Science Fiction and the Computer Revolution

Science Fiction of the fifties and earlier missed the computer revolution!  Yes, there were a few writers who foresaw computers, but only one or two saw small, desktop or laptop, miniaturized computers.

Isaac Asimov, for example, had a galaxy populated by humankind and filled to the brim in the Foundation series.  Even though he had a "positronic" robot, there were no computers to speak of  in any of the stories.  Ray Bradbury never used computers in any meaningful way, although he had wall sized TV screens and space ships to Mars.  Not to mention some way for fire starters to calculate the precise amount of fire to burn books in "Fahrenheit 451."

There were many other top early writers, such as "Cordwainer Smith", Anne McCaffery, A. E. Van Vogt, John Campbell, and even Ted Sturgeon in "Dune", who created Galaxy-spanning futures yet never addressed the impact of computers on society.  I always wondered how their spaceships were navigated without computers, and how their economies could work with only pencil and paper.

I think it was because most people didn't understand computers and thought (or hoped) that they must be a passing fad.  When I first got into the computer business, I read an article by a "pundit" who believed that a computer programmer had to have a specially wired brain, and the rest of the populace never would understand the things.  Even the CEO of IBM, Tom Watson, announced that the total market for computers worldwide would be no more than 50 units!  They would have been amazed by the way computers have permeated society.

Can you think of any technological advances that changed our society to the same degree that computers did?  Except for cell phones, I guess.

Next time: Science Fiction and Transportation.

Dick Tracy and the Smart Cell Phone

Many years ago, the 1930's I think, (maybe the '20's, even) there began a comic strip called Dick Tracy.  It was characterized by weird looking villains, a jut-jawed cop, wildly colored cars - like the ones on the street today, and a contraption Dick Tracy and the rest of the cops used for communication, the wrist radio.  It was a watch type contraption with a band which they talked into like a walkie-talkie, or cell phone.

Note that radios at that time used tubes, not even transistors, and two-way radios weighed in the tens of pounds at their lightest.  Chester Gould, the author, anticipated lightweight circuitry and private use of the electromagnetic spectrum not 20 years after the first public radio stations went on the air - my dad had one of those early radios - it was about four feet tall and weighed 55 pounds!

Not content with radios, in the 60's, Gould created the wrist TV, a two-way television for the wrist.  It actually operated pretty much the same as our current smart phones, only it was smaller.  I'll guess the next generations of smart phones will be equally small - I've seen one prototype that fits into a pair of glasses.  (Anyone who builds one can buy the idea from me cheap!  See my previous blog.)

Sad to say, Gould died before the cell phone explosion, so he never saw his brainchild become reality.  I read somewhere that the wrist radio was intended to be a joke and he never expected it to come true.  What do we know about the future, anyway?
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Next time I will discuss some of the things we take for granted in our daily lives, that the writers of the fifties, and before, completely missed.

Who invented communication satellites?

Back in the mid forties, (that's the 1940's) a science fiction writer named Arthur C. Clarke - you may remember one of his more famous stories, "2001" - wrote a short story which included the use of an orbiting communications platform.  Clarke's platform was manned, since while he foresaw the use of orbiting broadcast satellites, he missed the computer revolution completely.  Most of his contemporaries missed it, too.

Clarke had operators recording programs on tape, and replaying them when they passed over a particular area of the earth.  The action of the story revolved around one country trying to prevent another from broadcasting programs while over its territory.

All of the story would have been made moot by use of computers - there would have been no-one on board, so no spies or intrigue.  I suppose he could have had the action take place in the ground station, but that wouldn't have been nearly as interesting.

Another thing he missed was the capability of a network of synchronous satellites to broadcast the same material to the entire earth simultaneously. Later authors jumped on this - and we see it in reality today.  Is there anyone who hasn't heard of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and the demonstrations in Bahrain, Iran and Yemen?  This would have been impossible a few years ago in places where the news is censored.

By the way, Clarke actually got a patent on communications satellites!  Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the rest of us, he was unable to enforce it.

Next time, I will discuss the influence of the Dick Tracy comic strip on our technology and our very lives.

Introduction

Let me introduce myself - I've been in the business world for almost 50 years, working with high-tech stuff (Computers, software, apps), have been a consultant for 25 years and a writer for most of that time.  I am also a long-time reader of science fiction, with a large collection of both paperbacks and magazines going back around 55 years.

I intend to write about the connections between sci-fi and the real world - how some things have come true, other things not, as well as those things that have far outstripped anybody's guesses.

Drop by to see what I see.  Do send me your comments - a lively disagreement will be welcomed.