What Future
Torie Bosch and Roy Scranton
22 essays by narrow minded axe-grinding professional pessimists. I read 5 of them and gave up. ("Our Generation Ships Will Sink" "My Life on (Simulated) Mars" "One Swede" "One Armed Robot" "Selfless Devotion"
- p11 the future is as much projection as it is prediction.
- no, it is invention and creation, which by their very nature are surprising. Not necessarily good, but most of us wouldn't trade the present (with antibiotics, real friends worldwide, and opportunities) for the lives of our great grandparents.
- p15 "in media res" ... in the middle of things
- p16 Silicon Valley's "cybernetic capitalist reconstruction" will still need human bodies to staff the riot squads and surveillance teams necessary to quash dissent ...
- no, we just ignore the ineffective crybabies. Unlike the "occupy" movements, there is no physical place to protest a worldwide collaboration. There may be malicious participants, but there will also be spam filters.
p24 "a large proportion of organs for donation from car collisions" 33%, fewer during COVID lockdowns
- If we choose self-driving vehicles, will we also have to invest more heavily in 3D-printed organs?
- No, but some researchers might choose to, because more potential organ donors will be too unhealthy
p24 "Remember the suckers who shelled out ($1500) for Google Glass?
- most of the few thousand buyers were experimenters - including medical and education users