Can Science Fiction Predict The Future Of Journalism?
from the yeah,-but-most-people-won't-recognize-it-until-it's-too-late dept
On The Media has an a short interview with journalism professor Loren Ghiglione, who recently wrote a paper examining whether or not science fiction writers are a good place to look for the future of journalism. Unfortunately, I can't easily find a copy of the actual paper anywhere. I believe it was put online here, but the link to the actual file turns up a page not found, unfortunately. The interview itself is a bit short, and I actually find that it's more telling in what it doesn't include, than what it does. That is, it does point to examples of science fiction writers successfully predicting some elements of today's media world from the past:BROOKE GLADSTONE: Albert Robida wrote The Twentieth Century in 1887. What was his vision?But when it comes to looking into the future today to figure out what science fiction says about the future of news... well, that comes out a lot more vague:
LOREN GHIGLIONE: He's the one who had the all-electric home with telephonographics, news bulletins delivered automatically through telephones, and he had wall-sized telephonoscopes, which were televisions --
[BROOKE LAUGHS]
- that were interactive so people could react to the news and communicate with other people who were seeing the news.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Is there any prediction that struck you as more likely than another?I definitely think that there's plenty to learn from science fiction -- just look around at how many modern technologies today seem to come straight out of science fiction -- but I'm not convinced how much predictive value such things have. Yes, they bring up all sorts of cool ideas, but many of them never actually come to pass. It's neat to cherry pick examples of science fiction that were way ahead of their time in predicting new technologies in the real world, but you can't ignore all of the predictions that did not come true (flying cars!) in the timeframe predicted. So picking which sci-fi ideas from today will really matter to the media in the future still seems quite tricky, since there are so many (cool, unique and creative) ideas that won't actually come true.
LOREN GHIGLIONE: Oh, I don't know what's more likely, but I am intrigued about moving beyond the handheld devices. I remember hearing somebody who'd invented the handheld device talking about implanting various devices in the human body that might take care of delivery of news and everything else. So who knows where all of this is headed?
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Predicting the Future.
That was my idea of more-advanced-tech-than-Trek in the early 80s. There are some prototype devices now that are along those same lines.
OTOH, there are tons of predictions by futurists and authors that are really wrong and have been forgotten about.
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Philip K Dick
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And in the related field of reality TV, The Year of the Sex Olympics (teleplay), 1968, Nigel Kneale.
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Basically, look at the writers who actually do their research, and try to delve into hard sciences. And, of course, ignore the ideas that exist as the central plot-point. (So ignore the killer AI from 2001, but pay attention to the space travel)
The ones that write about things that "would be cool" can be tossed out pretty easily.
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I love SF
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I can't resist a straight line ...
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More of Robida on the Future of Publishing
Here's one version:
http://www.hidden-knowledge.com/titles/contesbib/
The illos are hilarious!
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Via the neo-majik of Google Docs.. I bring you this new fangled SCi-Fi cached version of the actual paper.
Just click on print and you too can have a shiny new PDF copy delivered to your door via the new media ;)
Clicky for SCI-FI paper
If the above link doesn't work (or this cut down version) reply and will email you my copy.
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I predict the abolition of copyright
I predict that journalists will soon get paid directly by their keenest readers, despite their published work being free.
Perhaps the question is not whether science fiction can predict the future for journalism, but whether predictions of its future must necessarily be regarded as science fiction?
Any sufficiently advanced business model for the exchange of intellectual work is indistinguishable from charlatanism.
(cf Clarke's Third Law)
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Sci-Fi is a terrible predictor
One case in point is the internet. There is not a single story I can remember that predicted this, arguably the most important media advance since movable type. There were plenty of stories about gigantic databases that required special skills to pull information, plenty more stories with artificial intelligences of varying ability and lots of high-tech communication tools, but nothing that came close to the internet and what it accomplished.
As another poster pointed out, the hard science fiction writers do a good job of describing future technology (e.g., Clarke's space elevator), but as far as predicting how those technologies affect our society? Not so much.
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Re: Sci-Fi is a terrible predictor
There is also the version that Friday (the titular heroine) used.
I want to say that there was a version in Methuselah's Children, as well.
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Re: Sci-Fi is a terrible predictor
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Re: Sci-Fi is a terrible predictor
OK, this is getting beyond journalism, which is specifically what the article was asking about.
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a contemporary sci-fi novel
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This government body's purpose is to frustrate the workings of government in order to give sentients a chance to reflect upon changes and deal with them. Having saved sentiency from its government, BuSab was officially recognized as a necessary check on the power of government. It provides a natural (and lucrative) outlet for society's regular crop of troublemakers, who must be countered by society's regular crop of "do-gooders".
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Why there are less...
Same issue with many other things, we don't yet have wireless electricity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_energy_transfer)because of regulations and how difficult it is for the average inventor to get a patent, get testing permissions, and find funding for experiments on this kind of technology.
Back in the Tesla, Graham Bell, and other inventors they would be allowed to test and try many different things, the US brought them from wherever they were to try their experiments here, helped them get funding, and made it somewhat pleasant for them to try new ideas. Nowadays is a PITA to try to implement any new idea.
And that's why we have less and less Science fiction type technologies!
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Which is the cause?
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Promoting my progress
That'll promote my progress for sure!
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