[extropy-chat] FWD [SK] Re: Century City: The law show of the future

[Terry W. Colvin]

At 12:36 AM 3/18/2004, Terry W. Colvin wrote:
>Hal Finney wrote:
>
> >Overall, I was pleased with the show's exploration of ideas.  The mere
> >fact of a non-dystopian future is a pretty radical concept today.
> >But they went beyond that and explored concepts that are the kinds of
> >things that we discuss all the time.  That's very brave for a mainstream
> >show.  They also seemed pretty sharp technically and I didn't see any
> >major errors.
>
>My first reaction was the rant of a younger Harlan Ellison against the
>stupidity of television. This show was not 2030. It was 2003 with a couple
>of new capabilities. Hair, clothing, furniture, vehicles, behavior,
>language -- it was all a mundane now.

But the problem with setting sci-fi in the future is that, as Bohr is 
reputed to have said, prediction is extremely difficult, especially about 
the future. If you look at any sci-fi work (movie, tv show, novel, short 
story) what it seems you're getting is basically the present with a couple 
of new capabilities. Original Star Trek is basically 1966 with some wild 
assed guesses about what things would be like 200(?) years in the future 
(ditto the other iterations of the franchise). Or, for an even more jarring 
effect, take a look at a sci-fi work which attempts to stay "grounded" in 
reality by using contemporary corporate logos. I still almost do a double 
take watching "2001: A Space Odyssey" when Heywood Floyd makes his video 
phone call back to earth from the orbiting space station, and the screen 
shows a late '60's "Bell System" logo while the call is being placed and 
after it is disconnected (how many of us even *remember* the Bell System, 
eh? Another jarring moment: seeing the Pan-American labeling and logos on 
the Space Clipper, especially since (IIRC) Pan-Am went out of business a 
while before 2001 (the year, not the movie) actually arrived. Another 
disconnect is in one of my favorite movies, "Silent Running", where the 
cargo hold of Freeman Lowell's spaceship contains containers bearing the 
early '70s logos of companies like Coca-Cola, GE (at least GE still uses 
pretty much the same logo they were using back then; it's just that 
precious little of what they do involves electricity anymore), RCA, etc.

Come to think of it, I feel cheated already. Where the hell are the flying 
cars we all knew we'd be driving in the year 2000. Dammit, they're at least 
four years late!

Cheers,

Len Cleavelin


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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