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[Dutchling]

Well that was a horrifying wall of text.

Seriously, all I care about is that you can understand when I say something to you. :I You can wear a turban or whatever, I don't care.

Anyway, I'm just holding out for quick-and-easy vocal machine translation. Just wear an earpiece or something and you hear something, it translates.

We should all communicate by handshake. Will solve everything.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

How else do you expect us to exchange protein strands?

[scriver]

[Descan]

Anyway, I'm just holding out for quick-and-easy vocal machine translation. Just wear an earpiece or something and you hear something, it translates.

That'd be neat but... they'd probably translate with the same level of quality as google translate :X

Why does everyone always assume that future technology will have the same limitations as current attempts? :I

[Aklyon]

Anyway, I'm just holding out for quick-and-easy vocal machine translation. Just wear an earpiece or something and you hear something, it translates.

That'd be neat but... they'd probably translate with the same level of quality as google translate :X

Why does everyone always assume that future technology will have the same limitations as current attempts? :I

Because people apparently expect newer technology to work like technology works already, unless its in scifi. Then you just need enough science (or enough technobabble, depending on hardness) to justify your anything.

[scrdest]

Anyway, I'm just holding out for quick-and-easy vocal machine translation. Just wear an earpiece or something and you hear something, it translates.

That'd be neat but... they'd probably translate with the same level of quality as google translate :X

Why does everyone always assume that future technology will have the same limitations as current attempts? :I

Because people apparently expect newer technology to work like technology works already, unless its in scifi. Then you just need enough science (or enough technobabble, depending on hardness) to justify your anything.

You know, science fiction used to be about taking the latest advances in science and extrapolating from those once. Now it's fantasy, IN SPACE!

[Frumple]

And yet we still seem to catch up to it relatively often anyway. Kinda' makes you think a lil'. Or start rambling about not!superman.

[misko27]

Why does everyone always assume that future technology will have the same limitations as current attempts? :I

Because people apparently expect newer technology to work like technology works already, unless its in scifi. Then you just need enough science (or enough technobabble, depending on hardness) to justify your anything.

You know, science fiction used to be about taking the latest advances in science and extrapolating from those once. Now it's fantasy, IN SPACE!

There's a Trope for that.

[GiglameshDespair]

I remember reading an interesting piece on how science fiction reflected the mood at the time. The early science fiction novels were written during a time of great advancements, a time when most people had hope and belief in the future. As a consequence science fiction was also hopeful and outlandish - the heroes with fantastic technology, defeating the evil enemies. Now, in an era of mistrust (of governments and other people) and global warming, science fiction is often dark and limited- humanity faces fundamental constraits on what is does, often has to squabble and scratch in underhanded ways just to survive.

Obviously not valid for all science fiction, but I wonder if that does fit the trends through sci-fi? It seems likely to me, with the stuff I've read.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I think it may be because current science fulfills like 20% of what science fiction hoped for 30 years ago. It's like how they're still making crime thrillers set in the modern day that ignore things like unregulated wiretapping, cell phone triangulation, gunshot sensors, facial recognition software in cameras, and post-9/11 terrorism response.

I watched a movie the other day where the most wanted guy ever was driving a super duper car at night with his lights off at like 200 mph and he didn't run into anything or run off the road. The police, though they knew his route across the country and knew what he was driving, were unable to set up sensible roadblocks that would require slow weaving through concrete barriers. They couldn't even get a damn garbage truck to block a road. Of course calling in the military or national guard was not even mentioned. And the SWAT helicopters didn't have infrared cameras which would let them spot him instantly and all his cronies coming up in impractical vehicles. And despite armoring such a car being impossible because it would weigh it down too much, the car was immune to small arms fire. It was a damn stupid movie you could enjoy only if you stopped thinking completely, and any appeal to reality would stop the villain instantly.

What I'm saying is the movie wanted to tell a story and in order for that story to happen it needed to ignore science and equipment that we have now. For a sci fi story to work they need to understand what the scientists are trying to say their science means and what are some possible results. How are you going to get audience buy-in for sci fi when you can't write a story with science? Instead all we get is Star Trek style handwaving. Take Firefly: did they use bullets? Sure looked like it. Sometimes. Did the show take place in a galaxy or a single solar system? Seemed to change between the series and the movie.  Was food a valuable and rare thing? When the story called for it.

[Pnx]

All fiction has to make some leaps of logic to really be entertaining, be they narrative leaps, technological leaps, or other leaps, because reality is sort of boring for us.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

But what's happening now would be sci fi 30 years ago.

Like, you know how all the doctor shows have organ-transplant episodes? It's like the adult TV version of a childrens' program having "Opposite Day". It's a lazy way for the writers to pump out one more episode with zero creative effort. What happens when we can grow organs and implant them in anyone? Will they stop doing organ transplant episodes? I really don't think so: they'll just invent some BS reason why THIS patient can't use a vat-grown organ and needs a transplant.

At some point these writers need to start coming up with original ideas. You know a great inspiration for original story lines? Stuff that is happening now instead of stuff that would be plausible as long as nobody has a cell phone and there are no cameras in banks etc.

[GiglameshDespair]

I could think of a reason for that. The [organ] requires a long time to be grown (probably true), but the patient needs the [organ] before that time, so the transplant has to be done now.

I think they already wrote about what was going on now. I think a bloke called Orwell named it 1984 

[Tiruin]

One does not just [organ transplant] without due acceptance.

There are tons of details behind how stuff works. Medicine, even more so.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I could think of a reason for that. The [organ] requires a long time to be grown (probably true), but the patient needs the [organ] before that time, so the transplant has to be done now.

I think they already wrote about what was going on now. I think a bloke called Orwell named it 1984 

That patient would just die because there isn't an organ available right this very second. People wait on organ lists all the time. Besides there would probably be an organ in a vat in the basement matching his genetics enough to just cram it in and hope for the best.