[extropy-chat] Futures Past

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Well, the settlement of space that we expected when we were kids did
not materialize. But other things that we did not expect did
materialize, like the very Internet we are using for this message.
I am reading Kurzweil's last book - the Singularity is near, and agree
with him that today Star Trek-like spaceships seem naive: a
civilization with start travel will long before have transcended its
biologic substrate. 1 kg computronium starships crewed by merged AIs
and uploads (see Stross' Accelerando) seem much more likely.
Often the future happens as a surprise, this is what makes life fun.
G.

> --- Greg Burch <gregburch at gregburch.net> wrote:

> > But somehow, I never seem to learn.  Seven years ago, we had a
> > discussion here on the List about what we called "near-term
> > projections" for the future to c. 2015.  I gathered together some of
> > the ideas in that discussion and put them in what I called a
> > "futurist time capsule."  Here it is:
> >
> >        http://www.gregburch.net/writing/NearTerm.htm
> >
> > It makes for interesting and, in many instances, painful reading.
> > Bear in mind that this was the vision some of us had in the Spring of
> > 1998.  We were surfing at the zenith of the 1990s Bubble.  The
> > Collapse of the Bubble, 911, Enron, Columbia – all were in the
> > future.
> >
> > What do you take away from looking back on looking forward?