Whatsnext

Science fiction writers have always speculated about the future -- sometimes they are quite accurate (Jules Verne predicted live newscasts, space travel, and the Internet in the 19th century) and other times not so much (flying cars haven't taken off yet). Authors typically set their science fiction stories well into the future, so they can get in a few good years of sales before the future becomes the present and their works begin to look naïve and obsolete. Far-future settings also allow an author to solicit a greater suspension of disbelief from the reader -- sure, warp drives and holodecks sound fanciful, but who's to say what wonders may be common in 400 years? However, occasionally authors will accept the difficult challenge of setting their stories in a near-future world similar to our own, where predictions about technological advancement must be grounded in reality and "science as magic" hand waving is not tolerated. It is these stories, when written by authors with expertise in the subject matter and the willingness to conduct research, that provide invaluable inspiration to those of us in the business of turning imagination into reality.

Warning: The following post may contain weak metaphors and bad analogies. If these are offensive to you or illegal in your jurisdiction, you may want to skip this post.

Like many people who grew up in the forward thinking, happy go-lucky days of the twentieth century when anything seemed possible, I sometimes wonder what happened to all the futuristic luxuries that technology was supposed to have delivered by now. Science fiction promised us flying cars, ray guns, personal robots, and space colonies. I can understand speculative fiction not living up to reality -- after all, nobody has a crystal ball. However, many of us who were involved in software during the early to mid-nineties had some very specific and realistic notions of how computing technology would progress over the coming years, including the following: