X-Message-Number: 30130
From: Mark Plus <>
Subject: Re: golden futures
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:19:51 -0800

In Cryonet #30126, Mr. Ettinger writes:


>(1) most people don't want radical change, even if it is positive, and (2) the 
prospective customer still needs to see it as plausible, and despite the 
popularity of science fiction, most people still see it as fiction.


Science fiction might have had some relationship with plausible futures 50-60 
years ago. But that relationship has broken down in the world of the real, 
rather banal 21st Century that in many ways still looks like the world of the 
1970's. I've pointed out here and elswhere that science fiction writers' 
spiritual cousins, the "futurists," predicted 30 years ago that we'd have 
radical life extension, solar power satellites, space colonies and other neat 
stuff by now (the 2000-2010 decade). Instead their current successors, the 
transhumanists and singularitarians, have rescheduled these marvels to the mid 
or latter 21st Century. 

When does that "golden future" arrive, again?


"There was a time before reason and science when my ancestors believed in all 
manner of nonsense." (Narim on "Stargate SG-1")

Mark Plus

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