Perhaps I should have phrased it, “Don’t just contradict WordMan in a drive-by post and then run away.” (You don’t want to be like *Clothahump, do you?)
Getting back on track: Bruce Sterling once wrote a short called “We See Things Differently,” which had a lot of telling predictions about the rise of radical Islam in a modern, high-tech world. You can find it in his 1992 collection [url=]Globalhead. The same collection has another story on the same theme: “The Compassionate, the Digital.”
*If you don’t know the username, do a post search in GD or the Pit.
You know, I wonder if you could write a story along those lines today. Have some fun with how wrong the ideas everyone was writing in the 40s and 50s turned out and have the protagonist with a novel accurately predicting today struggle to get it published and the like.
And as I mentioned in another post, BG, stop trying to draw me into your inanities. I realize that I piss you off because I’m right more often than I’m wrong, but stop using me as your personal boogeyman.
That gets my vote, especially because of the control-through-sensory overload thing. But there are plenty of works on this list that I haven’t seen or read.
And why not? This isn’t GD or the Pit–it’s not the place for an in-depth debate. And there was nothing in-depth about WordMan’s statement, it was a drive-by political hip-shot. Why doesn’t it deserve a reply in kind?
OOOooooh, right…I forgot…because you AGREEE with his politics and disagree with mine.
The collection 2020 Vision, published in 1970, had two stories that always stick in my memory. The first, Build Me a Mountain by Ben Bova, predicts that the space program will stall because of lack of political will, even though we have all the necessary technology to colonize the planets. And Eat, Drink, and Be Merry by Dian Gablon, has the government meddling around in people’s personal food choice…for their own good, of course. Just yesterday, the Chicago City Council took up a bill that would ban the use of cooking oils containing trans fats in the city’s restraunts.
Of course, I strongly believe that the best prediction for what will happen in the future comes at the beginning of G. K. Chesterton’s early science fiction novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill:
RikWriter and BrainGlutton, you’re both out of line here. Cafe Society is not the place to be continuing your personal feud. BrainGlutton, you threw your gauntlet down in his Pit thread–please keep it there. If he doesn’t want to attend that thread (as is his choice), don’t use threads in other forums as proxy.
Thanks, Skipmagic - again, I am happy to stay out of what is apparently discussion with some history. But Rikwriter - while you say I did a drive-by and clearly I have a political bias that comes through, surely you can acknowledge that the currect situation - declaring a “war” on Terror - without any formal trappings of war such as an official declaration approved by Congress, so whether you agree with their need to do so, you have to agree that War as it is formally, historically been defined has been spun differently - that is being used to foment support by the masses to accord more power to an Executive, coupled with increase tech-based monitored of individuals’ lives on a non-targeted, mass basis - smacks of 1984?
Wordman, now you’re out of line for trying to get in one last comment, after Skip told the other guys to cut it out.
The appropriate response to personal insults in this forum is to report them to a Moderator, and NOT to respond. Not to try to get in the last word. Not to reply at all. That way, when the Moderator looks at what’s happened, you’re the good guy and the insulter is the bad guy. When the teacher comes out to the playground, there’s a clear victim and a clear perpetrator.
As soon as you start responding in kind, you murky the waters. At that point, the teacher comes to playground and breaks up the fight, without worrying about who started it.
Understood and I very much apologize - I thought I was trying to separate the non-political point I was trying to make from the debate my original post apparently re-ignited. I can see where that was not accomplished and is probably not possible - sorry for my role…
Re the Internet, the most interesting passage was when Friday is learning to do in-depth online research. At some point she grows curious about who owns and operates the computer system of the espionage agency she works for (and, as was made clear early in the book, she actually has no idea whether she’s working for a government or a multinational corporation or what). The computer keeps giving her confusing, obfuscatory answers to each line of questioning. Finally she asks the computer flat out: “Who owns you?” The computer, quite reasonably, claims it can’t understand the question. After several tries she phrases it in terms an expert system should be able to handle and process – and the computer immediately shuts down.
Not sure what you’re referring to, but I didn’t see any personal insults at all…not HERE anyway, although there were probably some in the Pit thread BrainGlutton started.
There was political argument, but unless telling someone they are not being objective is a personal insult, I didn’t see any.
Oh, okay, so it’s pretty impressive after all. I sure wouldn’t have been able to guess that the new pope would take the name “Benedict” out of all those choices.
Okay, this thread has had sufficient hijackings that I figure one more won’t hurt. I was born in 1953, and came of age post-sputnik. Whenever the subject of the future comes up, I always annoy my son by repeating the same line.
I always knew I’d see the first men to walk on the moon, but I never expected to see the last.