One of my local papers reprinted this article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103328.html
or http://preview.tinyurl.com/646r6f
from the 13 April 2008 edition.
In it, Joel Achenbach quotes Christine Peterson, vice president of
Foresight Nanotech Institute in Menlo Park, CA, who says:
[quote]
"Even smart people are really pretty incapable of envisioning a
situation that's substantially different from what they're
in," ...... Peterson has one recommendation: Read science fiction,
especially "hard science fiction" that sticks rigorously to the
scientifically possible. "If you look out into the long-term future
and what you see looks like science fiction, it might be wrong," she
says. "But if it doesn't look like science fiction, it's definitely
wrong."
[/quote]
If WaPO disappears this, it's also on the Achenblog:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2008/04/letter_from_technological_palo.html
I was pleasantly surprised to see, in the MSM, a rationale for reading
SF that I have long held to: that aside from SF's imperfect
predictive power, its readers acquire a habits of mind that help them
deal with change.
Kevin
|
