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Old 10-12-2021, 04:25 PM   #101
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The trouble is that in Golden Age SF there was a widespread vision of what the future could look like technologically speaking (bigger faster more energetic), with a few parallel visions (the communist vision, the feminist vision ...) whereas today its very hard to imagine the world in even ten years. That makes future TLs harder to imagine than they were when GURPS introduced the concept.
I'd say it's always been hard to imagine 10 years from now as much because of political decisions as technological. E.g., Brexit will lead to 1. a better England according to its advocates 2. Some loss of GDP but not catastrophe according to Krugman & other economists 3. Disaster according to its opponents. Now pick one, try and write story set in 2030 and hope it isn't instantly obsolete. Setting the story half a century hence and being vague about how we got there is safer. SF writers were always missing key elements of the future - they just didn't worry as much. Now they've actually noticed their habit of extrapolating from the issues of the moment.

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Although IIRC, robot servants in the Terro-Human Future History were basically roombas with a coffee machine or a warming oven inside. The fancy ones could follow a preset list of voice commands, the ordinary ones took a remote control. Rossum's Universal Robots they ain't.
A little more than that. Piper explicitly refers to house cleaning bots and laundry bots, so basically they don't merely save labor like a washing machine, they replace servants. Definitely not universal robots. Though on that subject Poul Anderson had a short story, "Quixote and the Windmill" on the practical limitations of a universal robot with a classic punchline.

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Old 10-12-2021, 05:05 PM   #102
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I'd say it's always been hard to imagine 10 years from now as much because of political decisions as technological. E.g., Brexit will lead to 1. a better England according to its advocates 2. Some loss of GDP but not catastrophe according to Krugman & other economists 3. Disaster according to its opponents. Now pick one, try and write story set in 2030 and hope it isn't instantly obsolete. Setting the story half a century hence and being vague about how we got there is safer. SF writers were always missing key elements of the future - they just didn't worry as much. Now they've actually noticed their habit of extrapolating from the issues of the moment.
Charles Stross has complained about having current events overtake his storylines before he can get the novels written.

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A little more than that. Piper explicitly refers to house cleaning bots and laundry bots, so basically they don't merely save labor like a washing machine, they replace servants. Definitely not universal robots. Though on that subject Poul Anderson had a short story, "Quixote and the Windmill" on the practical limitations of a universal robot with a classic punchline.
There is also Boucher's "Q.U.R.," where robots are driven into mechanical neurosis by having complete human body forms with limbs and organs that their assigned tasks don't utilize at all.
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Old 10-12-2021, 05:18 PM   #103
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If the car is capable of locking you in and refusing to stop driving, and has no override (and the car windows are unbreakable, and...), the problem won't be so much the Big Bad Evil Government (who, after all, already have a reasonably effective system for arresting people) as the hackers who take control of the car and threaten to drive you off a cliff if you don't send them large sums of money.
Yes, I would call concerns over hackers a big factor in at least some of the resistance to self-driving cars (including my own suspicion of them). Mind you, hackers are also a problem for some modern non-self-driving cars, and for the Internet of Things in general.
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Old 10-12-2021, 05:53 PM   #104
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There is also Boucher's "Q.U.R.," where robots are driven into mechanical neurosis by having complete human body forms with limbs and organs that their assigned tasks don't utilize at all.
That's one of those science fiction where I draw an unintended conclusion. In that case, I thought the problem was not unnecessary limbs but unnecessary intelligence. Why the heck did a robot bar tender need to be smart enough to get neurotic about his unnecessary legs?
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Old 10-12-2021, 05:56 PM   #105
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The trouble is that in Golden Age SF there was a widespread vision of what the future could look like technologically speaking (bigger faster more energetic), with a few parallel visions (the communist vision, the feminist vision ...) whereas today its very hard to imagine the world in even ten years.
Ehn. It's pretty easy when you bear in mind that the world ten years was pretty much the same (technologically speaking) with slightly less impressive computer graphics.

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Old 10-12-2021, 06:20 PM   #106
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Yes, I would call concerns over hackers a big factor in at least some of the resistance to self-driving cars (including my own suspicion of them). Mind you, hackers are also a problem for some modern non-self-driving cars, and for the Internet of Things in general.
That always seems to me like a problem we could largely solve by just not doing that to ourselves. A good self-driving car probably does need to be networked for map information and coordination with other cars. It doesn't have to be wide open and accepting OTA update pushes and having an HTTP-accessible control panel and what not. But it probably will be.
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Old 10-12-2021, 07:03 PM   #107
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That always seems to me like a problem we could largely solve by just not doing that to ourselves. A good self-driving car probably does need to be networked for map information and coordination with other cars. It doesn't have to be wide open and accepting OTA update pushes and having an HTTP-accessible control panel and what not. But it probably will be.
Like the problem with current cars being hackable is because the sensible thing (an air-wall between the engine and other mechanical systems' network and the auxiliary systems' network) wasn't done simply because it was ever so slightly cheaper to have them connected via a particular module.
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Old 10-12-2021, 07:37 PM   #108
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Interesting distinction.
Well, when I think of self-driving cars what I imagine is a vehicle that you get in and input your destination somehow and the vehicle does the rest, you don't need to be alert to the outside for the journey. I believe that's the definition the Society of Automotive Engineers uses for the Level 5 of self driving.
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Old 10-13-2021, 12:34 AM   #109
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Well, when I think of self-driving cars what I imagine is a vehicle that you get in and input your destination somehow and the vehicle does the rest, you don't need to be alert to the outside for the journey. I believe that's the definition the Society of Automotive Engineers uses for the Level 5 of self driving.

Same, but I don't think any car manufacturers want the legal responsibility for any accidents that happen.
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Old 10-13-2021, 03:13 AM   #110
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Meanwhile in the news: https://mobile.twitter.com/Ghost_Rob...99250570203137

Why designing such a thing is allowed?
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