Science Fiction and the Banking System

I've been involved in the banking and investing systems of our country a lot over the last few weeks.  It occurred to me that several science fiction writers, those who bothered to have an economic system in their futures, envisioned systems quite like what we have today, but none of them went as far as reality has gone.

Many stories contained credit systems whereby ordinary folks carried only a card, which they used to pay for everything, from a pack of gum to an airplane ticket, to a hover-car, to a home.  Several predicted a future where everyone got a basic living from the government, and could earn more by doing jobs only humans could do - creative tasks, etc.  (Tea-partiers, take note!)  Of course, that supposed that all non-creative tasks would be done by machines.  The plots usually revolved around individuals who were not in the system, for some reason or another, and couldn't get food or shelter.

These people were uniformly capable and ingenious, and managed to bring the economic system down, while living in the cracks - thereby causing worldwide society to collapse.  They usually wound up in positions of power in the new order.  Humanity was naturally better off as a result, too.

The reality is that we have banking and investing systems today which allow us to do everything via the internet.  In the stories, terminals were placed in businesses, street corners, etc. and allowed the citizens to transact their business or purchase goods there.  No one thought we could do everything from the computer in our home, or on the street or other public place.  Wi-Fi was not a concept in most of these stories.

If we take this to the extreme, we have Asimov's universe of the "Pebble in the Sky" group of stories.  In them, he envisioned a future where habitable planets were so plentiful that people could each inhabit one of their own; and became so isolated, communicating via his version of video chat, that they became unable to be together at all; remaining isolated from childhood until death.  Note that he failed to describe how new children came about!

I'm waiting for machines to take over all the mundane business of everyday living, so that I can sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labors.

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.