The future of SF, life extension, and other "surprise technologies"

Aeson · May 25, 2019

Would you count Bicentennial Man? I suppose it's a reverse. A robot becoming human. How about Dick Tracy's watch? It was a communication device.

Ryujin · May 25, 2019

MarkB said:
It's a lot easier to predict a particular technology than it is to consider and explore all the secondary ramifications of that technology.

Plus, in many cases, that isn't even the goal. For many science fiction works, the objective is to examine the modern condition through the lens of a different setting, and introducing too many new factors is not merely irrelevant, it's detrimental and distracting. In a lot of stories, particularly short stories, the ideal is to introduce only one major new element, leaving everything else largely as-is, in order to focus upon how that single element would influence and change us.

Not the goal, but a byproduct.

tomBitonti · May 28, 2019

Star Trek TOS episode The Mark of Gideon takes a direct look at overpopulation as a result of near immortality.

You could view 40K’s Eldar Paths philosophy as a commentary on having potentially thousands of years of life.

Haldeman’s Old Twentieth has immortality as causing key events in the book’s timeline.

Other authors casually accept effective immortality, for example, Niven in the Known Worlds, and Banks in his culture series.

I’m not sure that folks views on us having a build in age limit (with large variance) is entirely conservative. There may be a need to limit cell divisions due to increasing replication errors. That is, taking away replication limits might unleash cancer. Adding substantially to lifespans might turn out to be hard.

Thx!
TomB

The future of SF, life extension, and other "surprise technologies"

Aeson

I learned nerd for this.

Ryujin

Legend

tomBitonti

Adventurer

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