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Comment by barrkel | Hacker News Reader

SF shouldn't see itself as being in the business of predicting anything; or if it does so, then that's a niche subcategory of minority interest. I don't want to read about SF predicting Facebook, and nor do I want to watch compelling dramas played out on comment threads.

SF is always an artifact of the time in which it was written. It's not about the future. It's about the present with a frame shift, and what that tells us about ourselves here and now, from a different perspective. Prognostication - especially about the future - is a fool's game. A compelling story should relate to the reader / viewer here and now, not in 20 or 40 years on the haphazard chance that a bunch of predictions play out.

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SF isn't about predicting the future, it's about predicting our reactions to possible futures.

A book that predicted Facebook would be interesting as a coincidence; a book that predicted Facebook and accurately showed some of the advantages and pitfalls that it presented would have been a worthwhile thing to read.

All fiction (not just SF) is about predicting reactions of a set of characters to set of circumstances. There are really only two kinds of drama: ordinary things happen to extraordinary people, or extraordinary things happen to ordinary people. (And for extra comic-book style bombast, I guess you could include extraordinary things and people.)

The way Philip K Dick put it, in SF the ideas (or circumstances) are the main character(s), rather than the people.

The most notable sci-fi stories seem to come down to one central point "be careful what you wish for, you might just get it". Sci-fi by nature is a warning of mankinds potential.

I just reread Heinlein's Friday published in 1982.

He is surprisingly accurate in describing the way casual use of networked computers for entertainment and education is used to track individuals.

Indeed.

Read "A Logic Hamed Joe".

Think about the implications for Google, Facebook, Siri, etc.

Remember that "A Logic Named Joe" was written in the 1940s.

I think I disagree. To me, good science fiction proposes some future technology, then explores what the ramifications are for society and/or individuals. It is relevant to us now, because it explores how our lives would be different if something new was introduced.

A great example is a short story by Asimov about someone who creates a television that can look into the past. The government in the story has known for a long time that such a thing was possible, but kept it secret because of a simple unintended consequence: the elimination of personal privacy. If you can look into the arbitrary past, then you can look into anyone's past of 5 seconds ago. The consequences are society-shifting.

Hmm, I seem to remember that story, but have it filed under 'Damon Knight'. I most clearly remember a scene set in the bathroom where the protagonist, the inventor who has realized the implications, shaves and then flips the bird to the mirror, as if to say to future generations, "Yeah, wadda you lookin' at?!"

I can't remember a SF story where a lack of privacy is considered a good thing for humans. Other species, yes, but in STV even some members of the Borg attempted to create their own private space to maintain a sense of individuality and non-Borg unity.

They both must have written short stories around the concept, because I don't recall such a scene; giving the finger is also very un-Asimov.

Counterpoint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_William_Shatner_Changed_the...

"technological advancements and people in the real world that were inspired by the Star Trek phenomenon"

That sounds more like an exercise in bias confirmation, to be frank; assume a premise, then look for evidence. Inspiration comes from lots of places, not least culture, fiction, nature, chance, etc. Finding the particular bits of inspiration influenced by a particular niche of fiction is a funny way of arguing that the purpose of a niche of fiction is to generate inspiration.

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