Some kind of wonderful
I like that song because it implies there are many kinds of wonderful, which is probably true, but the singer seems to not know which particular kind of wonderful his object of desire is. Crazy, huh?So, nano technology. Futuristic technology is always less exciting than it seems in films. When one thinks of robots, one thinks of Asmovian, intelligent robots, performing tasks and mingling, not a gigantic arm assembling car parts. When one thinks of cloning one thinks of big labs, and humans being grown, not animals that don't even necessarily look the same as their clone (DNA not being the be all and end all of how one looks). When one thinks of genetic modification, one imagines people with ten arms and two hears, not carrots that are really orange. And when one thinks of nano technology, one imagines tiny little robots that are super cool and make things, rather than things that might fight some disease.
I'm not going anywhere with this, merely making the point that our world is less exciting than it should be. Something science fiction seems not to predict is that we rather like the old- 11th century houses are nice to look at, so we are unlikely to demolish them all to replace them with an ultra cool plastic house, as almost all films set far in the future imply. Blade Runner's view is probably the best, supposedly being a dystopia because, you know, some of the houses are a little messy (everything is remarkably clean in the future).
If you took a science fiction writer from the 50s I think they would be kind of disappointed. Oh sure, they might find the televisions quite exciting, and all the stuff I can do with this computer is cool- but the problem is nothing LOOKS cool enough. I'm not sure I would change it if I could, I just think maybe its time for science fiction to start acknowleding this.
Air conditioning is a guilty pleasure of many of us. We all- well most of us- know that it contributes to global warming.... but I don't think many of us are going t give it up any time soon. It is really rather an awesome invention, when its actually working properly (my mother's workplace is often incredibly cold due to over active fans).
Hmm... keep commenting guys, and if you request something to blog about, I probably will blog about it. Becuase 'm like that.
posted by Mr K @ 6:33 pm
9 Comments:
Clearly, all science fiction writers think that at some point we are gonna have a global spring clean, clear away all the junk and make nice new buildings that are easy to clean and nice shiny ways to get to our shiny places of work. Clearly we clone a cross between a raven and those women that clean houses.
hears??? hears! i wish i had two of them.
Blog about... atheism and video games! Wait a seco....
ok ok blog about something you really enjoy that you dont get to do much/at all. Cos I dont know and we could do it... depending on what it is.
woah... I started commenting when there was no posts, now fred has snuck one in on me...
Hmm, buildings are probably going to become more eco friendly, rather than shiny with robots at least for the near future. So rather than plastic homes we'll probably have more straw bale houses and buildings that are more energy efficient.
Also air conditioning is a bit of a luxury for buildings in Britain, there's really no reason why we need it. Modern buildings should take advantage of the methods of natural cooling like cross ventilation and stack effect, therefore air conditioning should be unneccessary or at least minimal. I've read about buildings in Dubai that use only natural ventilation...
...Hey you started it!
Though I agree we should have robbot butlers and a house that folds into your phone like on the advert - that would be so cool. Probably lots of people would be killed testing it, as they're home imploded squishing them into the size of a pea. It's a risk i'm willing to take though!
a special request: blog about the americans?
Pretty much all we have from early science fiction is the slidey automatic doors. But we obviously need more of them, I want them all through my house!
Oh, and air conditioning is essential, it allows us to control our environment, and thus show our contempt for nature... is contempt the word I'm searching for here?
Oh, and in your previous post, you mentioned annoying things on the train... did anyone start breastfeeding?
Hey that might not necessarily be annoying ;)
lol
No, no breast feeding. At least, none that I could see... 7 comments? Impressive!
8 now! no 9!
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