Every previous major technological shift had an associated wave of sci-fi and speculative fiction, right? We explored space and got a generation of stories about aliens and moon bases and Mars missions. We discovered radioactivity and got The World Set Free, and then the nuclear bomb proper inspired countless Atomic Age works. We discovered the transistor, and Asimov and Clarke gave us visions of possible computer-powered futures. We discovered DNA and got decades of comics and movies about mutants and superpowers and bioweapons.
(Of course, we only remember the good ones. A lot of the forgotten stories were total shit. But people still wrote them! And at least in retrospect, it sure feels like they had a cultural impact, and made interesting observations about the way the technology of the time might shape the world.)
But now? We're currently a few years into what's probably the biggest technological shift since, what, the start of the millennium? And yet it feels like we're all collectively just sitting here watching it happen. The closest we have to popular speculative fiction is some billionaires and Bay area rationalists writing breathless blog posts about either curing cancer with AI or AI killing everyone, and universally being derided for it either way.
And as much as I myself don't like the work those guys put out, the derision does bug me. Because it feels like the effects of an irony-poisoned culture of cynicism. We can't write or discuss speculative fiction, good or bad, about what a future AI world might be like, because... I dunno. It'd be cringe? It'd be unrealistic? Or maybe we just don't want to think about it?
And so we all sit here, for the first time staring down the possibility, scarce as it still is but growing likelier every day, of a future where computers are better at every intellectual pursuit than us. And doing nothing about it! Nobody writing stories about a Culture where the future AIs benevolently rule over us. Nobody writing about a Butlerian Jihad where we take power back from the machines. (You'll note that those two examples are from the 80s and 60s respectively.) We just sit here going "oh man, huh yeah, it'll sure suck if the robots take all our jobs." And hardly even try to imagine a world where that's happened and how much it sucks, or a world where we successfully revolted against it, or a world where we manage to somehow thrive and find fulfillment despite it.
I'm not sure what I expect, really. I know authors can't just pull a grand vision for a future out of a hat. I'm sure many have, and I just haven't read or watched it. But it just feels like something is different this time, like there's something that's gone missing culturally speaking. Oh well. Maybe this is always how it feels being in the Interesting Times, instead of just reading about them after the fact.