ICCS06/David Brin

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[edit] David Brin

David Brin at ICCS 2006
David Brin at ICCS 2006

Science Fiction Author Homepage


Prediction as Faith, Prediction as a Tool: Peering Into Tomorrow’s World.


The new millennium has people pondering the future as never before.

We already devote much of our economy to all kinds of forecasting, from weather reports and stock analyses to financial and strategic planning, from sports handicapping to urban design, from political prophets to those charlatans on psychic hotlines. Which variety of seer you listen to can often be a matter of style. Some prefer horoscopes, while others like to hear consultants in Armani suits present a convincing “business case.”

There are good reasons for concern, ranging all the way from terrorism to economic uncertainty in a technology-driven world. For example, what if tomorrow’s chemists shrink their labs the same way cyberneticists transformed computers? Will teenagers with a desktop MolecuMac be able to synthesize any substance, at will? If 99% of these bright innovators use such tools in positive ways, a cornucopia might ensue. If 1% use them harmfully, will we survive?

Of course, doom prophecy is an ancient, venerable, and mostly discredited habit. In our lifetimes, there have been two major (and countless minor) self-destruction scenarios - nuclear war and world overpopulation that, somehow, did astounding turnarounds from a veritable brink. Threats that did not go away (they may return with a vengeance), yet somehow backed away from a looming precipice. Do modern human beings deserve any credit? Do our cultures and laws and new technologies and social innovations merit increased respect?

Is it worthwhile studying HOW these two miracles happened, in hope of finding lessons for new, vexing issues that face us in another century?

More generally, can we predict the future in any reasonably effective way? The new science of "complexity" suggests that our increasingly effective models, played out upon evermore sophisticated calculating engines, ironically, push us up an ever-steepening slope of diminishing returns, as minor factors grow important in nonlinear ways. Yet, we feel compelled to improve our predictive effectiveness in an era when both technology and unforeseen consequences burgeon at accelerating rates.

So much for the age-old dream of anticipation. While protective agencies, administrators and complexity theorists emphasize the importance of sophisticated modeling, it is important to recall that our civilization has developed additional tools for dealing with an onrushing future. Tools that supplement anticipation, compensating for its faults. For example: gedanken or thought experimentation, resiliency, and market accountability.

(Under the category of “gedanken experimentation” - does science fiction help us to explore the future in a useful fashion? Today we routinely use words like "robot" and "genetic engineering" that were limited to the pages of science fiction novels just a decade ago. Countless “self-preventing prophecies” have rocked the public’s conscience or awareness., typifying a process of fear-driven anticipation of error that has both benefited civilization and undermined its confidence.)

Meanwhile, the obsession with prediction manifests at the other extreme of personality - those among us who crave certainty, prophecy, and assurance that they are safe from the emotional consequences of choice. For these millions who see the future as fixed, there is an agenda very different - very much older - than the one offered by modernism. It can seem strange to those of us who seek a very different kind of forecasting... one that might supply us with better handles for cause and effect, in order to make better decisions in a hazardous world.

These and other aspects of prediction will be covered in a brief but far-ranging discussion at the Boston, Conference, spanning 5,000 years of history... and possibly a few just ahead.



Predictive hits from the novel EARTH (1989)... so far...
(author's note: For some years I have been egged by readers of this novel to compile a list of successful predictions that first appeared in this work, which I started writing in 1987. Elsewhere I talk about the fallacy that science fiction is "about" prediction, Indeed, the greates SF novels, like Orwell's 1984, failed to predict because they scared people into action, turning them into "self-preventing prophecies." I like that. Still, we are on the topic of prediction in an environment of growing complexity, so this "predictive novel" becomes relevant. Hence, I'll copy here the growing list that fans have accumulated over the years. People are welcome to add and/or supply missing data. -db)

. . Blatant and Obvious

  • The Web as a vehicle for personal expression
  • Partition of the Soviet Union
  • Blogging
  • The Web as a vehicle for mass democracy movements
  • Privacy as a vanishing commodity
  • Global warming and rising sea levels
  • Levees breaking and cities flooded on the Mississippi & Gulf Coast


. . Trends and Breakthroughs with Citation


. . Trends Needing Citation (I had the links but misplaced them)

  • Subvocal silent input devices.
  • Manmade black holes taken seriously
  • Crisis habitat arks
  • Eyeglass cams
  • Eyeglass VR overlays on real environments
  • Brain imaging->personality profiling
  • Geological-scale sculptures


. . Trends/breakthroughs that are desperately needed, now!

  • Prediction registries
  • Disputation Arenas
  • Henchman Prizes for whistleblowers
  • A worldwide uprising by educated citizens against secrecy.WHERE DO WE SIGN UP!!!
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