[ih] Fiction->History

Fri Sep 25 04:25:56 PDT 2015

+1 re: Forster. I make it recommended reading. V
On Sep 24, 2015 2:34 PM, "Jonathan Grudin" <jgrudin at microsoft.com> wrote:

> My favorite examples of science fiction that got it right are  E. M
> Forster's 1909 The Machine Stops, which I thought did a good job of
> capturing some Internet capabilities a century later as well as some AI
> possibilities (you may disagree), and Vannevar Bush's As We May Think,
> which he pretty much knew by 1945 wouldn't be realized by an
> opto-mechanical system and didn't yet see the alternative, but which
> inspired a lot of people who eventually realized it.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: internet-history-bounces at postel.org [mailto:
> internet-history-bounces at postel.org] On Behalf Of John Day
> Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2015 10:41 AM
> To: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
> Cc: internet-history at postel.org
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fiction->History
>
> "1000 Monkeys at a 1000 typewriters  . . .”  Only half joking, with all of
> the sci-fi writers out there you would expect a few to come close once in
> awhile.  ;-)  But future predicting in general has been pretty bad.
>
>
> > On Sep 24, 2015, at 12:56, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
> wrote:
> >
> > A few more obvious ones comes to mind:
> >
> > "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"
> >
> > "Colossus: The Forbin Project" - and lots of variants on that theme
> > (up to, and including, the Terminator movies -- and what with
> > automatically swarming drones now a reality, somehow Skynet seems to
> > loom on the near
> > horizon!)
> >
> > "Shockwave Rider" - which seemed to get an awful lot of things right,
> > for its time
> >
> > Miles Fidelman
> >
> > Bill Ricker wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 10:27 PM, Larry Sheldon <larrysheldon at cox.net
> >> <mailto:larrysheldon at cox.net>> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>        Fiction->History
> >>
> >> There are two sorts of SciFi (aside from the Fantastic) - those that
> >> aren't facts yet but likely will be if we persevere, and those
> >> that could be facts if we screw things up even worse. Those writing
> >> near-term SF are well advised to leverage  William Gibson's aphorism
> >> "The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed" to
> >> sniff out what is in the labs and the pockets of the early adopters.
> >>
> >>    
> >>    In 1977 there was a book titled “The Adolescence of P-1” (Thomas
> >>    Joseph
> >>    Ryan)
> >>
> >>
> >> I thought I remembered this was either serialized or first appeared
> >> as a novella in one of the magazines before release as a book, but
> >> Google finds no proof of that? Odd.
> >>   There was a flurry of pre-cyber-punk AI / rogue-programmer stories
> >> in Analog in the late 70's, i recall one featured a female hacker but
> >> i forget the title, and that it was the month before or after P-1 so
> >> it seemed a trend.  
> >>
> >> There are plenty of listicles that catalog SciFi
> >> stories/concepts/widgets that became reality -- partly through
> >> invention of the engineering fact being easier after invention of the
> >> idea as fiction, as testified to by the inventor of Cellphones being
> >> inspired by Kirk's (Roddenbery's) communicator -- but has this been
> >> treated in the full academic style as literature-and-society  or
> >> history of science? I don't know. I am remiss in not surveying
> >> academic treatment of  SciFi as LitCrit in between Padlipsky's
> >> thesis (latterly of MULTICS and this I-H list) and Gannon's [1]
> >> /Rumors of War/ [2] and Pournelle's SIGMA [3], which respectively
> >> study and practice influence of SF on military and government policy.
> >>    If there isn't yet an academic study of the influence of P-1 and
> >> the following Cyber-punk movement on Silicon valley et al in any/all
> >> aspects (network, OS, application, User interface), it's due, it's ripe.
> >>    If we don't get an answer on this list, i can ask Chuck Gannon and
> >> network through my other SF&F friends to see who if anyone is working
> >> such.
> >>
> >>  (I do highly recommend /Rumors of War/, particularly if you admired
> >> MAP's literary writing style as i do and are interested in social
> >> impact of early English-language SciFi on the military.) 
> >>
> >>  [1]
> >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.c
> >> harlesegannon.com%2fBioTop.html&data=01%7c01%7cjgrudin%40microsoft.co
> >> m%7c017d402c961741d8b01e08d2c509968d%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db
> >> 47%7c1&sdata=q7jU7ofQJIG6RffRwGGqkzlGlBQxl6tOjh66CMCtZiQ%3d
> >> [2]
> >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3a%2f%2fisbn.
> >> nu%2f9780742540354&data=01%7c01%7cjgrudin%40microsoft.com%7c017d402c9
> >> 61741d8b01e08d2c509968d%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7c1&sdata=
> >> tOjyX8U9aGRdw83B7KfybvuRrds6o4kCEuuDLbM0DC0%3d
> >> [3] 
> >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.o
> >> nthemedia.org%2fstory%2f129496-science-fiction-in-the-national-intere
> >> st%2ftranscript%2f&data=01%7c01%7cjgrudin%40microsoft.com%7c017d402c9
> >> 61741d8b01e08d2c509968d%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7c1&sdata=
> >> 6pArgzSS4HlMwGzSXP3lI%2f0Tx60Rbj5e0bJ4iw4tQC0%3d
> >> 
> >>
> >> --
> >> Bill Ricker
> >> bill.n1vux at gmail.com <mailto:bill.n1vux at gmail.com>
> >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.
> >> linkedin.com%2fin%2fn1vux&data=01%7c01%7cjgrudin%40microsoft.com%7c01
> >> 7d402c961741d8b01e08d2c509968d%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7c1
> >> &sdata=fnIeqbpS9dbH2g9K1VPRYgHAUTxTjds2%2bXjr4v0xEBA%3d
> >>
> >>
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> >
> > --
> > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> > In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra
> >
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