The ever greater intrusion on freedom....

[Bluestrom13]

I've got to admit, this is one of the finest thread hijackings that I have seen in a long time.....
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[smilespergallon]

My old business partner (of the BMW 1000SS and V-Max ownership) and I went to the beach one weekend to blow off steam and ended up touring a wax museum. He'd never seen Star Trek, so I got to set up this shot and then explain it to him later. I love the "It's cool, I got this." look on his face.


And yes, best thread drift ever.

 

[Bikebit]

Let's face it - our civilization is being destroyed by social media. We have never had access to more information, but the information we have access to has never been more suspect. Monetizing algorithms are actively destroying the foundations of humanity.

One of my favorite lines from any movie is from "Contact". Judie Foster gets asked if she could ask the alien civilization one question, what would it be? Her answer - "How did you do it? How did you survive this technological adolescence without destroying yourself?" Were are here now.

 

[smilespergallon]

The Fermi Paradox: "Where are they?" Sagan's answer being that the vast majority destroy themselves and the few who might survive long enough to go interstellar are separated by many hundreds of millions of years.

One of the many amazing thought experiments and radical ideas to come out of the Los Alamos lunchroom. Feynman wrote a good autobiography that gives some fun examples, but the real gems weren't declassified until the 80s.

 

[Woodstock]

I wasn't going to get involved here but given the turn, one theory I read on why we don't meet aliens is that all fossil fuel societies kill themselves off before they get to the technological advancement for interstellar travel. How they kill themselves off is probably implied but I am not going there. It also implies that all societies everywhere have a fossil fuel stage of economic development. I could extrapolate to a remembered episode of "The Tomorrow People," where the Romans invented the steam engine in the fourth century and went out to conquer the galaxy but another time.

 

[smilespergallon]

I loved Tomorrow People. Shame the reboot was so odd, it just didn't do it for me.

Sounds like you may have read either the work of Sagan, Hawking and/or and Schlovskii. Or the more recent 21st century dynamic systems study using the Rapa Nui as a basis for exploring the feedback effects of resource consumption. Brin used Polynesia's various expansion cycles and what we know of them as the basis for his Uplift books, citing the evidence in support of the Sagan Theory.

The thing I liked most out of the Rapa Nui study was the suggestion that there are many starfaring races out there, they're just not as expansionist and self-destructive as humans and so they never expanded outside of their small section of the galaxy. Trying to remember the guy's name, I just heard his voice on NPR not long ago.... Doctor Frank?

Hawking liked to view self-annihilation in terms of thermodynamics, positing that intelligent life is an ordered system sustaining itself against entropy. This led to his support of transhumanism to reduce the natural aggression of humanity that we might be capable of managing our own inventions without causing global societal collapse. Not a theory I personally support, although Phillip K. Dick wrote many fantastic short stories and novels around transhumanism and what it means to be human in the first place. Sadly it was his light hearted fluff that got turned into TV (High Castle) and the good stuff got watered down on its way to video (Bladerunner).

Gee, you'd think I was a total SF geek or something, attending seminars and staffing conventions and the like.

 

[Turbofurball]

It's not that he's on the bridge, did you notice how many times someone beats the crap out of him? Like every episode for a while there. A Klingon Warrior, hand picked to represent his peoples, and everyone from a random castaway to the ship's councilor takes him down in a fight. No sir, I just don't buy it. Not My Klingons.

To be fair he did a lot of arse kicking in Deep Space 9.

In other news I appear to be being out-geeked here, since I like the new stuff as well as the old. They never showed Star Trek in Hungary, so I got to introduce it to my other half and now she's more of a trekkie than me ... get her and mu Mum together and they often crack open the Star Trek Encyclopedia, lol. I've not dipped into much hard sci-fi since it tends to be a bit of a sausage fest, but I am a good chunk into The Dispossessed at the moment (still waiting for something to happen, lol)

 

[The gardener]

 

[smilespergallon]

Agreed about modern hard SF being a sausage-fest, I blame the toxic masculine military types like Correia and Beale.

Try Nathan Lowell's 'Solar Clipper' books for some non-sausage hard SF (merchant marine slice of life in space. a friend into military SF described it as 'six books wherein nothing happens, yet I could not put them down.') He also reads his own stuff if you prefer audiobooks.

 

[Woodstock]

I loved Tomorrow People. Shame the reboot was so odd, it just didn't do it for me.

Sounds like you may have read either the work of Sagan, Hawking and/or and Schlovskii. Or the more recent 21st century dynamic systems study using the Rapa Nui as a basis for exploring the feedback effects of resource consumption. Brin used Polynesia's various expansion cycles and what we know of them as the basis for his Uplift books, citing the evidence in support of the Sagan Theory.

The thing I liked most out of the Rapa Nui study was the suggestion that there are many starfaring races out there, they're just not as expansionist and self-destructive as humans and so they never expanded outside of their small section of the galaxy. Trying to remember the guy's name, I just heard his voice on NPR not long ago.... Doctor Frank?

Hawking liked to view self-annihilation in terms of thermodynamics, positing that intelligent life is an ordered system sustaining itself against entropy. This led to his support of transhumanism to reduce the natural aggression of humanity that we might be capable of managing our own inventions without causing global societal collapse. Not a theory I personally support, although Phillip K. Dick wrote many fantastic short stories and novels around transhumanism and what it means to be human in the first place. Sadly it was his light hearted fluff that got turned into TV (High Castle) and the good stuff got watered down on its way to video (Bladerunner).

Gee, you'd think I was a total SF geek or something, attending seminars and staffing conventions and the like.

Missed the reboot and from what you say that is a good thing. All the luminaries you mention are possibilities but I can't pin the theory to anyone in particular. Though if I had to guess, it was Sagan. There is nothing wrong with being a Geek. I once wrote two stories for TV Guide's Star Trek Xth anniversary glossy magazine. I must dig it out and re-read what I wrote. I still give the Vulcan salute on occasion.

 

[StefArmstg]

It's easier to believe in magic than think the future will be anything other than the Road Warrior.

On a lighter note, when I was going to a state college with no campus (one of my classes was above an auto parts store), I had to kill a hour in the afternoon. I'd head to the student lounge (a half block from the auto parts store), walked up to the TV that was always on, and changed the channel to Star Trek.

This was shortly after the Vietnam War had ended. There was the occasional race riot, and certain student groups were robbing banks to fund their activities. But no one ever objected to me changing the channel.

 

[Turbofurball]

Try Nathan Lowell's 'Solar Clipper' books for some non-sausage hard SF (merchant marine slice of life in space. a friend into military SF described it as 'six books wherein nothing happens, yet I could not put them down.') He also reads his own stuff if you prefer audiobooks.

I'll see if I can find a paper copy when I'm in the UK next month, I'm always on the lookout for something new (I've been reading some Korean sci-fi-ish comics online recently and ... well, they have a style of their own, lol)

Missed the reboot and from what you say that is a good thing. All the luminaries you mention are possibilities but I can't pin the theory to anyone in particular. Though if I had to guess, it was Sagan. There is nothing wrong with being a Geek. I once wrote two stories for TV Guide's Star Trek Xth anniversary glossy magazine. I must dig it out and re-read what I wrote. I still give the Vulcan salute on occasion.

Ooh, I'd love to read those

 

[smilespergallon]

Paper copies of books..... I havn't thought about them in years. Not sure his publishing company does ink and tree, I'll have to check.

If you do though, Quarter Share is the starting point. Wherein his main character gets life derailed without warning and the readers are introduced to how things work on corporate planets.

 

[Woodstock]

Paper copies of books..... I havn't thought about them in years. Not sure his publishing company does ink and tree, I'll have to check.

If you do though, Quarter Share is the starting point. Wherein his main character gets life derailed without warning and the readers are introduced to how things work on corporate planets.

I still buy books. I find them easier to read. And I like to support book stores.

 

[Turbofurball]

I prefer books on paper generally simply because so much of my life is spent looking at screens and I'd like to do that a bit less

 

[Stig57]

Books are my favourite but I've had to let tons of my sci-fi go due to space issues. (Excuse the pun).
I also use a Kindle 'cos I get stuff for free and it doesn't take up much space. Murderbot anyone ?