What will you be doing in 2045? Waiting for the Singularity to hit, of course!
Looks like my need for multiple on-going projects of differing levels of complexity and size is applicable to both my knitting and my writing. I've been working on this idea since before Christmas (for the record, this is two ideas down the road from the idea I discussed with sarumann and one idea and a genre away from the idea I alluded to an a email with busby1013) and I'm rapidly reaching the point of too much information. What have I been researching? The future. Not the sci-fi future, but the sci-nonfi future, according to leading Futurists such as Ray Kurzweil (fascinating man, btw). The story I want to tell, a straight up drama with romance elements, isn't that different from anything else on television right now, except it's set about 40 yrs in the future. Nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and human/computer augmentation all play a part, since my lead character is *gulp* a scientist. After watching a recent youtube showing an electron tweezer picking up a nanotube from the spot where it was grown, I've realized I'm way over my head. I mean, what the hell does that even mean? Water resistant fabric and fun new healing technology I can grasp, but when you're actually looking at a nanotube, what is it? There's simply no context I can find for understanding something on that level. Oh well. in related news, pretty much every year another few months are added to our lifespans due to advancements in the medical field. Pretty cool, huh?
The other issue I'm fascinated by is the disconnect between leading scientists and the general public. I have no doubt many of Kurzweil's predictions about the future would come true on time in a perfect world, but I feel like he's not taking people into account. I don't see the vast majority of humans merging with machines any time soon, since we're in the midst of such a huge battle over genetically modified crops, a relatively simple issue compared with what he's forecasting for the future. Humans, especially anyone who calls themselves religious (and don't forget, that's a large portion of this country!), will have a hard time accepting new technology which will gradually erode more and more of our individuality. Kurzweil predicts that in another couple hundred years we will no longer be able to separate man and machine, and I'm not sure I can buy that. People are the force he hasn't reckoned with, and I'm interested to see how they react to the advancements that will be coming out in the next few decades.
So anyway, I'm proceeding with writing the script and hammering out the story beats, but at this point there's a lot of "He helps her figure out her problem with blah blah" and I have multiple mentions of characters being impressed by my main character's research on such and such. I need to figure out what such and such is, huh?
The other issue I'm fascinated by is the disconnect between leading scientists and the general public. I have no doubt many of Kurzweil's predictions about the future would come true on time in a perfect world, but I feel like he's not taking people into account. I don't see the vast majority of humans merging with machines any time soon, since we're in the midst of such a huge battle over genetically modified crops, a relatively simple issue compared with what he's forecasting for the future. Humans, especially anyone who calls themselves religious (and don't forget, that's a large portion of this country!), will have a hard time accepting new technology which will gradually erode more and more of our individuality. Kurzweil predicts that in another couple hundred years we will no longer be able to separate man and machine, and I'm not sure I can buy that. People are the force he hasn't reckoned with, and I'm interested to see how they react to the advancements that will be coming out in the next few decades.
So anyway, I'm proceeding with writing the script and hammering out the story beats, but at this point there's a lot of "He helps her figure out her problem with blah blah" and I have multiple mentions of characters being impressed by my main character's research on such and such. I need to figure out what such and such is, huh?