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One thing I believe sci-fi seems to always miss is the 'information economy.' Sci-fi typically depicts contact with other races through spacefaring on FTL ship
by Tycho 16y ago
One thing I believe sci-fi seems to always miss is the 'information economy.'
Sci-fi typically depicts contact with other races through spacefaring on FTL ships, and then trade being established through that channel. But I think it's exponentially more likely that rather than developing the means to travel into the stars, we (first) develop the technology to allow FTL or instantaneous communication. And from there we'd pick up other civilizations' signals, and soon we'd work out the protocols and have access to some sort of galactic internet. Communication technology has been advancing faster than locomotive technology for a long time now.
People always talk about the internet reaching a point where we all work from home - well there should be a corresponding 'work from your home planet' notion.
- hartror 16y agoYou've just been reading the wrong science fiction. One of the great concepts in Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge is a galaxy wide internet and the malevolence in it is effectively just a super virus. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson has something what you describe also with a great "information economy", albeit earth based.
- wildwood 16y agoAlso, in Deepness in the Sky, it goes into the Qeng Ho's practice of broadcasting an encyclopedia of general technology throughout known space, to accelerate planets' development until they were advanced enough to trade with. It's sub-light, but so is travel, at least in that zone.
- hartror 16y agoOh yes forgot that!
- bitserf 16y agoA Fire Upon The Deep is one of my favourite sci-fi novels...I thought the idea of high technology (FTL, intelligences living in manufactured substrates, etc) only working in certain parts of the galaxy was pretty unique. I read it before I knew what the Internet was, so when I first got access to Usenet after reading it, imagine my surprise. FYI, Children of the Sky (sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep) is planned for October, but I'm sure you probably know :)
- Unseelie 16y agoA lot of that has to do with the age of the information technology. There's been a great deal of science fiction written about space ships and aliens, throughout the last century, but the concept of an information economy emerged, quite to humanity's surprise, rather recently. Science fiction of the digital bent hasn't had much time to mature.
- brudgers 16y agoThe transfer of information is the primary form of interstellar relations in Ursula LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness. Of course, it still depends on faster than light communications in order to dig the plot out of the dead ends a story involving sub-lightspeed diplomatic travel entails. Robert Sawyer's Rollback addresses the some of the human issues that lightspeed interstellar communications entail even with nearby star systems.
- BillSaysThis 16y agoCharlie Stross's awesome Accelerando also deals with this and let's just say he thinks phishing is not an exclusively human endeavor. Accelerando, which is top of my best SF of the first decade of the current millenium, is available as a free ebook at Charlie's site: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera....
- Unseelie 16y agoGlasshouse, also by Charlie, is another scifi that deals with the idea of the information economy, as well as a great deal of things Cory Doctorow has written, and to round out my list, The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson.
- Tycho 16y agothanks for the link, really enjoying this book. packed full of amusing ideas and projections of current trends. i burst out laughing when he introduced the 'reputation' market and said it looked like another 'honesty bubble'
- Stormbringer 16y agoSee also the ansible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansible