FastForward Radio -- Can You Imagine?
Phil Bowermaster discusses the role that the human imagination plays in bringing about the future.
What is the relationship between the limits of human imagination and the limits of potential human accomplishment? Put another way -- is our imagination adequate to the task of describing the future we have in store?
Show Notes below.
Examples of imagination in the past.
1. I can't find the reference, but do you remember reading about the guy who came up with the idea of making music available to anyone who wanted it, any time, by having a symphony orchestra playing music 24 hours a day and listeners to could phone in to hear it? Records, radio, and eventually iPods eventually provided this capability. Imagination can paint in broad outlines even if it can't get specific
2. But technologists DO get specific, as is the case with the guy who created the oldest recorded sound:
http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/001683.html
The inventor only came up with a means of recording -- hoping eventually there would be a way to play the sound back.
People who sign up for cryonic preservation are applying the same principle.
Coming Technologies that Are Easy to Imagine:
1. Electric Cars
2. Self-Driving Cars
3. Flying Cars (Lots more here .)
Coming Technologies that Are Harder to Imagine:
Virtual Worlds
Utility Fog
The End of Scarcity Scenario from earlier this weekend: a chicken in every pot and a Saturn V in every garage!
Space Elevator
Terraforming Planets
Invisibility
Time Travel
Getting Our Heads Around Life in the Future:
What will life be like? What will we be?
Sexy Immortal Billionaires with Super Powers? More here .
Comments
A possible side effect of Believable Virtual Reality (BVR, a term I just made up) is: Who's going to need or want a big house, or a second house, or a boat, or a private plane or an expensive cruise in a world of BVR? Some will, of course, but won't a huge amount of money stop flowing into luxury homes, vehicles and goods? Won't a side-effect of BVR be that our needs and lives and budgets in the world of meat simplify themselves and come to deal deal more and more with food and shelter and necessities, while our fun migrates into BVR where fun is cheap and plentiful and we're rich and powerful? Also, what resources will this effect free up to fund scientific, and particularly medical research?
Posted by: Dave Coles | May 4, 2009 08:31 AM