[extropy-chat] Science Fiction comes to life

[The Avantguardian]

--- Terry Colvin <fortean1 at mindspring.com> wrote:
> >Time travel, antigravity, teleportation, sentient
> silicon beings. Our
> >yearning to visualize the future has always been
> far ahead of our
> >technological prowess. To predict the future of
> technology in the 21st
> >century and take a look back at preposterous
> postulations of the past, what
> >better source to turn to than a bona fide
> science-fiction writer? After all,
> >when sci-fi writers ask "What if?" their
> extrapolations are sometimes
> >astonishingly accurate. We asked David Gerrold,
> sci-fi author and writer of
> >the most-popular-ever *Star Trek* episode?"The
> Trouble with Tribbles," from
> >the original TV series. Here's his survey of the
> high-tech imaginings of
> >sci-fi writers Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A.
> Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, H.G.
> >Wells, and more.

No treatise on the successful predictions of Sci Fi
authors can be considered complete without referring
to Jules Verne. Aside from his well known successful
predictions of nuclear submarines and moon landings,
here are some that are not as well known from his book
"Paris in the 20th Century":

gasoline-powered automobiles 
high-speed trains 
calculators 
The Internet (a worldwide "telegraphic" communications
network) 
fax machines ("photographic telegraphy permitted
transmission of the facsimile of any form of writing
or illustration") 
electric chairs (criminals "executed by electric
charge") 

Keep in mind it was written in 1863, around the time
of the American Civil War.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"God doesn't play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

"Einstein, don't tell God what to do." - Neils Bohr

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