{"id":4843,"date":"2013-12-17T00:05:10","date_gmt":"2013-12-17T08:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=4843"},"modified":"2013-12-16T22:47:02","modified_gmt":"2013-12-17T06:47:02","slug":"4843","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2013\/12\/17\/4843\/","title":{"rendered":"Future Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tWithin the genre of science fiction there is a common trope: the cautionary tale. Perhaps one of the better known examples is also one of the earliest examples of what came to be called science fiction: Frankenstein<\/em>, by Mary Shelley. In the tale, a reanimated collection of body parts becomes a monster that destroys its creator. Other well-known tales of this sort would be the various stories of run-amuck robots, from the first story from which the term \u201crobot\u201d originates\u2014R.U.R.<\/em>, a Czech play by Karel \u010capek. The title of the story is an acronym for \u201cRossom\u2019s Universal Robot.\u201d It is from this 1921 play that the word \u201crobot\u201d entered the English language: it is a Czech word simply meaning \u201cworker.\u201d The play relates the story of a robot rebellion that leads to the extinction of the human race. <\/p>\n

\tJames Cameron\u2019s 1984 movie The Terminator<\/em> pictures a fearful future, when the robot creations of Skynet run amuck, destroying the world in a nuclear holocaust. They then hunt down and try to kill all the surviving humans, going so far as to send a \u201cterminator\u201d back in time to kill the mother of the leader of the human resistance movement before he was even born.<\/p>\n

\tThus, when Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos on the CBS news program 60 Minutes recently talked about their idea for speeding up the delivery of packages to their customers, some people immediately commented \u201csounds like the beginnings of Skynet.\u201d What is Bezos planning? In \u201cfour or five\u201d years, pending regulatory approval from entities such as the FAA, he\u2019d like to use autonomous flying drones guided by GPS to deliver packages within thirty minutes of being ordered. <\/p>\n

\tOne of the first things to point out, of course, is that R.U.R.<\/em>, The Terminator<\/em> and its sequels, and various movies and television shows from the fifties are fiction. They are neither documentaries nor prophesies. The connection between Hollywood and reality is generally tenuous at best. <\/p>\n

\tThat occasionally something portrayed in a fictional universe may come to pass is the exception, not the rule. Science fiction authors are not prognosticators. They are simply storytellers whose primary goal is to create entertainment. Stanley Kubrick\u2019s 1968 movie 2001 failed to describe the actual year 2001. Pan American was out of business, and was not flying passengers to a giant, rotating space station. There were no moon bases. Self-aware computers like HAL did not exist. <\/p>\n

\tBut unintelligent computers are ubiquitous, running everything from your automobile to your washing machine. In your pocket, you probably carry a smartphone that has more computing power than all of NASA had during the moon landings. \tDo you fear your cellphone? Do you stay up at night worrying that it is plotting world domination? <\/p>\n

\tScience fiction authors of the forties, fifties and sixties never imagined our computer connected world. If you read Clarke, Asimov, or Heinlein, computers were monstrous devices that filled a building or even a planet. No science fiction author ever imagined computers fitting in your pocket. They never predicted that they\u2019d give you instant access to any human being on the planet, or that they\u2019d grant you access to all of human knowledge\u2014which you\u2019d then use mostly to figure out who that obscure actor was in an old movie you\u2019re watching on TV.<\/p>\n

\tThe Terminator vision of robots is not the only vision that exists in science fiction. Isaac Asimov postulated a more benevolent future with robots designed to be as incapable of harming human beings as your toaster.<\/p>\n

\tNew technologies can be scary. In fact, any change\u2014good or bad\u2014can be unsettling. But we don\u2019t have to let our darkest fears overwhelm the bright possibilities. As with anything in our lives, new gadgets and technologies can either curse us or bless us. But based on history, blessing seems to be the most common outcome. <\/p>\n

\tThink about it. Just about anything can be misused. The knife that cuts your steak could become a murder weapon. Passenger jets can be used for building demolition. Fertilizer can become a bomb. A toaster that browns your bread can electrocute someone if it\u2019s tossed into their bathwater. You could use your car to run down pedestrians. You could use a baseball bat to pummel random passersby. The possible perversion of good into evil is never-ending. Should we allow potential evil keep us from enjoying what is wonderful?<\/p>\n

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic according to the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Personally, I\u2019d really like to have some more magic in my life. I enjoy the magic that I already take for granted. After all, I appreciate the robots that wash my dishes and do my laundry: the dishwasher and the washing machine. So it\u2019s hard for me to fear the coming robots that might mow my lawn, mop my floor, drive my car, and deliver my packages. And really, wouldn\u2019t you rather send drones instead of eighteen-year-olds to fight Al-Qaeda?<\/p>\n

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Within the genre of science fiction there is a common trope: the cautionary tale. Perhaps one of the better known examples is also one of the earliest examples of what came to be called science fiction: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4843"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4843"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4845,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4843\/revisions\/4845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}