Dystopia. The word hisses off the tongue with sibilant ease, a slow slide into the dark cellar of the collective psyche. The black regimes of our fears, the fascism, the rage, the oppression which mirrors our inner shades, often realized in nightmarish reality. Conversely, Utopia sounds so hopeful, so inclusive, like a suspended note of a celestial choir. A future where technology is used compassionately to further creative pursuits, knowledge and collective awareness. What's it going to be? One of the great tasks of Science Fiction is to explore humanity in the context of earth shattering change. In the case of Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 with its mechanical hound or George Orwell's 1984, the startling portrait of the darker probabilities of the future, shaped the minds of a generation. The word "Big Brother" is now part of our lexicon of ideas. On the Utopian side, Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek inspired cell phones, interactive computers and has scientists noodling over the possibility of matter transfer and warp drive. Because I'm writing a dystopian novel, I … [Read more...] about Future Shock: Writing Sci Fi, Drones & Paranoia
Amazon Prime Air: Will Drones Deliver?
Remember The Jetsons? The cartoon about the future where the Jetson family had a plethora of wacky, futuristic gadgets to make life easier? Well it looks like CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos took that show seriously. Just when you're getting used to an irobot vacuum scooting around the floor, Amazon just revealed the next level of droid services. First Amazon created automated warehouses and now flying drones will deliver packages in under 30 minutes. The drone delivery service is called Amazon Prime Air: … [Read more...] about Amazon Prime Air: Will Drones Deliver?
A Million Robot Army
"Whatever distinctly human qualities war calls upon—honor, courage, solidarity, cruelty, and so forth—it might be useful to stop thinking of war in exclusively human terms. After all, certain species of ants wage war and computers can simulate "wars" that play themselves out on-screen without any human involvement. More generally, then, we should define war as a self-replicating pattern of activity that may or may not require human participation— Barbara Ehrenreich I was watching TV pundit/editor of Mother Jones Magazine David Korn commenting on Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's botched Iraq war when he said, "...it's almost like saying if we had an army of a million giant flying robots things would have turned out better. It's denying reality... it's all a giant experiment for them..." Those two ideas struck me; irresponsible, inexperienced leadership and a million robot army. A scary proposition, fast becoming a very real possibility. DARPA is slowly crafting robots around the art of war. What is DARPA? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency . DARPA funds an … [Read more...] about A Million Robot Army