Jim Baen's Universe

What's New in The Future And You

Columns

October 2007

Written by Stephen Euin Cobb

Senator (and presidential candidate) John McCain is joined by Jack McDevitt, Eric Flint, Randal L. Schwartz, Stoney Compton, Alethea Kontis (an editor at Solaris Books and buyer for Ingram), Doctor Aubrey de Grey (a gerontologist promoting medical life extension), Uncle Timmy (founder and chairman of the SF&F convention LibertyCon) and Walt (Bananaslug) Boyes for the September and October 2007 episodes of The Future And You.

The Future And You is an award-winning audio podcast about the future which may be downloaded and enjoyed, or even copied and shared, for free. Every episode contains numerous interviews which reveal a wide variety of ideas and opinion about the future from a wide variety of people.

And as always, each episode of The Future And You contains an installment in our serialization of the hard SF novel, Bones Burnt Black; and features ten minutes of Walt Boyes (The Bananaslug) & Stoney Compton as they do their bit to let the world at large know what's in the current issue of Jim Baen's Universe Magazine.

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Topics in the October episode

Senator (and presidential candidate) John McCain manages to first pleasantly surprise and then thoroughly scare your host with his answers to your humble host’s questions.  Not questions about the war, mind you, but about federal funding of scientific research.

The senator describes his support of embryonic stem cell research, and specifies that this support is not given lightly.  He understands that the issue has split the pro-life community—a community in which the senator includes himself.  “I have prayed a lot about it,” he says, and explains that his support it not just in general terms; he’s in favor of it receiving federal funding.  He also voices support for continued federal funding of nanotechnology research.

But it’s when asked whether he favors the manned mission side of NASA or the robotic probe side that Senator John McCain says something all who favor space research need to hear.  “I think those decisions have been delayed for a long time.  We need more congressional hearings on them.  And we should understand that it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, to fund both.  And our problem in NASA for a long time has been a failure to set priorities, and trying to fund everything.  As president, I will make those decisions and set those priorities.”  

If I understand the senator correctly, he intends to close down many of NASA’s divisions and projects, and lay off many of its scientists and engineers—a scary thought for all those who believe humanity’s vast future can not be squeezed into one claustrophobic little planet of questionable climatic stability. 

Eric Flint is highly skeptical of both nanotechnology and The Singularity; “Hooey,” he calls them both. The late Jim Baen, he recalls, also thought nanotechnology was nonsense and yet, though it seems contradictory, was a big fan of The Singularity. (Eric laughs as he explains that “the word contradictory was made for Jim Baen.”)

While Eric Flint is optimistic about the future in general, he laments what he sees as a slowing in the rate of scientific advancement during the last half century. Instead of advancement, he says, “what we get today is endless refinements of existing technology.” There was a time when we saw a parade of things that never existed before: the phonograph, the automobile, radio, TV, scuba gear, airplanes, rockets, calculators, computers; now we just keep improving the old stuff. His theory is that our modern economy is currently dominated by a small number of giant corporations; and radical scientific advancement would upset their applecart.

Eric also admits his reaction to cryonics is a bit hostile, but explains why he feels this way.

Jack McDevitt says he is not as optimistic about the future as he used to be and provides many concrete examples from his own experiences. For example, he laments that our government has stopped looking for asteroids which threaten to hit the earth—a project which would cost little and yet might easily save millions of lives. He also worries that “too many people think patriotism means following the President, no matter what.” He feels the Singularity is a real danger for our future. And on a philosophical note; he explains one of the secret little hypocrisies which we all share: “We say we want the schools to make our kids smart,” but what we really want is for them to “make our kids think like us.”

Doctor Aubrey de Grey is a gerontologist promoting medical life extension. He speaks of extending human lives, as well as nanotechnology, AI (artificial intelligence) and The Singularity. He believes that significant medical life extension can be achieved within a few decades without requiring nanotechnology, but that extending life expectancies indefinitely will require we develop a robust nanotechnology.

Having worked for a while in what’s known as “Weak AI,” he describes with some familiarity, but not a lot of confidence in its eventual success, an ongoing project which is attempting to produce something called “Friendly AI” (Strong AI which has been specifically engineered to be incapable of harming humans—apparently reminiscent of Asimov’s three laws of robotics.) He mentions that he sees no need, either practical or ethical, for Strong AI (AI with recursive self-improvement).

In nanotechnology, Doctor de Grey points out that molecular manufacturing (sometimes envisioned as smart dust or a magic box or even the infamous gray goo) can only be achieved with recursive self-replication, which we will almost surely not develop for many decades. Fortunately, biomedical uses of nanotech during the next decade or two will not require recursive self replication, and will yield many astounding benefits.

He worries that unanticipated technological innovations will periodically become widely available without our having the time needed to think about their ramifications, and that this will cause terrible instability within our civilization.

Predicting the approach of the Singularity, he feels, is far less certain than predicting the coming developments in medical longevity.

Alethea Kontis is a fantasy editor for Solaris Books in the UK and a buyer for Ingram as well as a writer of short fiction. Within fiction, she sees a lot of blending of the genres, and describes a variety of cross fertilizations. Horror, for example, seems to be working its way into every genre; along with SF&F going into mainstream and vise versa. She also sees many writers worrying about being pigeonholed. “Everyone wants to be in the literary or mainstream rather than any one genre.”

She feels that the SF&F short story market is moving more strongly online with several professional level magazines becoming increasingly popular. And people who read online tend to gravitate to the shorter of the short stories, she says. Thus, even though electrons are cheap, this is putting pressure on the magazines and writers to provide readers with stories that are shorter and more tightly written.

Outside of writing, Alethea has noticed that her friends, like herself, rarely watch TV anymore. Instead, they watch DVDs or download shows off the internet. Her worry is that this will limit the creation of quality TV shows since the advertising money has even now started to dry up.

As always, each episode of The Future And You contains another installment in our serialization of the Hard SF novel, Bones Burnt Black; and features ten minutes of Walt Boyes (The Bananaslug) & Stoney Compton as they do their bit to let the world at large know what's in the current issue of Jim Baen's Universe Magazine.

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Topics in the September episode

Jack McDevitt, author of the Nebula Award winning novel Seeker, as well as thirteen other novels, has made a career out of imagining our future. Here he describes what he anticipates and wishes for our future, as well as what he fears.

Doctor Aubrey de Grey explains that if you can cause a mouse to live an unnaturally long life you can win a huge cash prize. Inspired by the now famous space-commercializing "X-Prize," The Methuselah Mouse Prize is just as real but is designed to popularize and promote innovative medical research in Life Extension. Doctor de Grey of the Methuselah Foundation—who is both a gerontologist and a transhumanist—speaks of this and other aspects of medical life extension.