Yesterday a man that was very close to me passed away. So it goes. He was very close to me although I never met him and he never met me. I find that fascinating, although it's nothing really new, that a person that lives across the world can have such an impact on another person without ever speaking to them or seeing them.
Arthur C. Clarke was one of the pioneers of science fiction as we know it. He was a man of endless humanity that had an incredible gift for writing. Most are probably at least familiar with 2001: A Space Odyssey, but he wrote over 30 novels and a large amount of essays concerning mankind and technology. Like any great sci-fi writer, his interest was in people and the things they create. He's also one of the reasons you can talk on a cell phone or watch satellite television. The man was a genius, but he had a great sense of self and of humor. After failing to patent his telecommunications technology, he wrote a short essay entitled, "How I lost a billion dollars in my spare time".
Most people see the entire genre of science fiction as geeky escapism. People that were born too early - people that long for a generation where flying cars and jet packs exist. But at it's core, it's fundamentally philosophical. It asks the key questions about life as we know it now while predicting how life might be as we will know it. If done well, it forces the reader to ask hard questions about his or her life and the way in which they live. It also challenges people to look beyond the ordinary. One of Clarke's famous rules of discovery was, "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
I think that's an incredible mantra to live by - not just with technology, but with our human spirit, our talents, our love. It challenges us to reach beyond what we are to see what we might become.
On an interesting note, technology proliferation doubles every 11 years or so. Computers are faster, have more memory. To prove how constantly amazing we are, I'll leave you with this developing story: technology now exists that allows for voiceless communication.
At a recent expo, a company called Audeo exhibited a band that is worn around the neck. This band receives the muscular impulses of the vocal box and transmits them through a bluetooth capable cell phone. Thus, the person wearing it doesn't have to speak, they only have to think of what they are going to say and allow the brain to shift their vocal chords - the band creates the sound and sends it to the listener.
The program only knows a few hundred words right now, but that will change. It will progress, and soon, you could be having a conversation with someone on the other side of the world without even speaking. You could ride public transit or be in the car with friends and speak privately to someone else without others hearing your side of the conversation. I'm not sure that it has profound meaning for our society, but it's incredibly cool and could potentially be helpful.
I think Clarke would have been proud.
The future was three years ago.
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