This is a really inspirational piece by Warren Ellis,
Quote
HOW TO SEE THE FUTURE
Warren Ellis
The concept of calling an event Improving Reality is one of those great science fiction ideas. Twenty five years ago, you'd have gone right along with the story that, in 2012, people will come to a tech-centric town to talk about how to improve reality. Being able to locally adjust the brightness of the sky. Why wouldn't you? That's the stuff of the consensus future, right there. The stories we agree upon. Like how in old science fiction stories Venus was always a "green hell" of alien jungle, and Mars was always an exotic red desert crisscrossed by canals.
In reality, of course, Venus is a high-pressure shithole that we're technologically a thousand years away from being able to walk on, and there's bugger all on Mars. Welcome to JG Ballard's future, fast becoming a consensus of its own, wherein the future is intrinsically banal. It is, essentially, the sensible position to take right now.
A writer called Ventakesh Rao recently used the term "manufactured normalcy" to describe this. The idea is that things are designed to activate a psychological predisposition to believe that we're in a static and dull continuous present. Atemporality, considered to be the condition of the early 21st century. Of course Venus isn't a green hell – that would be too interesting, right? Of course things like Google Glass and Google Gloves look like props from ill-received science fiction film and tv from the 90s and 2000's. Of course getting on a plane to jump halfway across the planet isn't a wildly different experience from getting on a train from London to Scotland in the 1920s – aside from the radiation and groping.
We hold up iPhones and, if we're relatively conscious of history, we point out that this is an amazing device that contains a live map of the world and the biggest libraries imaginable and that it's an absolute paradigm shift in personal communication and empowerment. And then some knob says that it looks like something from Star Trek Next Generation, and then someone else says that it doesn't even look as cool as Captain Kirk's communicator in the original and then someone else says no but you can buy a case for it to make it look like one and you're off to the manufactured normalcy races, where nobody wins because everyone goes to fucking sleep.
And reality does not get improved, does it?
But I'll suggest to you something. The theories of atemporality and manufactured normalcy and zero history can be short-circuited by just one thing.
Looking around.
Ballardian banality comes from not getting the future that we were promised, or getting it too late to make the promised difference.
This is because we look at the present day through a rear-view mirror. This is something Marshall McLuhan said back in the Sixties, when the world was in the grip of authentic-seeming future narratives. He said, "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future."
He went on to say this, in 1969, the year of the crewed Moon landing: "Because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world. The present is always invisible because it's environmental and saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone is alive in an earlier day."
Three years earlier, Philip K Dick wrote a book called Now Wait For Last Year.
Let me try this on you:
The Olympus Mons mountain on Mars is so tall and yet so gently sloped that, were you suited and supplied correctly, ascending it would allow you to walk most of the way to space. Mars has a big, puffy atmosphere, taller than ours, but there's barely anything to it at that level. 30 Pascals of pressure, which is what we get in an industrial vacuum furnace here on Earth. You may as well be in space. Imagine that. Imagine a world where you could quite literally walk to space.
That's actually got a bit more going for it, as an idea, than exotic red deserts and canals. Imagine living in a Martian culture for a moment, where this thing is a presence in the existence of an entire sentient species. A mountain that you cannot see the top of, because it's a small world and the summit wraps behind the horizon. Imagine settlements creeping up the side of Olympus Mons. Imagine battles fought over sections of slope. Generations upon generations of explorers dying further and further up its height, technologies iterated and expended upon being able to walk to within leaping distance of orbital space. Manufactured normalcy would suggest that, if we were the Martians, we would find this completely dull within ten years and bitch about not being able to simply fart our way into space.
Now imagine a world where space travel to other worlds is an antique curiosity. Imagine reading the words "vintage space." Can you even consider being part of a culture that could go to space and then stopped?
If the future is dead, then today we must summon it and learn how to see it properly.
You can't see the present properly through the rear view mirror. It's in front of you. It's right here.
There are six people living in space right now. There are people printing prototypes of human organs, and people printing nanowire tissue that will bond with human flesh and the human electrical system.
We've photographed the shadow of a single atom. We've got robot legs controlled by brainwaves. Explorers have just stood in the deepest unsubmerged place in the world, a cave more than two kilometres under Abkhazia. NASA are getting ready to launch three satellites the size of coffee mugs, that will be controllable by mobile phone apps.
Here's another angle on vintage space: Voyager 1 is more than 11 billion miles away, and it's run off 64K of computing power and an eight-track tape deck.
In the last ten years, we've discovered two previously unknown species of human. We can film eruptions on the surface of the sun, landings on Mars and even landings on Titan. Is all of this very boring to you? Because all this is happening right now, in this moment. Check the time on your phone, because this is the present time and these things are happening. The most basic mobile phone is in fact a communications devices that shames all of science fiction, all the wrist radios and handheld communicators. Captain Kirk had to tune his fucking communicator and it couldn't text or take a photo that he could stick a nice Polaroid filter on. Science fiction didn't see the mobile phone coming. It certainly didn't see the glowing glass windows many of us carry now, where we make amazing things happen by pointing at it with our fingers like goddamn wizards.
That, by the way, is what Steve Jobs meant when he said that iPads were magical. The central metaphor is magic. And perhaps magic seems an odd thing to bring up here, but magic and fiction are deeply entangled, and you are all now present at a séance for the future. We are summoning it into the present. It's here right now. It's in the room with us. We live in the future. We live in the Science Fiction Condition, where we can see under atoms and across the world and across the methane lakes of Titan.
Use the rear view mirror for its true purpose. If I were sitting next to you twenty-five years ago, and you heard a phone ring, and I took out a bar of glass and said, sorry, my phone just told me it's got new video of a solar flare, you'd have me sectioned in a flash. Use the rear view mirror to imagine telling someone just twenty five years ago about GPS. This is the last generation in the Western world that will ever be lost. LifeStraws. Synthetic biology. Genetic sequencing. SARS was genetically sequenced within 48 hours of its identification. I'm not even touching the web, wifi, mobile broadband, cloud computing, electronic cigarettes...
Understand that our present time is the furthest thing from banality. Reality as we know it is exploding with novelty every day. Not all of it's good. It's a strange and not entirely comfortable time to be alive. But I want you to feel the future as present in the room. I want you to understand, before you start the day here, that the invisible thing in the room is the felt presence of living in future time, not in the years behind us.
To be a futurist, in pursuit of improving reality, is not to have your face continually turned upstream, waiting for the future to come. To improve reality is to clearly see where you are, and then wonder how to make that better.
Act like you live in the Science Fiction Condition. Act like you can do magic and hold séances for the future and build a brightness control for the sky.
Act like you live in a place where you could walk into space if you wanted. Think big. And then make it better.
http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14314
He's right, and it's a strange effect, I read about awesome new breakthroughs like the HIV cure, or the fact that there are now artificial eyes with 640 x 480 resolution and improving all the time.
And then I forget about it and think about how dreary everything is. It stands in stark contrast or at least along side the likes of Charlie brookers Black mirror, we either take technology for granted or use it for banalities like facebook.
I love that guy.
Thanks for posting this.
I'm going to have to look into this fellow further. Personally I have come to believe that much of the "real magic" in the world has much less to do with the wonders of our new-found, and incredible circa 25 years ago, abilities and everything to do with our spirit and motivation in using them. I know some kids that cannot do arithmetic without a calculator, much less in their heads. What can propel the capable to incredible efficiency can also totally blunt the development of the human it's self. Like always having a crutch to lean on while learning to walk, you will always feel the need for the crutch and the walking ability may never properly develop.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on September 07, 2012, 11:57:33 PM
I'm going to have to look into this fellow further. Personally I have come to believe that much of the "real magic" in the world has much less to do with the wonders of our new-found, and incredible circa 25 years ago, abilities and everything to do with our spirit and motivation in using them. I know some kids that cannot do arithmetic without a calculator, much less in their heads. What can propel the capable to incredible efficiency can also totally blunt the development of the human it's self. Like always having a crutch to lean on while learning to walk, you will always feel the need for the crutch and the walking ability may never properly develop.
I can still derive a solution to the SWE for the hydrogen atom but I am asked to do devision or multiplication in my head I'm lost.
Quote from: Faust on September 08, 2012, 12:09:58 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on September 07, 2012, 11:57:33 PM
I'm going to have to look into this fellow further. Personally I have come to believe that much of the "real magic" in the world has much less to do with the wonders of our new-found, and incredible circa 25 years ago, abilities and everything to do with our spirit and motivation in using them. I know some kids that cannot do arithmetic without a calculator, much less in their heads. What can propel the capable to incredible efficiency can also totally blunt the development of the human it's self. Like always having a crutch to lean on while learning to walk, you will always feel the need for the crutch and the walking ability may never properly develop.
I can still derive a solution to the SWE for the hydrogen atom but I am asked to do devision or multiplication in my head I'm lost.
I can't navigate well. I NEED gps technology to feel confident and remain on track. What is SWE?
Super weird enigma
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on September 08, 2012, 12:13:55 AM
Quote from: Faust on September 08, 2012, 12:09:58 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on September 07, 2012, 11:57:33 PM
I'm going to have to look into this fellow further. Personally I have come to believe that much of the "real magic" in the world has much less to do with the wonders of our new-found, and incredible circa 25 years ago, abilities and everything to do with our spirit and motivation in using them. I know some kids that cannot do arithmetic without a calculator, much less in their heads. What can propel the capable to incredible efficiency can also totally blunt the development of the human it's self. Like always having a crutch to lean on while learning to walk, you will always feel the need for the crutch and the walking ability may never properly develop.
I can still derive a solution to the SWE for the hydrogen atom but I am asked to do devision or multiplication in my head I'm lost.
I can't navigate well. I NEED gps technology to feel confident and remain on track. What is SWE?
The schrodinger wave equation, it was on one of my final tests, I can still do that but if someone asked me to divide two numbers I'd glaze over.
Quote from: Faust on September 08, 2012, 12:17:38 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on September 08, 2012, 12:13:55 AM
Quote from: Faust on September 08, 2012, 12:09:58 AM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on September 07, 2012, 11:57:33 PM
I'm going to have to look into this fellow further. Personally I have come to believe that much of the "real magic" in the world has much less to do with the wonders of our new-found, and incredible circa 25 years ago, abilities and everything to do with our spirit and motivation in using them. I know some kids that cannot do arithmetic without a calculator, much less in their heads. What can propel the capable to incredible efficiency can also totally blunt the development of the human it's self. Like always having a crutch to lean on while learning to walk, you will always feel the need for the crutch and the walking ability may never properly develop.
I can still derive a solution to the SWE for the hydrogen atom but I am asked to do devision or multiplication in my head I'm lost.
I can't navigate well. I NEED gps technology to feel confident and remain on track. What is SWE?
The schrodinger wave equation, it was on one of my final tests, I can still do that but if someone asked me to divide two numbers I'd glaze over.
Ah, I think I get that then. I've heard that similar blocks can exist in people that are great at algebra but suck at geometry. I'm not properly trained at either. Force of will CAN overcome such things and is quite rewarding, but it's much more expedient to use tech.
It's kind of like the whole "riddle of steel" thing in Conan. It's not the steel, it's the person wielding it or such.
Quote from: Nephew Twiddleton on September 08, 2012, 12:16:06 AM
Super weird enigma
What is now, Twid?
Schroedingers wave equation. Except i didnt know that and felt like making an asshat answer.
That was really great.
:lol:
OH! Super Weird Enigma solved then.
There's nothing I can disagree with here.
In fact, I've found myself thinking much the same thing, and I occasionally take a moment out to remember how cool and groundbreaking some of this stuff is.
I mean, an iPhone with UNLIMITED DATA, for example...well, that means you can get onto Wikipedia. So, being able access near-encyclopaedic levels of information via a handheld device...does this sound like a certain popular sci-fi instrument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_%28fictional%29)?
Kai's talked about tricorders to help diagnose people.
And this is all I can come up with without a coffee. But seriously. This stuff IS amazing.
I have an issue. I get habituated, as much as any other person. I'm not going to run through all the things I forget, because Ellis named many of them.
So what I want is an off switch. I know the usefullness of habituation, that if I was constantly running around in awe of anything I'd have a hard time surviving. So I want a manual on-off switch for habituation, so that whenever I want, I can return to beginner's mind and get that excitement back.
I find articles like this useful for exactly that. A reminder every so often of the awesome a compliments that have been made.
Quote from: Faust on September 08, 2012, 05:53:52 PM
I find articles like this useful for exactly that. A reminder every so often of the awesome a compliments that have been made.
I want something I can use at will. I think Thich Nhat Hanh has it, from many years of careful, directed awareness. I'm already habituated to this article, and that's awful.
:55 ? the fog {{{Was the hypnotic fog negative Or +
? thins out {{ it seams probable this is itself questionable ASK Jup
? fog is dens { is it ? or is it NOT | it is charged.
:50
This is very different from the Bohr atom.
To compare, we shall sit on nucleus of a Bohr atom and a Schrödinger atom.
Start with Bohr: we would see the electron moving
around us in a circular orbit with a radius of exactly ao.
In the Schrödinger case, we would see a fog of negative charge.
The fog is denser near the nucleus and thins out
with distance from the nucleus.
i prefur dartmouth
:44 http://www.dartmouth.edu/~genchem/0405/spring/6belbruno/waves.pdf
22:36 pdT http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tao/preprints/schrodinger.pdf
the next day?Sure i would like
to d'bait the subject, would it happen ? i doubt it. lemme say anyway
it reminds me of Stella & vinsim | two math / statistics programs
:45 the problem as i c it is the parameters of E (2) K&P or was it Kp
:41 /-/A /-/A /-/A
:35 http://gravitywarpdrive.com/NGFT_Chapter_7.htm
:30 WhiTch system | U stupid SH it
http://mayaanjali.hubpages.com/hub/The-Schrodingers-Wave-Equation
12:18 WoooW what luck #15 /-/ip /-/ip do a flip ^READ UP^
Quote from: Faust on September 08, 2012, 12:17:38 AM
I can still derive a solution to the SWE for the hydrogen atom
The schrodinger wave equation,
v http://s1.hubimg.com/u/3493520_f260.jpg v v READ DOWN v
(http://s1.hubimg.com/u/3493520_f260.jpg)
:23 THE #1 problem above is the shape's SHOULD NOT all be ovals.
v http://s2.hubimg.com/u/3505681_f260.jpg v
(http://s2.hubimg.com/u/3505681_f260.jpg) http://javascript:void(0) ?
:35 Total Energy = Kinetic Energy + Potential Energy | TE = KE + PE |
:40 (http://gravitywarpdrive.com/NGFT_Equations/General_Schrodinger_Wave_Equation.gif)
^
http://gravitywarpdrive.com/NGFT_Equations/General_Schrodinger_Wave_Equation.gif ^
:44 E = hν = hc/λ | E = mc^2 ? mc^2 = hc/λ } λ = h/mc
23:45 r message has been sent successfully. :fnord: (http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,33218.15.html)
thus i find wave equation Ψ {Psi)
to me it is static! A slow
if moving fog (A Quantum}
__d5__ clock 1: no words would be know about these(orbit//spin)
***[ PREPOSED TABLE of minisqualPHYSICAL UNITS ]*********
__d4__ clock 2: electrons orbit proton // electrons spin
***[ PREPOSED TABLE of quantmPHYSICAL UNITS ]********
__d3__ clock 3: Planets orbits the Sun // Planets Spin on axis
***[ PREPOSED TABLE of metaPHYSICAL UNITS ]*********
thus in my mind the quantum table (call it the periodic table}
has been printed. What has not yet been sketched out is the
next demension Down { i called it Mini's table above
perhaps it is string theory | what i see is not static fog
but dynamic fog | not a bowl of jello | but a boiling
caldren of pulsations up & down Left & right inside out
upside down round & around | a very turbulant place
& my guess is all tha can be said about mini is she ages
23:23 & beyound ^ Look Up ^
REMember at this point? i was taught by an assayer
NOT to trust the chemists, & so i do not. My exact point of disagreement
is rather non specific. Thus i Zoom in on the 1st year / 110 {never mind
v able 7-1: Periodic Table of the Ele v
References: http://www.webelements.com/index.html
http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/periodic/113.html
/\ /\
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger
at some remote chance of getting across | this:
i do not know why communication between myself & others IS
so badly impaired. that it is seams rather certain. One guess i have
about this is the passage thru?beyond the space time continuum
which took place in April of 58. Perhaps once beyond there exists
no return path. And while in that time frame may as well detail
briefly the TRANCE. for most surely there was one | in Mass {
affecting all. What was it out there ? the suspended animation
IN there {the wheel house| My only guess | it vas Wissualy
coupled | such that the brains involved were synchronously?
held in a state of suspension? it was very strange i can say
sme form of mass hypnosis | by highly charged{ionized water / mist
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on September 09, 2012, 01:54:53 PM
hat Science is ready to produce a Hirley0 trans :lol:
AS4 the 'bait | U can guess 118 El's some say 255 others 360
?/?Who Was Erwin U May ask
Well he was the one i knew in Portland | had a Museum on Union |
the Union came in | destroyed his place | handed him a bill |
& He Erwin Grant can be found in the Federal Court (d9}? in '10
Possibly still | TN | on the oTHer hand can not be found 9 or 10
I am uncertain that Science is ready to produce a Hirley0 translator device. :lol:
Yeah, the power of technology is truly wondrous! It cannot give purpose, real telos. It is a means, not an end. It will go on forever and ever. Amen. I hope.
I also hope that humanity will not lose that spark of innovation that brought this state of affairs about to the incredible tendency we have to make a faith of what we think we know.
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on September 08, 2012, 05:56:16 PM
Quote from: Faust on September 08, 2012, 05:53:52 PM
I find articles like this useful for exactly that. A reminder every so often of the awesome a compliments that have been made.
I want something I can use at will. I think Thich Nhat Hanh has it, from many years of careful, directed awareness. I'm already habituated to this article, and that's awful.
I use old science fiction. I'll frequently compare something I'm using or doing to star trek or doctor who or something along those lines. Then I'll notice how much cooler the one I have is. Like how Ellis compares the mobile phone to Kirk's communicator. I get that pretty much every time I use mine.
Maybe the disappointment with the future isn't so much that we don't have neat things to play with or amazing technological abilities, but that all those toys and technologies are props for the real "Future," where we're not still dealing with the same bullshit we've had for 100,000 years. A future where not only can we make a phone call to someone on the other side of the planet, with no wires, from a little box in our pocket, but we also don't have poverty, disease, or war (at least among ourselves). A future where we have nothing left to prove in the "Are we good enough to survive" department, and we have achieved what I think would be the greatest accomplishment in human evolution - a world where human lives can be spent exploring, learning, and evolving instead of working, sleeping, getting diabetes and dying young.
Quote from: v3x on September 11, 2012, 04:39:38 PM
Maybe the disappointment with the future isn't so much that we don't have neat things to play with or amazing technological abilities, but that all those toys and technologies are props for the real "Future," where we're not still dealing with the same bullshit we've had for 100,000 years. A future where not only can we make a phone call to someone on the other side of the planet, with no wires, from a little box in our pocket, but we also don't have poverty, disease, or war (at least among ourselves). A future where we have nothing left to prove in the "Are we good enough to survive" department, and we have achieved what I think would be the greatest accomplishment in human evolution - a world where human lives can be spent exploring, learning, and evolving instead of working, sleeping, getting diabetes and dying young.
Yup! I remember one of the Star Trek movies (can't remember which one) and someone was explaining to some dude from the past when the turning point came about and they said it was replicator technology - eliminated human need overnight. I can't help thinking that, whilst it probably won't be a complete panacea, it'll certainly shift the game a fuck of a way in the right direction.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on September 11, 2012, 05:14:43 PM
Quote from: v3x on September 11, 2012, 04:39:38 PM
Maybe the disappointment with the future isn't so much that we don't have neat things to play with or amazing technological abilities, but that all those toys and technologies are props for the real "Future," where we're not still dealing with the same bullshit we've had for 100,000 years. A future where not only can we make a phone call to someone on the other side of the planet, with no wires, from a little box in our pocket, but we also don't have poverty, disease, or war (at least among ourselves). A future where we have nothing left to prove in the "Are we good enough to survive" department, and we have achieved what I think would be the greatest accomplishment in human evolution - a world where human lives can be spent exploring, learning, and evolving instead of working, sleeping, getting diabetes and dying young.
Yup! I remember one of the Star Trek movies (can't remember which one) and someone was explaining to some dude from the past when the turning point came about and they said it was replicator technology - eliminated human need overnight. I can't help thinking that, whilst it probably won't be a complete panacea, it'll certainly shift the game a fuck of a way in the right direction.
If somebody invented a replicator, you can be sure that it would be kept off the market, like those nylons that don't run.
Quote from: TEXAS FAIRIES FOR ALL YOU SPAGS on September 11, 2012, 06:30:33 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on September 11, 2012, 05:14:43 PM
Quote from: v3x on September 11, 2012, 04:39:38 PM
Maybe the disappointment with the future isn't so much that we don't have neat things to play with or amazing technological abilities, but that all those toys and technologies are props for the real "Future," where we're not still dealing with the same bullshit we've had for 100,000 years. A future where not only can we make a phone call to someone on the other side of the planet, with no wires, from a little box in our pocket, but we also don't have poverty, disease, or war (at least among ourselves). A future where we have nothing left to prove in the "Are we good enough to survive" department, and we have achieved what I think would be the greatest accomplishment in human evolution - a world where human lives can be spent exploring, learning, and evolving instead of working, sleeping, getting diabetes and dying young.
Yup! I remember one of the Star Trek movies (can't remember which one) and someone was explaining to some dude from the past when the turning point came about and they said it was replicator technology - eliminated human need overnight. I can't help thinking that, whilst it probably won't be a complete panacea, it'll certainly shift the game a fuck of a way in the right direction.
If somebody invented a replicator, you can be sure that it would be kept off the market, like those nylons that don't run.
Depends what you can replicate.
I would replicate my cold virus-infested spit.
Wouldn't matter if the first few loads of replicator creators kept the devices off the markets.
Once humanity is at a point where replicators are feasible (assuming the physics behind them are feasible) then it's only a matter of time before they are on the market.
At the very least, the military applications of a replicator would ensure a market for their use. Just look at 3D printers. And once one military has them, others will scramble to get their own, probably offering huge sums to whatever scientists they can gather up to get such a device working.
Information leaks. And when a sufficiently game-changing device is invented, there is no going back.
This ^^ Wholeheartedly this!
Not that I expect to see replicators in my lifetime.
I DO wonder what the future will bring along the lines of life-extension technology. I often worry that under the current medical/economic system it will result in a true over-caste of long lived folks that got there only because they happened to be on the top of the economic hill at the time it was introduced.
Yeah. Life extension will certainly be the proof that "the future is already here, it's not just evenly distributed". I strongly suspect such treatments will be available in private clinics in Switzerland before they are available on the NHS, for example.
It's also one of those things that mankind had always chased after. In the ancient past it led to an incredible multitude of delusional states and subsequent con games. They still persist. Here in the present it seems plausible to actually be able to offer extended life expectancy on a corporate contract one day. I find this deeply disturbing on one level but still quite tantalizing. I am profoundly curious about how the future of this world of ours will go and would not mind being around for, say, 200 years. I would settle for 120 in reasonable health.
Also, what is NHS?
National Health Service - free at point of use healthcare system in the UK. It's pretty amazing, all things considered, when it comes to treatment and keeping up with advanced technology, but it can't and wont be able to compete with more...selective services, at least until the cost of treatment drops considerably.
Ah, I see. I'm fairly sure most treatments that would result in extraordinary lifespan would fall into this "selective services" category for sure. At least you good folks over there can expect reasonable treatment when needed without undue consideration of economic impact.
The closest thing I am aware of that we have other than things like medicare and disability status is a rule that says that if you can get to within 100 feet or so of a hospital and are in need of emergency treatment then the hospital is obligated to treat you no matter what. Small comfort, but better than nothing.