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“Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real,” Jules Verne wrote in the 19th century. Along with H.G. Wells, Verne created the science-fiction genre—and with it a mystique that science-fiction writers have special powers of prognostication about technology. Verne, himself, anticipated atomic-powered submarines in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and interplanetary travels in From the Earth to the Moon. Wells wrote about an atomic bomb in 1914. Modern sci-fi writers have extended this tradition, envisioning cyberspace and cellphones long before the actual things took on those names. Two modern practitioners of the craft—David Brin and Bruce Sterling—say science fiction can help penetrate the murk of the future partly because writers follow technological possibilities to their dramatic extremes, taking them further than most people are constitutionally capable of doing. Sterling has seen the phenomenon first-hand. Eleven years ago, in “We See Things Differently,” he described a suicidal Islamic terrorist who commits high-profile murders in the U.S. in the 21st century. The lines between fiction and prediction sometimes blur. Sterling is known for his many science-fiction novels, including his latest, Zeitgeist, but he also serves on various futurist committees. Brin has written numerous short stories and novels, including The Postman, which was turned into a big-budget motion picture. But Brin is also on the development boards of a number of software companies, including SAP AG (www.sap.com), the big database provider. Neither claims that sci-fi writers’ successful descriptions of the future would seem remarkable if subjected to rigorous analysis of their hit rate. Still, in the dialogue that follows, both offer some intriguing ideas on how to develop scenarios that may shed some light on tomorrow’s marketplace.
BRUCE STERLING: Science-fiction writers often predict the present, focusing on some little-known thing and casting it into the future. Writers also sometimes emphasize an issue that is common knowledge but that society can’t admit to itself. For instance, most people can’t talk about venereal diseases. If a writer can think about a topic like this objectively, he might imagine that in societies where people couldn’t talk about AIDS, such as sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa, the disease would become an epidemic. The truth is that what looks like a prediction often is really just playing off people’s ignorance. DAVID BRIN: At the same time, science fiction does take some pride in its prognostications. There are times when some things we write about really do come to pass. STERLING: One example occurred just recently. This past fall, a special adviser for cyberspace security was appointed by President Bush. A science-fiction writer imagined that position back in the 1980s. Science fiction has influenced the missile defense program. The idea has taken root so firmly in some influential people’s minds that the program has survived for ages even though it has no connection to reality. Star Wars has as much to do with American national security as lucky horseshoes. It will never work. Even if it did, terrorists would bring warheads over in container ships and trucks. Historically, there are any number of things that science-fiction writers imagined long before they came about. H.G. Wells wrote about the atomic bomb in 1914 in The World Set Free. Cleve Cartmill described an atomic weapon in detail more than a year before it was actually used. In 1869, Edward Everett Hale wrote about an artificial satellite orbiting the earth, in a story called “The Brick Moon.” In 1945, Arthur Clarke wrote about satellites used for communication. There is even a type of satellite orbit that is sometimes called the Clarke orbit, after him. In the 19th century, Jules Verne wrote about space travel and the submarine. In 1904, Rudyard Kipling predicted airmail postage. Hugo Gernsback was very big on a thing called television in “Ralph 124c 41+”—a bizarre story written in 1911-1912. Sci-fi writers wrote about computer worms and viruses back in 1975. Cellphones appear in Robert Heinlein’s stories as early as the 1950s. In his story “Waldo,” published in 1942, Heinlein was one of the first to talk about remote manipulators, the devices people now use to handle radioactive materials. People put their hands in these glove-like devices, and these big robot arms spring up and follow your movements. BRIN: Now they are being used in surgery. Heinlein’s predictions for the remote manipulators had to wait until computers arrived. It will take another five years or so for the Waldo age of teleoperations to truly emerge. STERLING: As far as what is yet to come, I’m interested to see what happens with ubiquitous computing [the notion that tiny electronic chips may wind up everywhere]. I wrote a story about the idea recently, called “User-Centric.” The central idea is that people can embed locator chips in common devices and track their movement in real time. BRIN: I believe we are heading in that direction. The topic of monitoring devices is fascinating. In both my fiction and nonfiction work, I explore the proliferation of cameras that record our movements. A decade ago, in my fiction book, Earth, I predicted that people might be walking around in glasses that could look up information about other people as folks walked nearby, based on a program that recognizes their faces and then supplies their names and a bit of a profile. The program could include what these people are looking for in potential mates or even include unfavorable opinions about them by their ex-spouses. Imagine people walking down the street, glancing at each other and bursting out laughing. Instead of the technology being Orwellian, it may be weirdly democratic. The effect might be rude, but at least it would be unrestricted and available to everyone. STERLING: Facial recognition software is a big stinking deal right about now, because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Still, the gizmos imagined in science fiction aren’t necessarily the ones with the most market pull. For example, science fiction has traditionally been obsessed with human-shaped androids and humanoid robots. While there is real demand for robots, the demand is not for anything shaped like your next-door neighbor. We science-fiction writers retail a sense of wonder. We always want to talk about the rising star moment. We don’t want to explore the boring, everyday device or yesterday’s technology. But wonder is a very brief emotion. BRIN: That’s right. Very few science-fiction authors portrayed computers advancing the way they did. They failed to predict the personal computer because a giant civic computer in the center of town is far better for a dramatic story. If the big computer is evil, it gives characters something to fight. If it is good, it gives them a terrific prize to protect. No wonder authors never created a different scenario and never imagined a million small computers. STERLING: As sci-fi writers, we tease out the dramatic aspects of events and don’t give dry, probabilistic assessments of future events. There are times when we are asked to give straightforward assessments of future events. I just did one recently about where I thought political and military events might go in the short term. But there is no heroine, no love interest in that. There is no rising tension, climax, and dénouement, no reason to keep turning pages. That’s why it is only two pages long. BRIN: Science fiction has long interacted with scientists, artists, and underground eccentrics. Now there are times when sci-fi writers mingle with the military and business. We’re on boards and even act as advisers to corporations. I am on the development board for several small software companies, as well as for SAP. I even filed for my first patent recently, for a new approach to chat software. STERLING: I haven’t started filing patents yet. I’m afraid of the day some notion of mine goes into production. You’re right, though. I spend time hanging out with the Global Business Network [www.gbn.org], which is now a part of the Monitor Group [www.monitor.com] of corporate futurists. BRIN: Someone once said there are two ways of dealing with the future: anticipation and resiliency. These qualities are modeled by the two major software industry centers in America: the East Coast, particularly Boston, and the West Coast, centered in Silicon Valley. In the East, customers are mainly made up of government and commercial banks. Software companies must anticipate problems before they release a product because they don’t want ATMs spitting money out on the street. So they try to anticipate all the bugs before they ship software to their clients. The attitude in Silicon Valley, on the other hand, is, “What a cool idea! Let’s do an experiment and have customers tell us why it doesn’t work!” That’s the resiliency approach, which depends on a rapid and agile response to cope with disaster. It turns out that any reasonable approach for dealing with the future needs generous dollops of both anticipation and resiliency. STERLING: Given the events of the last few months, I expect we’ll see a change in how business thinks about the future. There was a long period during the 1990s when people almost deliberately stopped thinking about the long term. The sentiment was: “Just give me the demo.” Or “Build it and they will come.” I believe that epoch has ended. We’re now in for an era of a global civil society, which will involve more anticipation and control. The idea of tossing out innovations and letting the devil take them where he may is probably gone. Because we do have a devil.
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