Augmented Reality, wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Most don't know what they talk about and have facile expertise in what they are futurologising about.

Some can be OK, but they generally don't call themselves futurologists (for example, historian Martin van Creveld, predicted more of the current decade in his 1999 book than most futurologists I've read, and economic analysts for Shell accurately predicted the fall of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War).  If they know the subject and have a historical, in-depth grasp of the material, then yeah, chances are they know what they are talking about.  Professional futurologists though might as well call themselves future bullshitters.

This is the correct motorcycle futuristic hovercycle.

Understanding history gets you a lot closer to the future than falling asleep after watching the Sci-Fi channel and eating too much pizza does. Most futurists seem to do the latter.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

The best way to get respected for being a 'futurist' is by calling yourself a science fiction author, and selling your predictions as fiction. That way, people jump on what you predicted correctly and ignore what you predicted wrong, instead of the other way around.

[Cain]

There are actually courses in futurology, you know.  Just in case anyone thought the "professional futurologist" thing was a strawman.  Actual expertise in a particular subject, be it virtual reality simulation or conflict resolution in South Asia, will make you far better at seeing the trends evident in that field than someone with less expertise, but with a lot of fancy pseudo-sociological models and jargon. 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

The best way to get respected for being a 'futurist' is by calling yourself a science fiction author, and selling your predictions as fiction. That way, people jump on what you predicted correctly and ignore what you predicted wrong, instead of the other way around.

Example: William Gibson, Jules Verne

[Cain]

Also, Gibson never posited himself as an expert, did he?  Everything I've seen suggests he is very forthcoming about his lack of technological aptitude, especially earlier on in his career.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Also, Gibson never posited himself as an expert, did he?  Everything I've seen suggests he is very forthcoming about his lack of technological aptitude, especially earlier on in his career.

Absolutely... in fact his more recent books aren't all that futuristic because Gibson stated that he has NO IDEA, what the hell is gonna happen next... he is of the opinion that the Future is Now and things are changing far too fast to predict anything with accuracy.

[Kai]

There are actually courses in futurology, you know.  Just in case anyone thought the "professional futurologist" thing was a strawman.  Actual expertise in a particular subject, be it virtual reality simulation or conflict resolution in South Asia, will make you far better at seeing the trends evident in that field than someone with less expertise, but with a lot of fancy pseudo-sociological models and jargon. 

Good to know I can predict trends in the biological sciences better than some doofus calling himself a futurologist.

Also, Gibson never posited himself as an expert, did he?  Everything I've seen suggests he is very forthcoming about his lack of technological aptitude, especially earlier on in his career.

Absolutely... in fact his more recent books aren't all that futuristic because Gibson stated that he has NO IDEA, what the hell is gonna happen next... he is of the opinion that the Future is Now and things are changing far too fast to predict anything with accuracy.

Smart man.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

There are actually courses in futurology, you know.  Just in case anyone thought the "professional futurologist" thing was a strawman.  Actual expertise in a particular subject, be it virtual reality simulation or conflict resolution in South Asia, will make you far better at seeing the trends evident in that field than someone with less expertise, but with a lot of fancy pseudo-sociological models and jargon. 

Good to know I can predict trends in the biological sciences better than some doofus calling himself a futurologist.

Also, Gibson never posited himself as an expert, did he?  Everything I've seen suggests he is very forthcoming about his lack of technological aptitude, especially earlier on in his career.

Absolutely... in fact his more recent books aren't all that futuristic because Gibson stated that he has NO IDEA, what the hell is gonna happen next... he is of the opinion that the Future is Now and things are changing far too fast to predict anything with accuracy.

Smart man.

Yep Here's a bit from the interview where they asked about the shift in focus:

Well, I thought that writing about the world today as I perceive it would probably be more challenging, in the real sense of science fiction, than continuing just to make things up. And I found that to absolutely be the case. If I'm going to write fiction set in an imaginary future now, I'm going to need a yardstick that gives me some accurate sense of how weird things are now. 'Cause I'm going to have to go beyond that. And I think definitely over the course of these last two books--I don't think I'm done yet--I've been getting a yardstick together. But I don't know if I'll be able to do it again. I don't know if I'll be able to make up an imaginary future in the same way. In the '80s and '90s, as strange as it may seem to say this, we had such luxury of stability. Things weren't changing quite so quickly in the '80s and '90s. And when things are changing too quickly, as one of the characters in Pattern Recognition says, you don't have any place to stand from which to imagine a very elaborate future.

Full Interview at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000112701

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

If you consider Gibson as a futurist, his track record is actually pretty awful. When he wrote Neuromancer, video games were already big and virtual reality was an existing concept. The idea that people would interact using computers the way they already do with telephones and books is no great feat of logic. The icon-centrism in the cyberspace trilogy completely failed to pan out, and Case was about to be killed for less ram than is probably in your average graphing calculator. Had he marketed himself as a futurist, he would be a complete failure. He was trained in postmodern literary criticism, and so his use of brands and his grasp of how people might mis-use technology were always far better than his predictions of technology.

Likewise, PKD has occasionally been accused of having good predictions of the future. His track record, if anything, is worse. Gibson at least managed to inspire a generation of graphic designers with a paragraph in Idoru, making his imagined near-future closer to reality. PKD's writing has always struck me as somewhat Gernsback-ish. It is amusing that the least speculative and futuristic of the bunch (A Scanner Darkly) is the most realistic, wherein outside of a few details (scramble suit, holographic video recorders, portable home fMRI machines that your average unemployed stoner can afford) it would fit neatly in the 1994 setting in which it was plopped.

[Cramulus]

ENKI: get off your ass and finish your goddamn AR smartphone app!

I want to help design AR games and I need someone to do ALL the technical stuff while I sit back in my chair and make vague predictions about how they will impact my bowels society.




I had no idea Futurology was something you can study academically, I always thought it was a label sci-fi authors came up so they could minimize that word 'fiction' in their job title.. 

also, BAM - back in the Predictions About the Future thread, I _vaguely forecasted all of this

New genres of games will eventually emerge which make use of portable systems equipped with GPS and VoIP. Games in which you have to go physically explore the world in order to play.

IMMA FUTUROLOGIST!

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

ENKI: get off your ass and finish your goddamn AR smartphone app!

The codebase has been sitting around unmodified for something like three years. I will be getting an actual gphone soon, so I will try to get the damned thing debugged then.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

ENKI: get off your ass and finish your goddamn AR smartphone app!

I want to help design AR games and I need someone to do ALL the technical stuff while I sit back in my chair and make vague predictions about how they will impact my bowels society.




I had no idea Futurology was something you can study academically, I always thought it was a label sci-fi authors came up so they could minimize that word 'fiction' in their job title.. 

also, BAM - back in the Predictions About the Future thread, I _vaguely forecasted all of this

New genres of games will eventually emerge which make use of portable systems equipped with GPS and VoIP. Games in which you have to go physically explore the world in order to play.

IMMA FUTUROLOGIST!

I did some basic development work on a tech heavy RPG... but the cost was just not feasible two years ago.

At any rate, we were considering the use of RFID tags in objects, so your smartphone or whatever would be able to know/identify stuff. And we'd come up with a basic system to work with a minimalist GUI... If this takes off, it may be time to break that shit out again.

Though in honesty, its not cause I'm a futurist... it was imagined on a Mushroom trip.. and sketched out in the weeks after the trip. 

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I am pretty sure that doing image recognition on a gphone is still damn near infeasible in real time. At least, I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck doing it. This, of course, means that if Cram wants to use my app to LARP, he will either have to deal with unskinned weapons or cover his foam weapons with telephones.

[Cramulus]

BTW Rat - how did you get in on a steve mann beta??

I've been telling people about his work for YEARS, I love that stuff

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I am pretty sure that doing image recognition on a gphone is still damn near infeasible in real time. At least, I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck doing it. This, of course, means that if Cram wants to use my app to LARP, he will either have to deal with unskinned weapons or cover his foam weapons with telephones.

rfid's would allow you to have a 'prop' in the real world and a 'object' in your app... Of course this assumes that all players have some minimum level of gear.

BTW Rat - how did you get in on a steve mann beta??

I've been telling people about his work for YEARS, I love that stuff

UNNAMED PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT decided that one year all of their Powerz That Be should have cool wearable computers for the Fashion Show... apparently so that they could watch the Internet video broadcast, rather than the girls on the runway in front of them. The concept failed utterly (sort of like the time they rented the Concord and wanted to "paint it pink and put heart stickers on it" for the flight to Europe....). However, it did get me a budget and a short trial period with Steve's early sunglasses model.