IMAGINING THE FATE OF DATA AFTER THE APOCALYPSE
Source: io9
If modern civilization collapsed, could the survivors hope to rebuild using our massive stores of data? Unless we can come up with something way more permanent to put them on in the near future, we probably shouldn’t bank on it.
A recent article by Tom Simonite and Michael Le Page in New Scientist tackles this question by positing a minor cataclysm: something bad enough to tear apart civilization as we know it, but not quite enough to kill off humans entirely. Candidates include a pandemic, a financial collapse that would make 2008’s pale in comparison, a severe natural disaster, or just the slow accumulation of decay in society’s foundations.
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SURROGATES AND CAPRICA: SPLENDID SCI FI WARNINGS AGAINST TRANSHUMANISM
Source: firsthings
I love good science fiction. It is a splendid vehicle for exploring the deepest issues in a very entertaining way, without getting too serious or bogged down in high brow importance. Indeed, good sci-fi is a powerful magnifying mirror, telling us where we are, and where we may be going.
When the Bruce Willis film Surrogates was first released, I promised a review. I missed it in the theater but caught it last night on DVD. It is quite good–not quite in the class of Blade Runner–but definitely worth watching. The plot involves a dehumanized future in which a huge corporation–reminded me of Apple–invented a way for people to live their lives through custom designed robots. Most humans retreat into their rooms, working, loving, playing via their robot alter egos–Second Life on steroids. One of the genius aspects of the film is the way the actors looked like they aren’t quite human–flawless skin, facial expressions that appear a bit frozen–kind of like Joan Rivers.
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GENE’S AREN’T BOXES, THEY’RE READIN INSTRUCTIONS
Source: io9
Where would we be without genre labels? Free to write new and weird idioms, possibly. But a couple of recent blog posts make the case that genres aren’t cages, they’re toolkits that tell you how to read a particular text.
Writing over at Tor.com a while back, Jo Walton quotes Samuel Delany as saying that people who read science fiction regularly most likely have developed a set of skills to allow them to read SF books. That’s why you don’t get tripped up by the inclusion of futuristic technology (like the tachyon drive in Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War) and you tend to take a certain amount of strange world-building for granted.
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What are your thoughts on today’s science fiction news?
