WHAT WILL OUR GREAT-GREAT- GRANDCHILDREN BE LIKE?

I have trouble writing stories about the far future—even one or two hundred years from now. I’m afraid they’ll end up like Star Trek and many other SF tales: essentially 21^st century humans interacting with 23^rd or 24^th century technology. I’m sure it won’t really be that way, so to write scenarios like that feels knowingly misleading.

You may think the people of the distant past were more primitive than we are, maybe even less intelligent. I disagree, and I think the great literature of history should be proof enough that our intellects, emotions, desires and motivations are really not different from our ancestors of many centuries ago. Our bodies aren’t either.

But can we say that about our descendants of even a hundred years from now?

Our physical bodies have been changing over the past generation and more because of our sedentary lifestyle and abundance of high-calorie foods—eventually adaptations will show up in our DNA—but technology will change us much sooner than that.

We’ve already become hooked on tech like Google searches and smartphones, to the point that some studies show we’re losing short-term memory and other cognitive functions in ways comparable to victims of head injuries. The new catchphrase for that is Digital Dementia. “Use it or lose it” is an integral part of brain development and maintenance throughout our lives. So if we continue to grow dependent on technology, our brain functions, personal interactions, and even conversations may be very different in a hundred years (I already have a hard enough time understanding the language of teenagers!)

We can also deliberately change our bodies in an increasing variety of ways. A not-quite-finished novel of mine postulates that within a few years smartphones will give way to direct brain-computer interfaces that we’ll routinely attach to, or even implant in our heads. Like Google Glass with a direct brain connection, they’ll keep us linked to the future version of the internet 24/7, to the point that we won’t know or care whether the answer to a question comes from our own memory or a digital database somewhere. Forget phone calls or texting—we’ll be able to communicate almost like telepathy, except that the messages will travel through the ‘net via wifi or its successor. I truly believe this will happen within decades, not centuries. Heck, by then artificial intelligence may have advanced to the point where our implant will have a mind of its own, like a little angel or devil sitting on our shoulder. Who can possibly guess how that will change our behavior? Futurist Ray Kurzweil has famously predicted that such a cultural shift (part of what he calls The Singularity) could happen as soon as 2045.

Medical engineering will allow us to replace limbs and other body parts with efficient and more versatile replacements that will make the Six Million Dollar Man look quaint. Within the lifetime of most of us, we’ll probably undergo medical procedures that will involve nano-devices travelling our bloodstream to pinpoint problems and maybe even treat them. (And a little internal ‘nip & tuck’ while they’re at it? Why not?) Geneticists are making great advances in deciphering and manipulating DNA. Screening embryos for desirable traits might become routine. Perhaps we’ll even be able to get injections of DNA cocktails or nano-gadgets that will replace plastic surgery in making us stronger, more youthful, and more attractive.

My point is, in a hundred years from now human beings won’t be the same as we’ve been for millennia, and an author who doesn’t reflect that in their vision of the future is missing the mark. That’s what makes this job so hard. Or just think of it as a challenge. Yeah, that sounds better.

SCIENCE FICTION IS ALL ABOUT HOPE (REALLY!)

Those who don’t understand SF think it’s about robots, aliens, space travel, time travel, and other stuff of childish dreams that bear little relation to reality. I could write pages about how much past SF is infused into our very real present, but other writers have done it well already. And anyway, SF is about dreams—a very good thing.

SF is the most hopeful fiction there is.

SF is the fiction of human potential. It celebrates the extraordinary skills and abilities that the human species commands, which raise us above the level of other creatures. Old thinkers and empire builders acted as if our great abilities meant that humans were destined to subdue and dominate, but SF writers know the universe is too big a place for that. Instead, SF is about reaching barriers and overcoming them, one at a time, using every one of the gifts our race can muster. It’s about flights of technological fancy that we will someday make real, yes, but also about the drawbacks of those technologies and how we will overcome them.

When real life is dull and the immediate outlook is bleak, SF imagines bright futures in which problems have been solved, and continue to be solved through our ingenuity, energy, and sheer persistence. Often our own cherished scientific research presents us with doors that seem closed to us: the airless vacuum of space, the speed of light, the sheer size of the universe. But SF imagines keys to open those doors, or sometimes simply trusts that humankind will find a way as we’ve done so many times before. That’s hope.

SF can take us to some very dark places, often of our own creation: future worlds poisoned by our excesses, overrun by engineering run amok, dehumanized by dependence on technology, stifled by political bureaucracy at its hellish worst. Yet even these stories revolve around the human characters’ refusal to accept defeat and destruction. They are stories about invention, courage, self-sacrifice, and above all: hope. Even when they don’t end happily, their very existence as stories testifies to the writer’s hope that humanity can recognize such warnings and use our gifts to avoid the danger.

Occasionally SF even forecasts the end of humankind—at least, as we know it—whether because we change ourselves into something very different, artificial intelligence supersedes us, or some other species takes over. But still, SF is optimistic about Life itself, and its triumph over the dead matter of the cosmos.

SF educates, agitates, advises, and inspires. An article I read recently proposed that science fiction is important because it motivates great innovators to think big and to make imagined technology real. It also illustrates “the big picture”: the social implications of these new innovations, and where they might take the human race. If you want to understand the need for such inspiration to fuel human progress you should check out Project Hieroglyph, an online space “for writers, scientists, artists and engineers to collaborate on creative, ambitious visions of our near future.”

SF is important because it celebrates the human determination to overcome all obstacles. It’s about potential. It’s about hope. And who doesn’t want to be part of that?

WILL THE HYPERLOOP REALLY HELP?

The man who is said to have inspired Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of “Iron Man” in the movies made a big teaser announcement this week. Entrepreneur Elon Musk (co-founder of PayPal and founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX) proclaimed that he will reveal the alpha design of a transportation system he says will become the fifth key mode of transportation in the world (after cars, planes, trains, and boats). He calls it the Hyperloop, and he describes it as "a cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table." We’ll have to wait until August 12^th to find out what exactly that means, but educated guessers believe it will be passenger-carrying pods that will travel in sealed tubes, floating by magnetic levitation or something similar, perhaps in a surrounding zone of fast-moving air. Musk envisions the Hyperloop being built across the continent, so that you could travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in just minutes, and from there to New York City in under an hour.

Fast? Yeah, you could say that. So does that mean it will be a game-changer, bringing about a new world of mobility? Maybe. But I’m not really convinced that faster always means better. A few minutes of thought made me to realize there are many things the Hyperloop won’t help, like:

- the two-hour drive to your cottage/camp that becomes five hours on a Friday night.

- the high-polluting, gas-guzzling journey your vegetables make from California to your dinner table.

- the family vacation trip that doesn’t include Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York City.

- the price of gasoline (do you think lower demand on a few long distance routes will convince oil companies to lower prices? Seriously?)

- the billboard advertising industry.

- your accumulation of frequent flyer points.

- lost luggage (it will just get to other cities without you much faster.)

In fact, the Hyperloop could outright destroy:

- excuses not to visit relatives you don’t like.

- scenery-watching (and any true, personal grasp of geography.)

- all hope of escaping the psycho ex-girlfriend.

- your last chance to catch up on your reading.

- the road trip movie (OK, some of these will be good things.)

I’m sure you can come up with dozens more like this. Either way, Musk claims the Hyperloop will cost much less to build than high speed rail, and I am in favour of getting as many trucks and cars off the road as possible. So, Mr. Musk, I’ll be watching on August 12^th to see what you’ve come up with, and if any partners are ready to jump aboard with you.

And, really, work on the lost luggage thing while you’re at it, OK?