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We live in the future.

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Neal Stephen­son wrote:

There is some­thing new: A globe about the size of a grape­fruit, a per­fect­ly de­tailed ren­di­tion of Plan­et Earth, hang­ing in space at ar­m's length in front of his eye­s. Hi­ro has heard about this but nev­er seen it. It is a piece of CIC soft­ware called, sim­ply, Earth. It is the us­er in­ter­face that CIC us­es to keep track of ev­ery bit of spa­tial in­for­ma­tion that it owns - all the map­s, weath­er data, ar­chi­tec­tural plan­s, and satel­lite sur­veil­lance stuff.

Hi­ro has been think­ing that in a few years, if he does re­al­ly well in the in­tel biz, maybe he will make enough mon­ey to sub­scribe to Earth and get this thing in his of­fice. Now it is sud­den­ly here, free of charge...

And of course, I have just that very thing in­stalled in my desk­top. Not all the men­tioned da­ta is hooked in­to it, but hey, it is free of charge.

Hein­lein wrote about pri­vate cit­i­zens and com­pa­nies go­ing in­to space. He thought it was not any gov­ern­men­t's job. And that is go­ing to hap­pen in my life­time. I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who went to space pay­ing for it with his own mon­ey.

Of course there are no fly­ing cars or rock­et back­packs (those were good ideas... not!)

What's the dif­fer­ence be­tween Gib­son's Idoru and Go­ril­laz, ex­cept that it's cheap­er to pay mu­si­cians than it is to build Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gences? Can you tell me what's the point in build­ing an AI, any­way? Aren't me­chan­i­cal turks cheap­er and bet­ter?

Asi­mov wrote about a foun­da­tion of schol­ars writ­ing an en­cy­clo­pe­dia to be con­stant­ly up­dat­ed, con­tain­ing the whole of hu­man­i­ty's knowl­edge (we got wikipedia in­stead. Good enough!)

Our phones are much nicer than Star Trek's com­mu­ni­ca­tors (for ex­am­ple, the loud­speak­er is op­tion­al)

It's as if most of the ideas of sci­fi got fil­tered through a pu­ri­fi­er and what made sense came out on the oth­er side. I like liv­ing in the fu­ture. I want to see the next one.

Gustavo V. / 2010-11-16 16:05:

sabia que Ud Podia :)
igualemnte deberias leer "Permutation City" de Greg Egan...

saludos

Roberto Alsina / 2010-11-16 16:55:

Buscando....

Daniel Moisset / 2010-11-16 23:04:

http://www.martinjetpack.com/

Ok. Sigue siendo un idea estupida. inutil. Impractica. Pero a quien no le gustaria jugar un ratito con uno?

Roberto Alsina / 2010-11-17 11:26:

A mí la idea de atarme un motor a la espalda me dá un cagazo importante.

Julián Landerreche / 2010-12-03 20:26:

No leí nada de lo que mencionan, pero me acordé del tema "Mirror", de Sieg über die Sonne, que dice así.:

"I'm telling you, kiddie
the future is boring
Not a single change
for (...)
Worst TV ever
Plain old cars
Rather boring.

It's not like Star Wars
It's not like Futurama
Neither Matrix
Nor Mad Max
Boring future

I'm telling you, kiddie
the future is boring
Made of cheap merchandising
Being paid on advance
(...)
Same old fire
and dancing Gorillaz
The future is here
and it is boring.

The future is here
right here
Look at the window
that's about it
Just boring."

(donde puse "(...)" es porque no entendí qué dice la canción".

Roberto Alsina / 2010-12-04 00:05:

Si alguien siente lo que dice esa cancion, es un pelotudo importante.


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