I'm opening the blog to guest posters this year, as and when people feel inspired to send me their thoughts (I have some lined up, if you want to contribute send me a message and i'll add you to the list). First up is Dave Gullen, the author of the wonderful Shopocalypse amongst other things - there's a link to his blog on the side there under "my mate Dave". Many thanks for his thought provoking piece...
Without further ado - What's next? by David Gullen
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What’s next?
Way back when (1978) the science historian and writer James
Burke presented a TV programme called Connections.
The series fascinated me and many
others, in fact I have a couple of quotes from Burke in my SF novel,
Shopocalypse.
This time of year we like to look ahead in our own lives and
the wider world. Futureologists predict the future, so they say. To me
futurology is simply the extrapolation of trends, looking at what’s under the
radar and what’s pushing on hard: if we go down this road for five years where
are we going to be in five years’ time? Useful and interesting, absolutely, and
not actually very simple, but it doesn’t, it inherently cannot, go beyond that
into any other future. We’re all still
waiting for our flying cars.
So, I
write SF, I thought I’d give it a go. I also thought I’d go back to Burke and
when I did it all got interesting-
One of Burke’s conclusions was that the rate of change is
dependent on the ease of information exchange. As he was writing, he could say Western
technology enjoyed three great bursts of innovation: the Medieval period, when communication was
re-established between European communities after the wars of the 10th
century; the 17th century, when the scientific community used
printing to exchange ideas; and the 19th century development of
telecommunications.
Since then of course we’ve had a revolution in cheap
powerful computing, the internet, and so on. You could argue that this is just
more telecom, the important thing here is the digitisation of information.
Within limits we can now get access to pretty much all knowledge instantly. The
ease of exchange has gone up, and with it, the rate of change. It’s another
revolution.
One discovery makes space for another. Automatic looms using
punched cards allowed for error-free complex weaving – the cards allow or
prevent pins to drop and control the loom threads: yes or no, on or off, O and
1. The idea was used by engineers for riveting, the ship-building revolution
drove American immigration; the 1890 USA census used a modified punch card
system devised by engineer Herman Hollerith; Hollerith formed the Tabulating
Machine Company, which later merged with other businesses to ultimately form
IBM. Binary code, discovered in the 18th
century by French weavers,
now drives the modern world.
Fundamentally, you cannot predict what’s going to happen
tomorrow based on what happened yesterday (yes, the sun always rises, yadda
yadda , but one day, pal, one day.) We can only work with what we know – the
future can only ever be conjecture.
So what’s the next big thing? Extrapolating from what’s
going on now, all still mostly under the radar, it has to be synthetic biology.
Where did that come from? I doubt at the time many people thought a 19th century German
monk would become the founder of modern genetics. Synthetic biology is absolutely in its infancy
but the technology is garage level. Kids can do it. Kids are doing it. When the toolbox is complete, when making new life is
little more than a process of selecting the right bricks out of the Lego box,
the world will change again, and again in ways we cannot imagine - in the same
way the first men and women of the Iron Age could not imagine the Industrial Revolution.
This coming century we can extrapolate a great deal about
planet earth, human society, the big mix where those two things collide. It’s
pretty easy to see we’re heading towards a perfect storm (ha!) of climate
change, resource limits, and population growth. Layer that with geopolitical and
economic changes, the fact that we’re already at the fringes of vast social
change as populations come to terms with the overt and covert intrusions of the
governments that claim to govern on their behalf, the governments next door,
and the commercial entities that collude with them. It’s going to be a
fascinating ride through more than interesting times.
Under it all I think Burke was right - what is more
important than the next big thing is how we process information and how we
share it around. Now that we have all our information, now every piece of data
and knowledge is at our fingertips, what can we do with it? How can we
aggregate and synthesise it, fit it all together into new ways? How do we ‘nexialise’
it? How do we make sure that what we read and what people tell us is actually true?
Maybe, if and when they turn up, the true AIs will be able to do that for us.
As a corollary to this, something I think we urgently need and
don’t see we are going to get, is better forms of government. Tribes and
villages are one thing, mega-cities and nations of tens and hundreds of
millions are another. Humanity is rapidly forming into clusters of super-organisms.
As individuals we need to be more engaged, as societies we need less
amateurism, less tribalism, and more expertise in our politics. What are the
chances?
And we’re going into space. Yay! Finally, it seems we really
are! The moon, planets, asteroids. At long last space exploration is being
commercialised. Yes it’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than orbital
bombs and a cold war military arms race.
After decades of stagnation it now feels like a hugely optimistic time
for space exploration.
In fact, despite all the obvious, severe and significant
problems we do have we should be optimistic about the future. Hundreds of millions
of people are leaving poverty, there is less warfare, problems are being
solved, knowledge is being gained.
We are in THE most exciting times. Human society across the planet is dynamic,
vibrant and developing. We’re learning and we’re changing. Now is the time to
be alive. For a writer of speculative fiction the world is an amazing place, it
always was. If we want them to be, our stories can be mirrors of the world
today and gateways to guessable futures.
Real change? Synthetic biology –
that’s where it’s at. Trust me. One day we won’t need street lights.
Where are we going after that? As Mr Burke knew decades ago, the future is
conjecture. To put it another way – haven’t
got a clue.
Brilliant, isn’t it?
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