04-14-2012, 06:08 AM | #21 | |
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Stockholm
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Re: Probability of THS scenario - in light of the last 10 years
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Straight lines are often assumed in the development of the future, with planning built on examining just one factor (”what if we could clone people?”, for instance). Cities have seldom been built for the people who would ultimately live there, but for the people the developers wished would live there. The actual result is given by that dynamic. When we were writing Cities on the Edge, we assumed that there is no straight line to the future. Attentive readers will notice our descriptions and hints at developments, ideas and technologies that fell out of the way during the setting's development. A historian looking backwards from the year 2100 would probably point out other decades than the 2010's as more instrumental to forming the present. Are we realistic about urban life in the year 2100? Is our description of it probable? Perhaps some elements will be familiar. Anders has written about some of his thoughts on how he would approach writing Cities on the Edge today. More important is, as some comments in the thread have noted, if we are giving some realistic and probable comments about the present's preoccuptions and hopes for urban life. Even more important if those comments provide the material for exciting and interesting RPG adventures.
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The future has an old joke: No one lives in the cities anymore; they're too crowded! Transhuman Space: Cities on the Edge |
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04-15-2012, 09:45 PM | #22 | |||||
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Probability of THS scenario - in light of the last 10 years
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That's not a slam against it, all SFnal projections into the future over a period of a century or so are going to be unrealistic. SF is not about the future, it's about the present, and almost invariably reflects the debates and concerns of the present. You can actually learn something about the past by taking a look at their ideas, both speculative and fictiional, about the future. As the saying goes, "Nothing ages faster than yesterday's tomorrow." Quote:
The EU of THS, as presented, is of course radically improbable. It's too much like an idealized version of today's EU. But that's true of all the politics of THS, for that matter. The major powers of THS Earth are the USA, China, and the EU, with outfits like the Caliphate and the nanosocialists as second-tier powers. Within the USA, for ex, the Democrats are 'green' and the GOP is technocratic, the cultural debate is between 'greens' and industrialists and geoengineers (i.e. terraforming), it looks a lot like today's politics, actually. In short, the Earth of THS it looks a lot like the present, politically. Too much so to be fully credible, in fact. Again, contrast 2012 to 1922, to get an idea of how much can change. If THS had been written in 1980, the USSR would have been one of those major powers in 2100, too. Quote:
One of the myths of our own age is that economics can (not should, just that it ever can) operate independently of social constraints and conditions. This is nonsense, as even a cursory examination of history will show. What social, religious, and political changes will reshape the economy over the next 90 years? Nobody can say, but we can bet that some will. Quote:
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We might possibly be all over the Solar System in 2100...but not based on the rocketry and techniques extrapolated from where we are now. OTOH, odds are the irrational aversion to nuclear propulsion systems will be all but forgotten by then, too. |
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04-15-2012, 10:03 PM | #23 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Probability of THS scenario - in light of the last 10 years
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Bill Stoddard |
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04-16-2012, 01:22 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Not in your time zone:D
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Re: Probability of THS scenario - in light of the last 10 years
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*I love the full body replacements in Cyberpunk (not so much Robocop)
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04-16-2012, 01:27 AM | #25 | |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Probability of THS scenario - in light of the last 10 years
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04-16-2012, 11:04 AM | #26 |
Join Date: Dec 2010
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Re: Probability of THS scenario - in light of the last 10 years
I don't have quite so rosy an outlook on people downloading their consciousness into a machine. It's because I don't know anyone who has had a computer that lasted more than ten years of use. Either they got rid of it because it became terribly obsolete, or its circuits just stopped working.
So if you became a living machine you would be constantly replacing yourself so as not to break one become part of an "obsolete" lower class. |
04-16-2012, 11:39 AM | #27 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Probability of THS scenario - in light of the last 10 years
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Also, backups are cheap. |
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04-16-2012, 04:35 PM | #28 | |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Probability of THS scenario - in light of the last 10 years
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As to back ups that brings up the controversial topic of identity from another thread. |
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04-16-2012, 06:27 PM | #29 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Probability of THS scenario - in light of the last 10 years
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04-17-2012, 01:00 AM | #30 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: Probability of THS scenario - in light of the last 10 years
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Whether the model can eliminate all possibilities for decline while preserving the capacity to learn may be an interesting technical point, but it's surely not inconceivable. Changes beyond the scope of normal human brain plasticity are another subject again, but anything that's possible with a real brain and a brainbug should be entirely feasible.
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