Comments on: What Changes? What Remains the Same?

By: Julian Morrison

Julian Morrison — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:46:01 +0000

It’s interesting how much futurism equals “today-ism”. SF set in the future has always been a projection of the tensions of the now. All those people in the second YouTube sound like they’re talking about 2008.

I know what I’d predict: a lot of broken conceptual boundaries that people had lazily assumed were features of the universe. Life blends into machine, computer into mind, information into matter. The concept of species all but goes away; humanity itself becomes a continuum. Gender smears out and becomes very subjective. Your personality might be dispersed over several bodies or share one. Real individual uniqueness (which we nowadays would call “freakish”) becomes the rule and not the exception.

I also recognize that my answer says more about my viewpoint of 2008 than it does about 2076.

By: Karl Hallowell

Karl Hallowell — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:26:57 +0000

Actually, it is quite interesting to figure out what doesn’t change. In math, these things are called invariants and many fields deal with them in some way.

By: Karl Hallowell

Karl Hallowell — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:01:30 +0000

Actually, it is quite interesting to figure out what doesn’t change. In math, these things are called invariants and many fields deal with them in some way.

By: Phil Bowermaster

Phil Bowermaster — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:39:57 +0000

Well, Harvey looks pretty good, but I’m not yet ready to declare that everybody HAS to wear an aluminum foil mask.

…or did you mean something else?

By: Stephen Gordon

Stephen Gordon — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:28:50 +0000

Err, I think its time we institute a dress code here at The Speculist.