Topic: Science Fiction
Little Green Men, and other out-there stuff.
Cultural Change Is Slowing Down
Posted in Unfounded Speculation
on July 30th, 2011 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball,
Science Fiction
Earlier, I blogged on my predictions for technological progress, with an angle on the implications for science fiction writing. My basic thesis is that writers in most times are guilty of extrapolating the notion of progress from their own time. Pre-nineteenth-century authors would generally extrapolate technological progress flatly, or shallowly, if it occurred to them to anticipate it at all. Nineteenth and early twentieth century authors perceived the rapid rate of progress in their time but extrapolated it linearly, tending to undershoot many aspects of the actual progress which occurred. And mid-twentieth-century to twenty-first century authors have tended to extrapolate the apparently exponential progress of our own time and overshoot our actual progress (i.e., "Where is my flying car?"). I was lately struck by the impression that the same thing seems to have happened with the way cultural change is depicted and anticipated.
Interstellar Archaeology?
Posted in Unfounded Speculation
on February 5th, 2010 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Science Fiction
Randy McDonald posted a link to an interesting discussion about the idea of interstellar archaeology on his blog.