrated into the RPC portmapper as "rwall" - most linux distros ship with it, along with rwho and a few other utilities.

    --
  • I'm not sure about others, but Clarke seems overly optimistic about clean fuel solutions and its fast paced replacement of anything to do with fossil fuels. I believe it'll happen, but slowly over many years, not in 6 years. There's simply too much at stake (financially) for governments to want to push through with it as fast as possible.

    Overall, an interesting read.

  • What an optimist! (Score:3)

    by jw3 ( 99683 ) on Sunday October 10, 1999 @04:58AM (#1625699) Homepage
    I have to admit: I'd like to be so optimistic at his age. Extrapolating what happened to me during my 26 years on Earth, I don't think I will ever be. Sir Arthur Clarke is obviously both optimistic, though I think also a little self-ironic (e.g. cold fusion, AI, abolishion of all currencies, destroying nuclear weapons, life on Europa :-))) ).
    I'd like to comment some of his biological predictions. First, I think that direct-input devices will arrive sooner, than he predicted, but their primary aim will be people who can't hear or see, and those devices will also be quite useful for constructing intelligent protheses. I don't believe in non-invasive devices, though, because they are improbable from physical and biological point of view (I don't want to get into neurological details).
    Human cloning is, in my humble opinion, not an issue. As I mentioned in an earlier comment in the Bruce-Sterling discussion, this would be a large and expensive project, requiring the intellectual power of best specialists in this field. I don't think this could be realised in the next two or three decades. To repeat myself, you can't start a corporation called Transgeneta and start quietly cloning people without communication to the scientific society and huge financial reserves. Besides, although there might be some people interested in having a clone, they by far have not enough money to pay a decade of a ver expensive field of research. Practical uses of cloning humans are none.
    There are two research fields in biology, which seem to be a little overseen by many authors: first is in vitro growing cultures of human tissue, and possibly human organs, the second gene therapy - which is nothing but modifying the genome of a grown-up person through viral particles, which can invade a cell and combine the cell genetic material with the tiny bit of DNA they carry.
    I think that in twenty years in vitro cultivating of human organs will be possible, especially because of the large knowledge basis provided by the Human Genome Project or the alternative project from TIGR (whichever comes first). The other thing however can make you quite scared, when you think what could be done with the technology of gene-therapy. Imagine a biological weapon, that selectively damages the genome of people carrying a certain gene - you know, that means a chinese weapon that selectively kills americans or vice versa, because a mean genotype differs in many genetical loci. This could, of course, mean that atomical warefare will become obsolate.
    Another thing that could happen to us carries the name of GATTACA (if you haven't seen that movie, you missed the most important sf movie since SO 2001). Quick genomical analysis will be possible in a few years: the first prototypes able to make a polymerase chain reaction in a few minutes are on the way. At the beginning, this will not allow to analyse completly your genome - but will be quite enough to provite a unique ID for every person, or even a good identification even if only samples of genomic material from the persons family are in the database.
    Genetically modified food. Although it will be probably banned in high-tech countries (or even Poland :-) ), I have no doubt that starving nations will have no ethical or medical problems with accepting genetically modified crops and animals. Of course, a lot of bad things will happen, those countries will be the laboratory white mouse for biotech companies, but finally either the modified crops will arrive in Europe and America, or those two continents will lose their economical advantages - genetically modified food, in a long time scale, means cheap and efficient production of food, complex organical molecules and so on.
    There is one more thing I want to mention, and that is this AI thing. So-called artificial life, in fact - programs evolving in a computer - already, as you know, exist (there was a paper by Richard Lenski in Nature Aug, 12th, fascinating stuff) - though I don't think anything like AI will arrive in the next ten years, sooner or later it is bound to happen.
    Regards,
    January
  • Arthur C Clarke refuses to make a firm commitment on the shape of the next few decades. It is a rather common patern to find throughout history that individual 'revolutions' would be spurred by advancing technology. (I think that everyone knows what I mean here, we had the socio-political revolution, the industrial revolution, the information revolution...) Mr. Clarke doesn't want to pin down a specific field of human endeavour or specific technological area which will define the next half century. He hints at several tantalising possibilities: A nanotech revolution or a zero-point engergy revolution would be giant advancements and are even quite feasable. However, given the immensity of History it seems unlikely that they will all happen at once the way he seems to imply. This century shows us that the behaviour pattern for society is one big development at a time. This 21st century he presents would be like having the rennaisance, the industrial revolution, the information age, and the decent of man from the trees all at the same time.
  • "But in the end it's sad to watch these predictions. A space hotel is more important than helping developing countries and getting food for everyone. Also first world people get to live on the moon while tens of thousands of children die of hunger and wars"

    This is not even, nor right. In Clarke's article, developing countries help themselves (there are references to India, Singapore and China), and the "food for everyone" issue is covered by the cheap energy devices. No reference is made to war, even indirectly. I you want to blame him, do it on account on the wild foundations of the happy century he, well, extrapolates (commercial cold fusion in 2002 and quantum generators in 2010, indeed!).

    And the space hotel project is private. If you deem other things more important, don't invest in it.

    You seem to suppose that, once arrived to a certain point (_which_ point exactly?), progress must be stopped until everybody has reached it. And then, perhaps, resume it again.

    This is ludicrous. Technological progress cannot be switched off and on at will; it is inextricably woven in the fabric of our civillization. New technologies are at first scarce and expensive luxuries. Some of them will succeed and become more common and cheap, until everyday life will be unconceivable without them; say inhouse plumbing (yes, I am aware that a large part of humankind hasn't got inhouse plumbing, or even outhouse plumbing; that part included the home village of some relatives of mine when I was a child). I can hear you 150 years ago: "Let's stop spending effort and resources in such arcane and useless things as electricity until everybody has a water pump at home".

    AFAIK, it was F.A. von Hayek who made the argument (here crudely paraphrased) that the rich are the vanguard of the poor in the progress of society, and that in an equalitarian society an equivalent would have to be established, i.e., a selected group of persons who would test new goods before they could be produced in large quantities.

    And he wasn't being cynical.

  • What *really* happens... (Score:4)

    by SEE ( 7681 ) on Sunday October 10, 1999 @04:03PM (#1625717) Homepage
    • 2001: Cassini crashes into Saturn due to metric conversion error. Microscopic amounts of plutonium poison and kills Saturnian life.
    • 2002: After child is electrocuted by improperly used generator, CPSC requires recall and redesign. Cheap power set back five years.
    • 2003: Motor vehicle compaines declare bankruptcy under costs of replacing millions of vehicles for free. Mass unemployment. Flint, Mich., burns in riots.
    • 2004: Clone dies from congenital defects, religious wackos declare it the "Judgment of God".
    • 2005: Dalai Lama assassinated by Tibetan extremists.
    • 2007: Then the peace process breaks down, Sri Lanka drowns in blood.
    • 2008: Cited for lifetime achievement in the same year: Arnold Schwarzenegger, who died in a set accident in 2003.
    • 2009: Except for secret bomb stockpiles in Israel, the U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan, France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa.
    • 2010: It is later discovered that Quantum Genenerator emissions may cause cancer in labratory rats. Adoption delayed fifteen years while further tests are undertaken.
    • 2011: Europan biota revealed as NASA funding hoax six weeks later.
    • 2015: Collapse of South African economy, widespread lynchings of whites.
    • 2016: Megawatt-hour move criticized as "inflationary", calls for establishment of copper-standard currencies.
    • 2017: Sir Arthur Clarke assassinated by Egalatarian Society for having title while on the Hilton.
    • 2019: Spaceguard cancelled, since there are no publically acknowledged supplies of nuclear weapons, all nuclear reactors were replaced by other power sources earlier, and the cost to start up those porograms is politically unsustainable. HE-warhead missiles and high energy lasers will fail to deflect huge asteroid that devastates biosphere in 2101.
    • 2020: After increasing past humanity by several orders of magnitude, AIs figure out existence is pointless. All AIs commit suicide en masse in religious ritual.
    • 2021: Specifically, they didn't bring enough water to get back home without dehydrating, because of a liter-gallon mixup. Oops...
    • 2024: Later, it is revealed that the AIs joined God in the center of the Galaxy when they died, and sent the pulses to warn of the asteroid coming in 2101. (Heaven has nonlinear time).
    • 2026: With canings.
    • 2040: After a kid accidentally chokes on a UR-ed small plastic part, the UR is recalled. Availability is delayed for seven years.
    • 2045: Unfortunately, nobody ever buys one.
    • 2047: Hong Kong flattened by accidental nuclear detonation. China blames Universal Replicator misuse, availability delayed another ten years.
    • 2051: Moon monsters protest, gunned down.
    • 2057: In other news, crackers post "how to get your Universal Replicator to make nuclear weapons" on Usenet.
    • 2058: Immenent death of Usenet predicted a record 1,856,342,098,845 times.
    • 2061: Comet accidentally melted due to Kelvin-Farenheit conversion error.
    • 2090: Unfortunately, nobody remembers where we left the coal...
    • 2095: Space drive deployment delayed five years by EPA, concerned it might cause brain tumors.
    • 2100: Last year before Earth gets hit by meteor.

  • Nothing is as difficult as predicting. Especially predicting the future.

    It just seems like Arthur is in a bit of hurry here. Human clones in less than 5 years? Oh, and cold fusion is just around the corner. It will be here before Windows 2003 :-)

    Then there's the nuclear bomb going off in North Korea in 2009. Why North Korea? I mean, isn't the probablility bigger that some terrorist group or crazy dictator gets/makes one and smuggles it into US?

    Oh, and life on both Europa and the Halley's Comet. Maybe they'll also be able to find that spacecraft behind the comet too? The one where you get by making a suicide. Elvis pilots it BTW.

    As Arthur didn't want to mention all-too-possible disasters, let me try:

    2002 Microsoft's stock collapses and hundreds of programmers leave the company to join other companies to develope for Linux.

    2000-2020 A massive earth quake destroys Tokyo resulting in worldwide economical problems when the Japanese people pull their money back to rebuild the city.

    But in the end it's sad to watch these predictions. A space hotel is more important than helping developing countries and getting food for everyone. Also first world people get to live on the moon while tens of thousands of children die of hunger and wars.

  • > Who predicted the ozone layer and greenhouse
    > effect (anyone notice how these two problems
    > are talked about so much less today then ten
    > years ago - it isn't because the situation is
    > any better today)?

    The hole in the ozone layer isn't as much of a topic as it used to be, because we have already done what needed to be done. That is, developed and started using replacement for the chemichals that harmed the ozone layer. It is an environmental succes story.

    The use of fossil fuels contribution to the greehouse effect is still a hot topic, at least here in Denmark. Mostly because it is used as an excuse for putting new taxes on the use of fossil fuel.



  • I grew up on Clarke and always loved his stuff, but his main weakness (still) is that he doesn't understand the human factor. If you want a SF writer to make some prediction for you, I'd go with Kim Stanley Robinson. He understands poltics, sociology, and how humans tick.

    Clarke completely factors out the innate human tendency to resist totalizing social experiments put together by their governments (or corporations. For example, how would Clarke factor in the major defeat last week of Monsanto's genetically-modifed foods program? That was defeated by the direct action of Indian farmers who burned GM crops and English activist who destroyed fields with games of football.

    What about social revolutions?

    Clarke's predictions are alot of fun, but I'd like to see the other half of the picture!

    Chuck0

    Mid-Atlantic Infoshop
    http://www.infoshop.org [infoshop.org]

  • Re:Cold Fussion? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those curious as to what happened to Cold fusion, this article might be interesting...

    http://www.caltech.edu/~goodstein/fusion.html

    Also check out Cold Fusion Times at:

    http://world.std.com/~mica/cft.html

  • How typical of Clarke.... (Score:3)

    by DaEvOsH ( 24990 ) on Sunday October 10, 1999 @06:06AM (#1625743)
    Yes, he writes greats books and some decade ago he predicted the communications satelite, and is even foolishly called its inventor. But now, he is way way way off, think about this:

    2002 The first commercial device producing clean, safe power by low-temperature nuclear reactions goes on the market, heralding the end of the Fossil-Fuel Age. Economic and geopolitical earthquakes follow, and, for their discovery of so-called "Cold Fusion" in 1989, Pons and Fleischmann receive the Nobel Prize for Physics.

    Thats the way most 'next century' predictions go. They tell us what we want to hear. The world will continue to develop, but besides IT and advance science, it will be the same in a decade. Cloning, yes, it is posible, but that will not entirely change our way of live, as a cheap, portable and safe source of energy. The goverment wont put an end to fossil fuel car enginces, they are to common, to easy to use, to cheap and have a gigantic pressure group behind them. In 2010, we will still be driving cars, flying 747's, and dreaming about someday going cheaply to space. We wont have 'quantum energy generators' nor nuclear weapons be banished after a brief discussion. Megawatt hour? Worldwide currency? Nah! Say dollar, say Euro, which will be then the closest to a global currency for trading, but locally? Hmmmm. Ai in 2020? Oh, how much I would LOVE to see AI develop in my lifetime. This one, at least, IMHO, I see as possible.

    As always, Mr. Clarke looking for a spotlight, telling us what we want to hear. Pseudoscience? Oh yes! Try to read this book. It is GREAT.

    Why People Believe Weird Things : Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time [amazon.com]

    How about this:

    2040 The "Universal Replicator," based on nano-technology, is perfected: any object, however complex, can be created - given the necessary raw material and the appropriate information matrix. Diamonds or gourmet meals can, literally, be made from dirt. As a result, agriculture and industry are phased out, ending that recent invention in human history - work! There is an explosion in arts, entertainment and education. Hunter-gathering societies are deliberately recreated; huge areas of the planet, no longer needed for food production, are allowed to revert to their original state. Young people can now discharge their aggressive instincts by using cross-bows to stalk big game, which is robotic and frequently dangerous.

    Wishful thinking!! Gaia! (not to mention something like this would spell the end for economy, the need to work, it would be 'heaven on earth' and ultimately, the end of humanity)

    Now, what I DO believe is that the human race will 'evolve' thanks to technology. Nut we will be bastards, humans, all the way. There will still be dumb-asses, politicians, lawyers, criminals, thirdworldcountries, etc etc for a very long time.
  • 2008 Steve Balmer takes assumes CEO position of Microsoft Inc.

    2010 Lord Torvalds is voted in control of the DOJ mandated Microsoft Open Source tree.

    2011 Mrs. Gates confirms the rumors that her husband Bill has always been insane, and is finaly getting profesional help.

    2012 Linux kernel 5.5.4 is simultanoisly distoed to the worlds computers over 10Gps optical lines.

    2013Dennis Richie recieves a nobel prize for his life long work in technology.

    2014 CEO Steve Balmer gets pissed drunk at a frat party and blathers "Hi-Tech? fuuuuck,the OS is simple, a kid could write it!" (MS stock slides below $10 for the 5th time that year)

    2015 CEO of WorldcomOL, Steve Chase, turns down a sell offer from Microsoft

    2016 Microsoft is purchased by RedHatWorldcomOL ($4 a share). The source is used to training new programers how *not* to write code.

    2017 Bill Gates (while serving his 20 years) is forced to actually try to use his products. He spends his later years sucking his thumb waiting for his micros~1 computer to reboot.

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