22 - Interesting Times

Summary

May you live in interesting times.

Ancient Chinese curse, apparently invented by Eric Frank Russell c. 1950

MULTIPLE FUTURES

A writer looking forward from 1900 might have anticipated rockets. He might have anticipated nuclear explosives. The nuclear balance of terror, one of the central facts of the second half of the century, required both. Through most of this book, I have taken futures one at a time. They will not come that way.

One interaction among technologies was discussed in Chapter 5. If cyberspace is private and realspace public, how much privacy we have depends on how much of our lives is lived in each. That in turn depends on another technology: virtual reality. In the limit of deep VR, everything important is happening in cyberspace, leaving the automated cameras of the transparent society very little to watch.

Another example appeared in Chapter 21. How large a role space plays in our lives over the next century depends on how expensive it is to get there. That, in turn, depends on the strength-to-weight ratio of the materials available to us. With sufficiently strong and light materials, it becomes possible to build a space elevator, drastically reducing the cost of getting off earth. Short of that, better materials make possible launch vehicles with a much higher payload and much lower costs. One way of getting very strong and light materials, such as single-molecule carbon fibers, is nanotechnology.

In some cases, one technology eliminates problems raised by another. Genetic testing makes genetic risks uninsurable.