Saturday, January 28, 2017

Don't Know You're Born...

"We haven't made any science-y progress since the Apollo moon missions," Neil deGrasse Tyson instantly communicated to millions of pocket computers around the globe.



As I was idly perusing the entertainment choices in the seatback touchscreen entertainment center on an eastbound 737-800 (I ended up watching the documentary Fastball), I couldn't help but remember this commercial. Now all this stuff is in your phone.

In retrospect, most of the hand-held computing technology in most science fiction from the last fifty years is laughably primitive. Hell, most of the computing technology, period. 2001: A Space Odyssey predicted a lot of things with Kubrickian attention to detail (flat screen color monitors did not exist when the movie was made, so all those video displays are rear-projected on frosted glass) but its computer predictions, at least regarding size and form factor, were knocked into a cocked hat by Moore's Law.

We still haven't caught up to Kubrick's vision in the field of murderous AIs, but I'm sure we're getting close.

Future is now.
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