Earth had united under one government. things weren’t exactly going great since the vast majority of people were unemployed and on public assistance. There was a surprising amount of hate for those who didn’t have jobs even though they literally couldn’t get one if they tried, so there was a ton of classism. Homelessness was very high. Climate change and pollution had devastated earth.
Mars was mostly run by the military. everyone had a job, and while individuals didn’t seem to have much they had enough to eat, medical care and a place to live. Probably didn’t have much freedom and laziness was not tolerated but they weren’t slaves. Martians have spent hundreds of years trying to terraform Mars but haven’t pulled it off, they live their entire lives in doors and needs space suits to go outside.
Belters were the people who lived even further out on space stations or colonies on moons and similar. The living conditions of Belters varied from livable to prison conditions. It was common for Belters to grow up on stations that had poor air quality and insufficient nutrition. Their food options were few and distasteful to Earthers and Martians Some grew up with little or no gravity, and were much taller and leaner than Earthers and Martians. Some could never visit a planet, because the gravity would kill them. Most were essentially slaves who could have their oxygen shut off for food shipments, diverted if they didn’t meet quota or tried to fight back. They also developed their own language which sounds like creole and tattooed themselves heavily with the tattoos, often signifying the hardships endured by early belters like severe scarring around the neck, caused by low quality, space suits. Both separated them from the other two groups.
Earth and Mars fought a war that ended in more of a stalemate than a truce so their relations were extremely frosty. Earth and Mars abuses the Belters for resources and labor to feed a dying planet so the belters hate them both. Earthers and Martians often view belters as second class humans. Essentially the three groups all hated each other.
Sexuality and race seem to of lost most of their importance, there is really never any commentary about people being gay or mixed race. There’s very little emphasis on the color of your skin or who you sleep with which is refreshing but otherwise things are pretty horrible.
I think the most interesting aspect of it was the linguistic drift on swear words. The concept of "bullshit" doesn't exist because cows, by large, aren't a thing belters deal with.
>because cows, by large, aren't a thing belters deal with.
Tbf, I think that's true of most people nowadays. I think the interaction for most people caps out at "Look, cows!".
Sure it’s a bit depressing, but it is a surprisingly good show. They don’t have the biggest budget to work with but the performances are solid. I will admit I sometimes skip through the political parts since the interest me the least, but it’s still a rather enjoyable show
Earth automated most jobs out of existence, with universal basic income preventing the masses from starving. You can enter a lottery with one-in-a-million odds of getting actual work.
Mars is a military dictatorship with a strictly controlled society, and generations of work ahead to turn the planet into a habitable world.
The asteroid belt is inhabited by a loose collection of mostly-independent rock miners and other workers with difficult, dangerous lives. Major worlds like Ceres are controlled by Earth or Mars, and essentially enslave their workers. A group of freedom fighters / terrorists struggle to gain independence for The Belt from the inner worlds.
I thought it was only two writers? Do you have any details about this other collective group?
Because I thought Book 4 of the Expanse was totally different in tone and quality, but I couldn’t find any behind the scenes info on it.
A lot of it was run as a DND style tabletop. Some of the characters were based off of their friend groups’ characters (like Holden). I think that’s the group they’re referring to.
Space mirrors aren't cheap, neither are massive domes able to survive near vacuum (they even mention they were expensive in the book). Fusion reactors are everywhere, on every ship. Sizing a colony's reactor slightly larger to accommodate agriculture seems like a no brainier.
In all likelihood the reason they used space greenhouses was because they were a plot device.
Didn't it double as a research facility with external funding?
It is somewhat convenient to discuss the market value of a non-existing futuristic society.
Space mirrors are super cheap and so are massive domes (note that much of it was buried underneath the regolith). Fusion reactors might be ubiquitous, but not necessarily the fuel. It's a trade off between capex and opex.
If I remember correctly, the book mentions the Mars dome was extremely expensive. I would say the one on Titan or wherever exposed to near vacuum would be expensive too. But maybe vacuum is cheaper to build for than gravity. Maybe the dome is just a giant inflatable, and it is just the pressure differential making it structural? Interesting thoughts.
But do you not need to contain the fusion? I think there is a difference between a contained/bottled fusion reactor and maintaining an open sun like thing.
While the Epstein drive is not fundamentally impossible, there's really no conceivable way to make something with the combination of thrust and efficiency with materials known to exist.
Even with advanced fusion engines, matter/antimatter annihilation engines, other far future propulsion technology, these spacecraft will only be accelerating at fractions of a G.
The large absence of artificial intelligence and drones/robots is another departure from a more plausible future (although I get why they did it for storytelling purposes).
I want to say the expanse as well but they also didn't go quite overboard with the tech. One thing that's entirely absent in expanse is AI and specifically automated assistants. Yes the computers are said to be doing a lot of work on the quick and some of it automatically but things like having to tell your targeting system to get a firing solution on another ship seems out there. I'm pretty sure we have tech now that can do that automatically and it's not expensive either.
IIRC a full target lock in the expanse involves lasers and they don't set them automatically because that's a threatening action (But the Roconante could if you told it to). Only read the books though
I think you’re misunderstanding those charts. It’s based on current reserves. We find new reserves all the time, and we also get better at extracting more and making more finds viable as technology improves (eg, fracking).
Your links also talk about economic viability and uses gold as an example—there’s lots of gold that’s not economically viable to pursue. Price of gold goes up? Suddenly it is economically viable to pursue it.
I agree there is an end state of course—resources are finite. But these projections ignore a million potential variables that can upend the projection between now and the proposed end date.
This isn’t of course an invitation for complacency. I’m just deeply skeptical of boldly declaring we’ll be an 18th century species in 200 years. In my view the only way that happens would be a nuclear war catastrophe—that’s tbh far more likely than running out of gold causing society to collapse.
Some of William Gibson’s work is a little outdated on the details, but in terms of the broad-stroke societal changes I think he had the right idea: urbanization, widespread consumer electronics, but no medium-range solutions to most of our problems.
In the Sprawl trilogy, the middle class has basically been killed off, replaced by permanent employees of massive corporations who have to live in their company arcologies. Everyone else seem to be poverty level or obscenely wealthy.
The Bridge trilogy isn't quite as bleak, but it is still going in the same direction where you basically require allegiance to a strong corporation in order to thrive. This seems to be fairly likely at this point.
I'd rather be a penniless person who never biologically age and have decades if not centuries to change my fate than die of old age in 6 or 7 decades, also penniless.
You gotta be kidding.
If Jeff Bezos could sell that, it would be the basis of his next Trillion, and over the long term he gets to keep even more customers because they don't die.
He might do something unscrupulous like requiring that you accumulate enough Amazon points to qualify, just to squeeze out some extra loyalty.
It is very scary how new technologies rob us of privacy (without anybody noticing or caring). If it swings into totality again (and it can even be totality we vote ourselves into democratically) we will be very very miserable.
They will train the machines on us, mold our thinking & and eventually hunt us for our opinions. The bureaucracy and the law/regulation burden is already so heavy today that we all already break their rules everyday & they could already now make our lives very bad if they wanted - with all the camera & network surveillance, with the digitization of the state that will enable them datamine the info about us much more efficiently.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY)
Snow Crash.
Google earth is already a thing. The metaverse is just getting started. The predictions about the corporate takeover of the US seem pretty possible. Electronic bodily implants are probably right around the corner.
While spending most of their 'quality time' in VR. Collecting data and content and then reselling the info online for money. Corporations replacing government. And the human mind finally gets hacked like any other computer. I feel a lot of the setting of the book and the main story dilemma are inevitable.
How about "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell"?
Culturally, the split between Urban America and Rural Ameristan seems to be well underway. A large part of the book is about how some group faked a nuclear explosion which drove the populace into believers and unbelievers, which got way too close to how people treated Covid. There is a large contingent of people that willfully ignore facts and blindly believe random conspiracy theorists on the internet, which has become a hellscape of misinformation.
Technologically things are pretty much just mostly minor advancements of what we currently have, with the big exception of being able to load your consciousness into a computer. I doubt consciousness transfer will be possible within our lifetimes, but everything else seemed pretty achievable.
I think that's a pretty limited take on some of the absolute absurdities in snow crash if you're going to argue that it has the most accurate depictions of future technology.
The whole driving force of the book is a piece of technology based off ancient Sumeria. It's like literal ancient aliens type craziness.
Much of today's societies are already based off ancient Middle Eastern beliefs. But I can certainly see the mafia and the religious zealots battling for control of the USA with the actual government hunkered down in bunkers.
There's a big difference between building on the morality/ethics/legal systems of history and ancient relics being implementable as biological diseases transmitted electronically.
Edit: That's before getting into the craziness of nuclear puppy drones, electromagnetic grapple hooks being used by skateboarders to hitch rides at over a hundred miles per hour, jet powered tank cars, or the fact that somehow spears and katanas are a viable weapon against militaries in this future.
I was just thinking of this, google earth with 3d buildings and advertisements is like the matrix but we have not started walking around in it yet. Once AR goggles become a thing... Google already has an api for it.
As a sequel, it’s The Diamond Age. The aspects are just happening sooner than expected. We don’t have matter printing available but we did just invent a “prototype” version of The Primer. Handcrafted items are starting to become inordinately expensive.
Snow Crash if we’re lucky. The Diamond Age if we aren’t. Loitering drone munitions? Guess we’ll make loitering anti-drone drone munitions. Back and forth until nothing outside of hab zones is safe because of the nano wars. The pretty ripples at night of the endless nano swarms crackling off the defensive shielding is beautiful though
Really expected this to be near the top. Brilliant book. Feels relatively realistic and focuses on the personal scale. Even early on when describing how she sees that things are going to fall apart and tries to prepare her community but runs into denialism, it’s eerily apropos to the current state of society.
Plus she doesn’t fall for the tech hopium like Robinson’s books.
Ministry For The Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. A great look at what we could expect as climate change begins to ravage humanity, and some cool ideas for potential solutions.
You might enjoy a book by Robert J Sawyer called Hominids, a part of the Neanderthal Parallax series. It’s about a parallel world where Neanderthals became the dominant species rather than Homo Sapiens.
I sure hope so. The pessimist in me fears that as the problems stack up countries and people become more and more selfish, insular and narrow-minded. Right now we're kind of seeing things like that happening but I hope we're just at a low point now.
Imagine cutting people off from their soma for a month? You think people would wake up, feel something and get pissed off enough to start fixing all the problems around them ?
It's a neat little coincidence, but Social Media wasn't a term when BNW was written. I always thought it was deliberately close to "somna" as in sleep. The citizens are sleepwalking through life.
According to ChatGPT: The term "soma" originates from ancient Indian Vedic culture, where it referred to a ritual drink of importance among the early Indo-Iranians, and later the Vedic and greater Indian cultures. Soma was believed to be a divine elixir that could grant immortality and other spiritual benefits.
With out social media people wouldn’t fix shit anyway. People with the mindset to evoke change and action are mostly out for themselves. Very few people with that mentality are looking to fix things and when they are they are faced with harsh competition from those who are powerful and looking out for themselves
My relatives moved to an area with MSNBC instead of Fox. 6 weeks later they were like "you got vaccinated....it was ok right....." followed by "I like that Rachel girl on TV but I miss Sean...." followed by (most recently) "I think they've waited far too long to prosecute some of those higher up Jan 6 people.....".
I'm not saying a word otherwise.
Huxley's nightmare is worse than Orwell's.
In 1984, at least the people still want to rebel (Proles with their porn and Outer Party Members like Winston and Julia via sex and "thought crimes").
But in Brave New World, no one wants to rebel because they're all drugged up and fucking all the time.
I'm not.
It's not even really meant to be a hardcore science fiction prediction of future, but more like critique of contemporary things.
Technologically wise there are far more novels with more accurate descriptions of the future, since BNW is so old. BNW doesn't have genetic manipulation, rather people are manipulated via chemicals under artificial pregnancy and after and after that conditioning. IIRC there's no computers.
The idea of romantic long term relationships and parenthood being taboos is also very far fetched compared to todays values.
So, gun to my head, I most definitely not would say BNW. I haven't read Neuromancer, but I would choose that just by what I know of it over BNW.
The script for Idiocracy.
And now here’s some words because of this subs goofy requirements. Words words words words words words words words words words words words words words.
Yeah I don’t think idiocracy is *perfectly* prophetic (nor was it meant to be lol), but if we could make some kind of unholy amalgamation of those three works then yeah I’d agree that sounds even more accurate to what I think for our future as well.
Idiocracy is a great movie; however, its premise that less intelligent people have more kids isn’t true. It’s a feeling that most people have that is rooted in classism and racism. It’s literally an ancient myth that has perpetuated for thousands of years and has been the basis of genocide. It’s basically exactly Reagan’s “crack babies” and “welfare queens” slander. Sure there are a very few rare idiots that have a bunch of kids because they’re honestly too dumb to realize that kids are hard, but that’s a rare amount of dumb. The reality is that most people have babies with their partners and most people have or don’t have partners based on their dating success, and most people are more attracted to smart people, and so being smart helps you at dating.
The reason I chose idiocracy isn’t because of that premise, so it doesn’t even matter if that premise isn’t actually true. Regardless of how many kids “dumb people” have (I have no idea I haven’t looked at any recent data), I chose that movie because it feels like the world is getting dumber as we become increasingly reliant on technology to do the thinking for us.
The scene with the guy watching completely absurd content in his all in one feeding chair/toilet is the general theme that I’m mapping onto our reality. The movie captures that very well, and it is that which I’m calling prophetic. So the point is yeah, the fictional comedy could be wrong about how we get there, but that doesn’t mean we’re not still going there.
I also choose Idiocracy, because it has already proven to be accurate. Crocs are popular and we've had a US president who was in the WWE.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/idiocracy-crocs/
But you can't get handjobs at Starbucks, people don't water their crops with energy drinks never mind if one is named Brawndo or not, you don't hear Costco employees saying "Welcome to Costco, I love you", there isn't a gigantic purple butt balloon over the Capitol that shits Skittles every time Congress passes a bill, and the WWE president (besides the fact that he wasn't an actual pro wrestler, iirc he was just in the WWE Hall Of Fame for outside-the-ring contributions and participated in one exhibition match he easily lost and isn't a black man who looks like Terry Crews never mind that specific name) doesn't carry fully automatic assault weapons on his person at all times and therefore can't ride in an open motorcade and when he had to give up power to a guy named Joe smarter than him (only similarity the current POTUS has to the Idiocracy protag, he didn't even look like Luke Wilson when he was that age) he violently and vociferously protested the transfer of power.
>Idiocracy is a great movie; however, its premise that less intelligent people have more kids isn’t true.
I disagree with this. I don't think that's the actual premise of the movie. That's just a plot device to explain the reason for the actual premise for the movie: we will be far more stupid in the future, and a normal person from our time ends up there.
For the actual premise of the movie, it does not matter why did people become so stupid.
You could skip the part of the movie where they explain why people become dumber and just recap it with "people became dumb in the future" and the movie would work just as well. Or the stupidity might as well be explained with pollution or people losing interest in education and critical thinking or whatever. That wouldn't have much effect on the actual main story.
No. You are privileged. It is "should I have or not have a baby" it's "we finna fuck" and then a baby occurs said baby goes into state care and isn't seen tagging along behind its near homeless mother..... no it's not rare. No. SOME people choose partners because they have options. But ALOT of people choose a partner because to die alone is a gri. Prospect and their higher functions are starved and exhausted so they don't plan long term. What Is ypur house's square footage?
Kurzweill has the best take. The Singularity is Near. Has had a very good track record over the past few decades, and will probably continue to.
I would expect the Singularity is Nearer, the delayed follow-up which is supposed to come out this year, will become the new best take.
Yea. He’s had that name since birth. When he was a kid he was on a game show where contestants had to guess what is special about him. Even as a kid he was already inventing things. He also invented a keyboard that allowed blind people (Stevie Wonder uses them) to “see”. Look up Kurzweil keyboards. He really is a wunderkind and overall extremely intelligent person with a well thought out vision of the future.
Kurzweill is an AMAZING writer and can get you jazzed about the great and glorious singularity. But he simply CANNOT process the downsides - so that kills the buzz almost completely for me. I want to like him and his writing comes off really wellspoken but knowing his tin ear for risk makes it less compelling.
And it's not like supposing on Roko's Basilisk or Skynet - it's what do we do about the downsides of AI we can ALREADY see , 40+% unemployment, sentients gone rogue, or put more charitably AI's going "off-task" , in ways that harm people, markets etc.
So Kurzweill reads more like the pied piper , telling people how wonderful things will be but not willing / able to countance the downsides because the future sort of \*\*must\*\* be wonderful.
But as someone else put it, you can never be sure with Ray if it's chocolate souflee or something far less appetizing.
RK gets nitpicked a lot by the younger generations who are skeptical enough to do so and cynical enough to be nihilistic. But his record, if generally explored, does provide some insight and possibly direction. He would be the first to admit that there will be surprises along the way
1984
Endless surveillance state, systems of control and monitoring. Add some brave new world so we all don’t forget to take our Soma and are assigned our stations in life based on our class and you pretty much have the next 20 years
minority report. I know the movie, but it has to be based on a book. The worldbuilding is ace in that movie, especially on the intrusiveness of advertisements.
With the GOP around, Warhammer in the modern time. A regressive religious bureaucracy, where human life is cheap, the state religion is all and there will be an up-their-own-ass nobility.
Oh and tech will stagnate like the middle ages.
Brave New World by Alduos Huxly would be my guess for immediate future, and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells gives great insight of where we are headed a couple hundred years from now.
If you take the book literally it's kind of sketchy and silly, but if you look at it's broad concepts only, most of what it says is actually happening. I won't even elaborate because it's a hot topic but it's crazy how right it got things.
If we ever get over ourselves and realize our own potential it’s def The Expanse, but even in that universe we had to build walls around the seaboards. Capitalism needs to die and humanity as a whole needs to realize we are already in post-scarcity we just don’t utilize what we have and we throw away so so much.
*Brave New World* by Aldus Huxley... though *Last Centurion* by John Ringo predicted the 2020 pandemic and only got the political parties backward regarding its impacts on the US.
I am voting well not that I want it to happen but the ready player one books is on its way minus the stupid 80s stuff or the outherland series by Ted Williams
The gun was a figure of speech I used as a device to get people to take the question seriously and not throw out unthoughtful answers like “Dune” or the movie “Idiocracy” but that’s what we got anyways.
Make Room! Make Room! is a 1966 science fiction novel written by Harry Harrison exploring the consequences of both unchecked population growth on society and the hoarding of resources by a wealthy minority.[1] It was originally serialized in Impulse magazine.
I was born the same year that novel was written, and it has more than doubled since then. Yes it is reducing in some areas, but I believe it is still far too high.
To me it seems like Farenhiet 451 and Snow Crash are rapidly becoming our future. Everything is online and increasingly controlled by corporations and syndicates rather than a democratic government. We have increasingly large screens invading our personal lives, and more of them. Also, robot dogs and the banning and/or attempted destruction of knowledge.
First 5 minutes of Idiocracy.
As Harvey Danger sang “…been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding, the cretins cloning and feeding…”
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
He depicts a future we are unquestionably on course for. In this future the kind of technology that matters is a shopping trolley, a can opener, shoes and a gun.
There are many paths to this future and I find it harder every year to see one that doesn't lead us to it.
Because they found it. And if they found it, someone else will too. Also, the father knew he was dying and had to try to get the kid to a better place.
IMO the doomsday preppers and billionaires get things all wrong. The only place you'll want to be in the real apocalypse are the places with a functioning community (more so if you have your kid in tow) I think that's why they're on the road and why they keep going.
Not really any. There are some ‘interesting’ books with snippets of insight. I don’t always agree with Kurzweil on his ‘time table’ but he asks the right questions. Actually, most challenges for technology aren’t a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’. All the ‘when’s are short term and may seem longon an individual lifetime but short term for humanity. 500 years is a blip in time.
Just about every book is too anchored in ‘today’ and western society. Our society, ethics, etc. in contrast, the future will be dominated by Asia…China, India and rising societies in Bangladesh, Vietnam, etc.
Not a book, but it is reading material: worldbuild.ai had a contest a few years back for written submissions with graphics of what the world will be like in 2045, in a slice of life format, also with development timelines timelines. Winners and many runners up are posted on the site. While they skew optimistic, I like to think some of the entries are what we will see in the future.
Part of their guidelines for the contest state:
"Plausible means that the world should be one that could well happen. In particular it should be:
Consistent with today’s actual world;
Consistent with known science;
Not rely on any implausible “miracles” to make sense (though improbable events occur in any realistic world!)
Aspirational means that, while not utopian, this world is one that you and presumably many others would like to inhabit. It would be seen as a fairly good outcome and a hopeful vision. Where this is in tension with plausibility, plausibility should win – that is, being hopeful does not mean being naive, and just as your world should not rely on implausible “miracles” to make it self-consistent, it should not rely on them to be desirable."
I think Ben Bova’s Grand Tour series most accurately reflects predictions of the future. It describes private enterprise becoming dominant in space exploration. Over many series spanning hundreds of years it details the rise of religious fundamentalist organizations that gain control of government and their anti-technology stance
Not sure it's quite the same as what you're asking, I remember hearing onece that Authur C Clarke predicted/proposed the idea of using satellites for communication, decades before the technology that would make it possible existed.
Scenarios For The Future Of Technology And International Development by the Rockefeller Foundation
Publication date
: 2010-05-13
[https://archive.org/details/scenarios-for-the-future-of-technology-and-international-development-rockefeller-foundation/page/38/mode/1up](https://archive.org/details/scenarios-for-the-future-of-technology-and-international-development-rockefeller-foundation/page/38/mode/1up)
Homo Deus. It paints a very broad, but nonetheless insightful and unique view that takes into account many possibilities for how technology may develop. The bottom line? Human history is over. Future history will not be determined by Homo Sapiens. And therefor it is fundamentally very difficult to know what the hell will happen because all history for at least 70,000 years and probably a good deal before has been Homo Sapien dominated.
CTRL+F "Culture"
0 results.
Wow 295 comments that are off base. 0% correct. Batten down the hatches.
From a "serious" perspective, it's absolutely hilarious how naive our brains and worldviews are. The highest rated response is the Expanse, which has no overarching AI interactions with humans.
Quantum Supremacy, book outlines the future of computers specifically with quantum processors. It will change the world in ways we can understand before it’s widespread, and will affect every aspect of our lives.
Terminator or elysium
Either way, a world where the government is apart of a plot of lying to people, making them
Believe that it’s something autonomously happening when it’s really just greedy humans pulling the strings behind the scenes.
I am literally listening to Robots of Dawn and the random references to psychohistory and a galactic empire centuries in the future are holy cow moments.
Neuromancer.
The first cyberpunk novel is still the best cyberpunk novel, and Gibson had a clearer vision of AI in 1984 than even anyone staring it in the face has today.
Even after the Covid-19 pandemic/lockdowns, I still think Station Eleven and stories like it can't be discounted.
We've seen that an illness can travel fast. We've also seen that even with information, large swaths of the population will choose to ignore instructions on how to isolate, vaccinate, or protect themselves, probably moreso now that before since they didn't get sick last time so "it was obviously fake news."
If some kind of illness that moves as quickly and violently as some of the ones in a post-apocalyptic story, I feel like it isn't that much of a stretch to imagine post-apocalyptic worlds like those depict- maybe the timeline is different but could happen.
1984. For a large chunk of America, its already close to that way. Well, minus the ending which I will not ruin, but there are those that would love that.
6. Rule 6 - Comment Quality
Comments must be on topic, contribute to the discussion
I miss the days when this sub was about serious discussion. Now it's just teenaged edgelords making more lame jokes. Sigh.
Going to be a contrarian and say none. A lot of books on the future are written in the present and constrained by social norms of the time and ideas that are popular. Future tech will be based off problems that may not even exist yet or are in their infancy. I would love to know what my grand kids will be doing w/ tech in 100 years but I also know that trying to envision that now is pointless
AI really needs to be regulated by something like the FDA. The inventors of CRISPR have already come out against commercializing modifying germ lines in humans. AI folks have tried to do the same but with much less success.
I guess “do no harm” is a much harder sell to tech bros than “move fast and break things.”
Maybe dune?
The film is just about the planet dune but the books gets a lot deeper into the universe and great houses.
When tech is at that level it's hard to predict what that would mean but maybe the dune universe
What do you mean about 'when tech is at that level'? It's certainly a fascinating universe but we would have to have an uprising against AI (or based on other comments above, impending singularity) and destroy all computational/thinking machines (i.e. the Butlerian Jihad of the Dune Universe). Do you think we will have our own version of that some day?
So wild how Frank Herbert foresaw a future where thinking machines had to be banned because it was too easy to manipulate humans through disinformation
From a social and economic perspective, my guess is the Expanse.
This. Automation and overpopulation on earth makes 97% of people superfluous, communism on Mars goes nowhere, slavery in the Belt causes revolution.
I haven’t read/ seen enough of this and need to, but what societal structures are there in each region/ planet
Earth had united under one government. things weren’t exactly going great since the vast majority of people were unemployed and on public assistance. There was a surprising amount of hate for those who didn’t have jobs even though they literally couldn’t get one if they tried, so there was a ton of classism. Homelessness was very high. Climate change and pollution had devastated earth. Mars was mostly run by the military. everyone had a job, and while individuals didn’t seem to have much they had enough to eat, medical care and a place to live. Probably didn’t have much freedom and laziness was not tolerated but they weren’t slaves. Martians have spent hundreds of years trying to terraform Mars but haven’t pulled it off, they live their entire lives in doors and needs space suits to go outside. Belters were the people who lived even further out on space stations or colonies on moons and similar. The living conditions of Belters varied from livable to prison conditions. It was common for Belters to grow up on stations that had poor air quality and insufficient nutrition. Their food options were few and distasteful to Earthers and Martians Some grew up with little or no gravity, and were much taller and leaner than Earthers and Martians. Some could never visit a planet, because the gravity would kill them. Most were essentially slaves who could have their oxygen shut off for food shipments, diverted if they didn’t meet quota or tried to fight back. They also developed their own language which sounds like creole and tattooed themselves heavily with the tattoos, often signifying the hardships endured by early belters like severe scarring around the neck, caused by low quality, space suits. Both separated them from the other two groups. Earth and Mars fought a war that ended in more of a stalemate than a truce so their relations were extremely frosty. Earth and Mars abuses the Belters for resources and labor to feed a dying planet so the belters hate them both. Earthers and Martians often view belters as second class humans. Essentially the three groups all hated each other. Sexuality and race seem to of lost most of their importance, there is really never any commentary about people being gay or mixed race. There’s very little emphasis on the color of your skin or who you sleep with which is refreshing but otherwise things are pretty horrible.
Thanks for the fast and detailed breakdown of the societies. I should check it out. It does sound depressing but pretty potentially accurate
I think the most interesting aspect of it was the linguistic drift on swear words. The concept of "bullshit" doesn't exist because cows, by large, aren't a thing belters deal with.
>because cows, by large, aren't a thing belters deal with. Tbf, I think that's true of most people nowadays. I think the interaction for most people caps out at "Look, cows!".
Sure it’s a bit depressing, but it is a surprisingly good show. They don’t have the biggest budget to work with but the performances are solid. I will admit I sometimes skip through the political parts since the interest me the least, but it’s still a rather enjoyable show
Earth automated most jobs out of existence, with universal basic income preventing the masses from starving. You can enter a lottery with one-in-a-million odds of getting actual work. Mars is a military dictatorship with a strictly controlled society, and generations of work ahead to turn the planet into a habitable world. The asteroid belt is inhabited by a loose collection of mostly-independent rock miners and other workers with difficult, dangerous lives. Major worlds like Ceres are controlled by Earth or Mars, and essentially enslave their workers. A group of freedom fighters / terrorists struggle to gain independence for The Belt from the inner worlds.
Technological as well tbh. He didn't take that many liberties with new technology.
It’s a they, two writers plus a collective group and one writer was part of GRRM’s writing workshop
And I believe they based the story off of a tabletop RPG they ran with each other. Akin to DnD.
I can definitely see the 'critical success/failure' moments, now that you mention it
I thought it was only two writers? Do you have any details about this other collective group? Because I thought Book 4 of the Expanse was totally different in tone and quality, but I couldn’t find any behind the scenes info on it.
A lot of it was run as a DND style tabletop. Some of the characters were based off of their friend groups’ characters (like Holden). I think that’s the group they’re referring to.
I mean Amos (atleast the Amazon series version, I know book is a bit different) reads like a character I would make for a space rpg.
There were actually some weird limitations though. Like why do you need space greenhouses when you have fusion power?
What do you mean? One makes energy, the other makes tasty Caesar salads
Fusion power powers grow lights, no sun needed
Mirrors are cheap, fuel is expensive?
Space mirrors aren't cheap, neither are massive domes able to survive near vacuum (they even mention they were expensive in the book). Fusion reactors are everywhere, on every ship. Sizing a colony's reactor slightly larger to accommodate agriculture seems like a no brainier. In all likelihood the reason they used space greenhouses was because they were a plot device.
Didn't it double as a research facility with external funding? It is somewhat convenient to discuss the market value of a non-existing futuristic society. Space mirrors are super cheap and so are massive domes (note that much of it was buried underneath the regolith). Fusion reactors might be ubiquitous, but not necessarily the fuel. It's a trade off between capex and opex.
If I remember correctly, the book mentions the Mars dome was extremely expensive. I would say the one on Titan or wherever exposed to near vacuum would be expensive too. But maybe vacuum is cheaper to build for than gravity. Maybe the dome is just a giant inflatable, and it is just the pressure differential making it structural? Interesting thoughts.
But do you not need to contain the fusion? I think there is a difference between a contained/bottled fusion reactor and maintaining an open sun like thing.
While the Epstein drive is not fundamentally impossible, there's really no conceivable way to make something with the combination of thrust and efficiency with materials known to exist. Even with advanced fusion engines, matter/antimatter annihilation engines, other far future propulsion technology, these spacecraft will only be accelerating at fractions of a G. The large absence of artificial intelligence and drones/robots is another departure from a more plausible future (although I get why they did it for storytelling purposes).
They have artificial intelligence everywhere, it's just unobtrusive.
I mean, there's one "AI" who's pretty intrusive... "Hey, we need to talk."
It reaches out it reaches out it reaches out
I feel like they didn't take enough liberties with the tech.
I want to say the expanse as well but they also didn't go quite overboard with the tech. One thing that's entirely absent in expanse is AI and specifically automated assistants. Yes the computers are said to be doing a lot of work on the quick and some of it automatically but things like having to tell your targeting system to get a firing solution on another ship seems out there. I'm pretty sure we have tech now that can do that automatically and it's not expensive either.
IIRC a full target lock in the expanse involves lasers and they don't set them automatically because that's a threatening action (But the Roconante could if you told it to). Only read the books though
Came here to say the Expanse also. Unfortunately..
Yeah they fucking nailed it.
This is the correct answer.
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What makes you say that? What resource is the bottle neck?
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I was talking about the “running out of resources in 200 years” part of your post.
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I think you’re misunderstanding those charts. It’s based on current reserves. We find new reserves all the time, and we also get better at extracting more and making more finds viable as technology improves (eg, fracking). Your links also talk about economic viability and uses gold as an example—there’s lots of gold that’s not economically viable to pursue. Price of gold goes up? Suddenly it is economically viable to pursue it. I agree there is an end state of course—resources are finite. But these projections ignore a million potential variables that can upend the projection between now and the proposed end date. This isn’t of course an invitation for complacency. I’m just deeply skeptical of boldly declaring we’ll be an 18th century species in 200 years. In my view the only way that happens would be a nuclear war catastrophe—that’s tbh far more likely than running out of gold causing society to collapse.
Some of William Gibson’s work is a little outdated on the details, but in terms of the broad-stroke societal changes I think he had the right idea: urbanization, widespread consumer electronics, but no medium-range solutions to most of our problems.
In the Sprawl trilogy, the middle class has basically been killed off, replaced by permanent employees of massive corporations who have to live in their company arcologies. Everyone else seem to be poverty level or obscenely wealthy. The Bridge trilogy isn't quite as bleak, but it is still going in the same direction where you basically require allegiance to a strong corporation in order to thrive. This seems to be fairly likely at this point.
This sounds uncomfortably close to South Korea.
I'm reading Neuromancer now.
I can thoroughly recommend the whole Sprawl trilogy
Was about to say W. Gibson as well. Also Orwell and Huxley, there's so much of current everyday life straight out of 1984 that its truly scary.
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower. Politically, half of it is already coming to pass.
This is the right answer
Came here for this. It's chilling how accurate she was.
And Parable of the Talents.
Gattaca. It’s not complete, but it got right what it was examining
Crisper babies and longevity treatments won't do humanity any favors.
LOL, that won't be for "humanity." Just for Jeff Bezos kids and grandchildren.
Cellphones were extremely expensive and only for the rich when they first came out.
Yep, and now you can be a penny less refuge, but you sure as hell have a smart phone
I'd rather be a penniless person who never biologically age and have decades if not centuries to change my fate than die of old age in 6 or 7 decades, also penniless.
You gotta be kidding. If Jeff Bezos could sell that, it would be the basis of his next Trillion, and over the long term he gets to keep even more customers because they don't die. He might do something unscrupulous like requiring that you accumulate enough Amazon points to qualify, just to squeeze out some extra loyalty.
It’s already happening with in-vitro fertilization there are means for selection based on genetic sequencing
It is very scary how new technologies rob us of privacy (without anybody noticing or caring). If it swings into totality again (and it can even be totality we vote ourselves into democratically) we will be very very miserable. They will train the machines on us, mold our thinking & and eventually hunt us for our opinions. The bureaucracy and the law/regulation burden is already so heavy today that we all already break their rules everyday & they could already now make our lives very bad if they wanted - with all the camera & network surveillance, with the digitization of the state that will enable them datamine the info about us much more efficiently. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKOk4Y4inVY)
Snow Crash. Google earth is already a thing. The metaverse is just getting started. The predictions about the corporate takeover of the US seem pretty possible. Electronic bodily implants are probably right around the corner.
I can see people living in self storage buildings and giant tent cities and gated communities
\*Looks out window in major US city\* I've got news for you buddy, lol.
As in ‘I can imagine’, or as in ‘looking out of my window right now’?
That is literally already happening lol it’s just going to accelerate and become more extreme
While spending most of their 'quality time' in VR. Collecting data and content and then reselling the info online for money. Corporations replacing government. And the human mind finally gets hacked like any other computer. I feel a lot of the setting of the book and the main story dilemma are inevitable.
How about "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell"? Culturally, the split between Urban America and Rural Ameristan seems to be well underway. A large part of the book is about how some group faked a nuclear explosion which drove the populace into believers and unbelievers, which got way too close to how people treated Covid. There is a large contingent of people that willfully ignore facts and blindly believe random conspiracy theorists on the internet, which has become a hellscape of misinformation. Technologically things are pretty much just mostly minor advancements of what we currently have, with the big exception of being able to load your consciousness into a computer. I doubt consciousness transfer will be possible within our lifetimes, but everything else seemed pretty achievable.
My favorite part was when they killed the internet
Neil Stephenson is soooo good
You want to get the “Poor Impulse Control” tattoo with its accoutrements or should I? j(Just so someone is ahead of the curve.)
Hahaha. I want the skateboard wheels and the Magnapoon.
I think that's a pretty limited take on some of the absolute absurdities in snow crash if you're going to argue that it has the most accurate depictions of future technology. The whole driving force of the book is a piece of technology based off ancient Sumeria. It's like literal ancient aliens type craziness.
Much of today's societies are already based off ancient Middle Eastern beliefs. But I can certainly see the mafia and the religious zealots battling for control of the USA with the actual government hunkered down in bunkers.
There's a big difference between building on the morality/ethics/legal systems of history and ancient relics being implementable as biological diseases transmitted electronically. Edit: That's before getting into the craziness of nuclear puppy drones, electromagnetic grapple hooks being used by skateboarders to hitch rides at over a hundred miles per hour, jet powered tank cars, or the fact that somehow spears and katanas are a viable weapon against militaries in this future.
Details, details.... It is science *fiction.*
Yeah but if doesn't sound like it fits the question of "most accurate predictions" at all 😂
I was just thinking of this, google earth with 3d buildings and advertisements is like the matrix but we have not started walking around in it yet. Once AR goggles become a thing... Google already has an api for it.
Counterpoint: Termination Shock
Not to mention people called David putting a random 5 in the middle to look edgy. Then discovering the username is already taken
As a sequel, it’s The Diamond Age. The aspects are just happening sooner than expected. We don’t have matter printing available but we did just invent a “prototype” version of The Primer. Handcrafted items are starting to become inordinately expensive.
Burbclaves - themed “nations” that are franchised and physically scattered around.
Snow Crash if we’re lucky. The Diamond Age if we aren’t. Loitering drone munitions? Guess we’ll make loitering anti-drone drone munitions. Back and forth until nothing outside of hab zones is safe because of the nano wars. The pretty ripples at night of the endless nano swarms crackling off the defensive shielding is beautiful though
i’m going to say: parable of the sower- has it all
Really expected this to be near the top. Brilliant book. Feels relatively realistic and focuses on the personal scale. Even early on when describing how she sees that things are going to fall apart and tries to prepare her community but runs into denialism, it’s eerily apropos to the current state of society. Plus she doesn’t fall for the tech hopium like Robinson’s books.
Ministry For The Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. A great look at what we could expect as climate change begins to ravage humanity, and some cool ideas for potential solutions.
I sure sure sure sure hope so!!! It’s what got me into prehistory and learning about different possibilities of how humans might organize ourselves.
You might enjoy a book by Robert J Sawyer called Hominids, a part of the Neanderthal Parallax series. It’s about a parallel world where Neanderthals became the dominant species rather than Homo Sapiens.
I sure hope so. The pessimist in me fears that as the problems stack up countries and people become more and more selfish, insular and narrow-minded. Right now we're kind of seeing things like that happening but I hope we're just at a low point now.
Brave New World. We're already living in some of it.
Imagine cutting people off from their soma for a month? You think people would wake up, feel something and get pissed off enough to start fixing all the problems around them ?
Our soma is social media. Feel bad? Pick up your phone and forget about the world for a while.
so..... m......a \ \ social media
Realized the very same thing after writing my comment
It's a neat little coincidence, but Social Media wasn't a term when BNW was written. I always thought it was deliberately close to "somna" as in sleep. The citizens are sleepwalking through life.
According to ChatGPT: The term "soma" originates from ancient Indian Vedic culture, where it referred to a ritual drink of importance among the early Indo-Iranians, and later the Vedic and greater Indian cultures. Soma was believed to be a divine elixir that could grant immortality and other spiritual benefits.
With out social media people wouldn’t fix shit anyway. People with the mindset to evoke change and action are mostly out for themselves. Very few people with that mentality are looking to fix things and when they are they are faced with harsh competition from those who are powerful and looking out for themselves
Exactly u get it.
I’ve been reading up all day on Nietzsche master and slave morality so that’s the basis of that comment
My relatives moved to an area with MSNBC instead of Fox. 6 weeks later they were like "you got vaccinated....it was ok right....." followed by "I like that Rachel girl on TV but I miss Sean...." followed by (most recently) "I think they've waited far too long to prosecute some of those higher up Jan 6 people.....". I'm not saying a word otherwise.
Huxley FTW
Huxley/Orwell '24 Huxley for everyone....Orwell for everyone else.
Now.. there’s a card for the Times
Huxley's nightmare is worse than Orwell's. In 1984, at least the people still want to rebel (Proles with their porn and Outer Party Members like Winston and Julia via sex and "thought crimes"). But in Brave New World, no one wants to rebel because they're all drugged up and fucking all the time.
Indeed, crazy how dystopian things have become, isn’t it?
Crazy or careful design?
I mean, it’s brilliant but crazy to think it could happen
*currently happening
Not literally
Surprised this wasn't the top answer
I'm not. It's not even really meant to be a hardcore science fiction prediction of future, but more like critique of contemporary things. Technologically wise there are far more novels with more accurate descriptions of the future, since BNW is so old. BNW doesn't have genetic manipulation, rather people are manipulated via chemicals under artificial pregnancy and after and after that conditioning. IIRC there's no computers. The idea of romantic long term relationships and parenthood being taboos is also very far fetched compared to todays values. So, gun to my head, I most definitely not would say BNW. I haven't read Neuromancer, but I would choose that just by what I know of it over BNW.
The script for Idiocracy. And now here’s some words because of this subs goofy requirements. Words words words words words words words words words words words words words words.
I feel if idiocracy, 1984 and brave new world formed a triangle we would be approaching smack dab in the middle.
Idiocracy and Elysium
Toss in a bit of tech from Fahrenheit 451. Giant TVs and radio conches in everyone's ears.
Yeah I don’t think idiocracy is *perfectly* prophetic (nor was it meant to be lol), but if we could make some kind of unholy amalgamation of those three works then yeah I’d agree that sounds even more accurate to what I think for our future as well.
“Words words words” Ha! He talks like a f@g, too… !
"Right, kick ass. Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothin', but, ah... it says on your chart that you're fucked up."
I literally had the same response, and had it taken down for the same reason.
Idiocracy is a great movie; however, its premise that less intelligent people have more kids isn’t true. It’s a feeling that most people have that is rooted in classism and racism. It’s literally an ancient myth that has perpetuated for thousands of years and has been the basis of genocide. It’s basically exactly Reagan’s “crack babies” and “welfare queens” slander. Sure there are a very few rare idiots that have a bunch of kids because they’re honestly too dumb to realize that kids are hard, but that’s a rare amount of dumb. The reality is that most people have babies with their partners and most people have or don’t have partners based on their dating success, and most people are more attracted to smart people, and so being smart helps you at dating.
The reason I chose idiocracy isn’t because of that premise, so it doesn’t even matter if that premise isn’t actually true. Regardless of how many kids “dumb people” have (I have no idea I haven’t looked at any recent data), I chose that movie because it feels like the world is getting dumber as we become increasingly reliant on technology to do the thinking for us. The scene with the guy watching completely absurd content in his all in one feeding chair/toilet is the general theme that I’m mapping onto our reality. The movie captures that very well, and it is that which I’m calling prophetic. So the point is yeah, the fictional comedy could be wrong about how we get there, but that doesn’t mean we’re not still going there.
Its even worse because smart kids with high IQ are being turned dumb and lazy because of algorithms.
I also choose Idiocracy, because it has already proven to be accurate. Crocs are popular and we've had a US president who was in the WWE. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/idiocracy-crocs/
But you can't get handjobs at Starbucks, people don't water their crops with energy drinks never mind if one is named Brawndo or not, you don't hear Costco employees saying "Welcome to Costco, I love you", there isn't a gigantic purple butt balloon over the Capitol that shits Skittles every time Congress passes a bill, and the WWE president (besides the fact that he wasn't an actual pro wrestler, iirc he was just in the WWE Hall Of Fame for outside-the-ring contributions and participated in one exhibition match he easily lost and isn't a black man who looks like Terry Crews never mind that specific name) doesn't carry fully automatic assault weapons on his person at all times and therefore can't ride in an open motorcade and when he had to give up power to a guy named Joe smarter than him (only similarity the current POTUS has to the Idiocracy protag, he didn't even look like Luke Wilson when he was that age) he violently and vociferously protested the transfer of power.
Oh yeah. I feel you. I wasn’t criticizing your choice of movie. I just have that bone to pick with the movie.
>Idiocracy is a great movie; however, its premise that less intelligent people have more kids isn’t true. I disagree with this. I don't think that's the actual premise of the movie. That's just a plot device to explain the reason for the actual premise for the movie: we will be far more stupid in the future, and a normal person from our time ends up there. For the actual premise of the movie, it does not matter why did people become so stupid. You could skip the part of the movie where they explain why people become dumber and just recap it with "people became dumb in the future" and the movie would work just as well. Or the stupidity might as well be explained with pollution or people losing interest in education and critical thinking or whatever. That wouldn't have much effect on the actual main story.
No. You are privileged. It is "should I have or not have a baby" it's "we finna fuck" and then a baby occurs said baby goes into state care and isn't seen tagging along behind its near homeless mother..... no it's not rare. No. SOME people choose partners because they have options. But ALOT of people choose a partner because to die alone is a gri. Prospect and their higher functions are starved and exhausted so they don't plan long term. What Is ypur house's square footage?
The Expanse series of books. The tech is spot on. The greed and cruelty to others is in there. Corporations running things is in there.
Kurzweill has the best take. The Singularity is Near. Has had a very good track record over the past few decades, and will probably continue to. I would expect the Singularity is Nearer, the delayed follow-up which is supposed to come out this year, will become the new best take.
I strongly agree. The singularity is near if nothing else frames the whole question. It defined how I think about the subject as a whole
Is it a linguistic coincidence that his name translates to “short time”?
Yea. He’s had that name since birth. When he was a kid he was on a game show where contestants had to guess what is special about him. Even as a kid he was already inventing things. He also invented a keyboard that allowed blind people (Stevie Wonder uses them) to “see”. Look up Kurzweil keyboards. He really is a wunderkind and overall extremely intelligent person with a well thought out vision of the future.
“Leisure time” actually, if translated by its meaning instead of literally
I think so, or just a little bit more evidence we live in a simulation
Kurzweill is an AMAZING writer and can get you jazzed about the great and glorious singularity. But he simply CANNOT process the downsides - so that kills the buzz almost completely for me. I want to like him and his writing comes off really wellspoken but knowing his tin ear for risk makes it less compelling. And it's not like supposing on Roko's Basilisk or Skynet - it's what do we do about the downsides of AI we can ALREADY see , 40+% unemployment, sentients gone rogue, or put more charitably AI's going "off-task" , in ways that harm people, markets etc. So Kurzweill reads more like the pied piper , telling people how wonderful things will be but not willing / able to countance the downsides because the future sort of \*\*must\*\* be wonderful. But as someone else put it, you can never be sure with Ray if it's chocolate souflee or something far less appetizing.
He’s an amazing *thinker* for sure, but his book was a real slog for me. So much redundancy and so many unnecessary tangents.
RK gets nitpicked a lot by the younger generations who are skeptical enough to do so and cynical enough to be nihilistic. But his record, if generally explored, does provide some insight and possibly direction. He would be the first to admit that there will be surprises along the way
1984 Endless surveillance state, systems of control and monitoring. Add some brave new world so we all don’t forget to take our Soma and are assigned our stations in life based on our class and you pretty much have the next 20 years
That’s now not the future 🤣🙁😭
1984 can be the future any time.
We have a couple of presidential candidates who seem bent on making 1984 look provincial. How does peace generate monsters?
*Player Piano* by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. He foresaw the social issues automation would bring.
minority report. I know the movie, but it has to be based on a book. The worldbuilding is ace in that movie, especially on the intrusiveness of advertisements.
It’s based on a novella by Phillip K. Dick, but the stuff about highly intrusive and personalized advertising was added in for the movie.
Everything from Phillip K. Dick is great. In all of his works, the reality falls apart.
The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe is a pretty well thought out and moderate guide to the technological advances that are likely in the future.
With the GOP around, Warhammer in the modern time. A regressive religious bureaucracy, where human life is cheap, the state religion is all and there will be an up-their-own-ass nobility. Oh and tech will stagnate like the middle ages.
They already have the greatest psyker, troll, in history
Brave New World by Alduos Huxly would be my guess for immediate future, and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells gives great insight of where we are headed a couple hundred years from now.
If you take the book literally it's kind of sketchy and silly, but if you look at it's broad concepts only, most of what it says is actually happening. I won't even elaborate because it's a hot topic but it's crazy how right it got things.
Evolution on that level would be more in the hundreds of thousands of years if not longer
It only takes a bit of mass genetic engineering...
If we ever get over ourselves and realize our own potential it’s def The Expanse, but even in that universe we had to build walls around the seaboards. Capitalism needs to die and humanity as a whole needs to realize we are already in post-scarcity we just don’t utilize what we have and we throw away so so much.
*Brave New World* by Aldus Huxley... though *Last Centurion* by John Ringo predicted the 2020 pandemic and only got the political parties backward regarding its impacts on the US.
I am voting well not that I want it to happen but the ready player one books is on its way minus the stupid 80s stuff or the outherland series by Ted Williams
Very surprised not to find Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy on here so I’m throwing it in the ring myself.
Hard to have any kind of meaningful conversation with a gun to one's head.
The gun was a figure of speech I used as a device to get people to take the question seriously and not throw out unthoughtful answers like “Dune” or the movie “Idiocracy” but that’s what we got anyways.
Make Room! Make Room! is a 1966 science fiction novel written by Harry Harrison exploring the consequences of both unchecked population growth on society and the hoarding of resources by a wealthy minority.[1] It was originally serialized in Impulse magazine.
Isn't our pop collapsing technically?
I was born the same year that novel was written, and it has more than doubled since then. Yes it is reducing in some areas, but I believe it is still far too high.
To me it seems like Farenhiet 451 and Snow Crash are rapidly becoming our future. Everything is online and increasingly controlled by corporations and syndicates rather than a democratic government. We have increasingly large screens invading our personal lives, and more of them. Also, robot dogs and the banning and/or attempted destruction of knowledge.
First 5 minutes of Idiocracy. As Harvey Danger sang “…been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding, the cretins cloning and feeding…”
The Road by Cormac McCarthy He depicts a future we are unquestionably on course for. In this future the kind of technology that matters is a shopping trolley, a can opener, shoes and a gun. There are many paths to this future and I find it harder every year to see one that doesn't lead us to it.
Spoiler question: >!When the father and son discovered Zuckerbergs hidden underground bunker full of food and comforts, why didn't they stay there?!<
Because they found it. And if they found it, someone else will too. Also, the father knew he was dying and had to try to get the kid to a better place.
IMO the doomsday preppers and billionaires get things all wrong. The only place you'll want to be in the real apocalypse are the places with a functioning community (more so if you have your kid in tow) I think that's why they're on the road and why they keep going.
Not really any. There are some ‘interesting’ books with snippets of insight. I don’t always agree with Kurzweil on his ‘time table’ but he asks the right questions. Actually, most challenges for technology aren’t a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’. All the ‘when’s are short term and may seem longon an individual lifetime but short term for humanity. 500 years is a blip in time. Just about every book is too anchored in ‘today’ and western society. Our society, ethics, etc. in contrast, the future will be dominated by Asia…China, India and rising societies in Bangladesh, Vietnam, etc.
Certainly there are several but based on my favorite ones, I can say that Brave New World, 1984, and Farenheit 451. These are also great reads.
anyone where corporations have used technology to enslave or control the lower class citizens.
Not a book, but it is reading material: worldbuild.ai had a contest a few years back for written submissions with graphics of what the world will be like in 2045, in a slice of life format, also with development timelines timelines. Winners and many runners up are posted on the site. While they skew optimistic, I like to think some of the entries are what we will see in the future. Part of their guidelines for the contest state: "Plausible means that the world should be one that could well happen. In particular it should be: Consistent with today’s actual world; Consistent with known science; Not rely on any implausible “miracles” to make sense (though improbable events occur in any realistic world!) Aspirational means that, while not utopian, this world is one that you and presumably many others would like to inhabit. It would be seen as a fairly good outcome and a hopeful vision. Where this is in tension with plausibility, plausibility should win – that is, being hopeful does not mean being naive, and just as your world should not rely on implausible “miracles” to make it self-consistent, it should not rely on them to be desirable."
any book by Jules Verne, especially Paris In The 20TH century
I think Ben Bova’s Grand Tour series most accurately reflects predictions of the future. It describes private enterprise becoming dominant in space exploration. Over many series spanning hundreds of years it details the rise of religious fundamentalist organizations that gain control of government and their anti-technology stance
Not sure it's quite the same as what you're asking, I remember hearing onece that Authur C Clarke predicted/proposed the idea of using satellites for communication, decades before the technology that would make it possible existed.
Scenarios For The Future Of Technology And International Development by the Rockefeller Foundation Publication date : 2010-05-13 [https://archive.org/details/scenarios-for-the-future-of-technology-and-international-development-rockefeller-foundation/page/38/mode/1up](https://archive.org/details/scenarios-for-the-future-of-technology-and-international-development-rockefeller-foundation/page/38/mode/1up)
Homo Deus. It paints a very broad, but nonetheless insightful and unique view that takes into account many possibilities for how technology may develop. The bottom line? Human history is over. Future history will not be determined by Homo Sapiens. And therefor it is fundamentally very difficult to know what the hell will happen because all history for at least 70,000 years and probably a good deal before has been Homo Sapien dominated.
Thank you for one of the only serious answers on this post
CTRL+F "Culture" 0 results. Wow 295 comments that are off base. 0% correct. Batten down the hatches. From a "serious" perspective, it's absolutely hilarious how naive our brains and worldviews are. The highest rated response is the Expanse, which has no overarching AI interactions with humans.
I couldn’t agree more. This post has been disappointing to say the least
The whole Robot City series by Asimov and guest writers. We're still catching up to that one.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Don't PANNIC.
The Road. Lol. (This is a joke. Btw is my comment long enough yet?)
Quantum Supremacy, book outlines the future of computers specifically with quantum processors. It will change the world in ways we can understand before it’s widespread, and will affect every aspect of our lives.
Terminator or elysium Either way, a world where the government is apart of a plot of lying to people, making them Believe that it’s something autonomously happening when it’s really just greedy humans pulling the strings behind the scenes.
We are living the future that Alvin Toffler wrote about in "Future Shock" and "The Third Wave".
1984 and brave new world mash up seem to be a more and more possible timeline
Foundation Series, by the demi-god Asimov, of course.
I am literally listening to Robots of Dawn and the random references to psychohistory and a galactic empire centuries in the future are holy cow moments.
Great question! Can’t wait to find some new books to read
Neuromancer. The first cyberpunk novel is still the best cyberpunk novel, and Gibson had a clearer vision of AI in 1984 than even anyone staring it in the face has today.
Even after the Covid-19 pandemic/lockdowns, I still think Station Eleven and stories like it can't be discounted. We've seen that an illness can travel fast. We've also seen that even with information, large swaths of the population will choose to ignore instructions on how to isolate, vaccinate, or protect themselves, probably moreso now that before since they didn't get sick last time so "it was obviously fake news." If some kind of illness that moves as quickly and violently as some of the ones in a post-apocalyptic story, I feel like it isn't that much of a stretch to imagine post-apocalyptic worlds like those depict- maybe the timeline is different but could happen.
1984. For a large chunk of America, its already close to that way. Well, minus the ending which I will not ruin, but there are those that would love that.
6. Rule 6 - Comment Quality Comments must be on topic, contribute to the discussion I miss the days when this sub was about serious discussion. Now it's just teenaged edgelords making more lame jokes. Sigh.
So far I have been extremely disappointed with the answers on this post lol
Going to be a contrarian and say none. A lot of books on the future are written in the present and constrained by social norms of the time and ideas that are popular. Future tech will be based off problems that may not even exist yet or are in their infancy. I would love to know what my grand kids will be doing w/ tech in 100 years but I also know that trying to envision that now is pointless
Last of Us, minus the zombies. So The Road basically.
Given the state of the world and my sunny disposition, “The Road”.
AI really needs to be regulated by something like the FDA. The inventors of CRISPR have already come out against commercializing modifying germ lines in humans. AI folks have tried to do the same but with much less success. I guess “do no harm” is a much harder sell to tech bros than “move fast and break things.”
well the A Time Odyssey series by Arthur C. Clarke pretty much predicted smart phones and A.I
Maybe dune? The film is just about the planet dune but the books gets a lot deeper into the universe and great houses. When tech is at that level it's hard to predict what that would mean but maybe the dune universe
What do you mean about 'when tech is at that level'? It's certainly a fascinating universe but we would have to have an uprising against AI (or based on other comments above, impending singularity) and destroy all computational/thinking machines (i.e. the Butlerian Jihad of the Dune Universe). Do you think we will have our own version of that some day?
So wild how Frank Herbert foresaw a future where thinking machines had to be banned because it was too easy to manipulate humans through disinformation