Mercurius
Legend
Dial back to just about any 20th century science fiction movie and you'll see no sign of smartphones and similar technology. For whatever reason, most people had no clue about iPhones and such, or how they would change society (for better or worse). In a similar fashion that they often over-estimated certain advancements (e.g. flying cars).
In watching the "old Picard show" trailer, I had the thought: could life extension technology be similar? If you follow futurism, transhumanism, or medical technology, then you know that some speculate that at some point in the next few decades we're going to make medical breakthroughs that will see us living centuries, if not indefinitely. Now there are more conservative views that the human body is hardwired for around 120 years max, but even then you would think that in a sufficiently advanced near future, we'd have tons of centenarians walking around who look middle aged. Presumably that's the (unintentional?) assumption of the Star Trek universe.
For the most part, science fiction films--even recently--don't take this into account. Thus we have the new Picard show; the series is presumably set 20 years after Nemesis in 2399 which makes Picard 94ish years old. With Stewart 78, that means the apparent age difference is about 15 years...not a lot of progress for almost 400 years in the future.
Now I understand that science fiction is generally about the present, even when set centuries in the future. The Jetsons said a lot more about the early 1960s than it did about the 2060s when it was set. I'm not even saying that they should make Picard, I don't know, two or three hundred years old. I'm just wondering if at some point in a few decades we're going to look back at the "quaint" SF of the early 21st century, before life extension became as ubiquitous as smart technology.
What say you? Any other possible "surprise technologies" that will change everything?
In watching the "old Picard show" trailer, I had the thought: could life extension technology be similar? If you follow futurism, transhumanism, or medical technology, then you know that some speculate that at some point in the next few decades we're going to make medical breakthroughs that will see us living centuries, if not indefinitely. Now there are more conservative views that the human body is hardwired for around 120 years max, but even then you would think that in a sufficiently advanced near future, we'd have tons of centenarians walking around who look middle aged. Presumably that's the (unintentional?) assumption of the Star Trek universe.
For the most part, science fiction films--even recently--don't take this into account. Thus we have the new Picard show; the series is presumably set 20 years after Nemesis in 2399 which makes Picard 94ish years old. With Stewart 78, that means the apparent age difference is about 15 years...not a lot of progress for almost 400 years in the future.
Now I understand that science fiction is generally about the present, even when set centuries in the future. The Jetsons said a lot more about the early 1960s than it did about the 2060s when it was set. I'm not even saying that they should make Picard, I don't know, two or three hundred years old. I'm just wondering if at some point in a few decades we're going to look back at the "quaint" SF of the early 21st century, before life extension became as ubiquitous as smart technology.
What say you? Any other possible "surprise technologies" that will change everything?
