General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "Learn a Trade!" response to AI fears [View all]hunter
(40,170 posts)Give the virus some capacity to evolve too...
Computers are pretty simple in comparison to biology.
Yes, I can see the future:
In a few million years nothing will remain of our civilization but a curious layer of trash in the geologic record.
The 21st century future I imagined as a child reading science fiction is not here and never will be. Some of that future was stifled by human avarice but a lot of it was simply not possible in this universe. It turns out that most science fiction is pure fantasy, no different than imaginary worlds of wizards, elves, and unicorns.
I was in a computer lab when the second Berkeley Software Distribution was released and I remember thinking it was one of the most beautiful things I'd seen, almost like the Apollo 11 moon landing. Today I see all sorts of consumer bling built around computers but all things considered space travel hasn't changed much and neither have computers. These technologies are not as simple as they once were, the complexity has increased, but they are not proportionately more sophisticated.
When I peer into the future it looks more like Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home than Star Trek and I'm not disappointed by that.