An Event Report

[coalescent]

So here I am in the computer room of the MRC, waiting for twic to finish off the experiment he came to finish, and it seems to me I might as well write up my thoughts on the Future Cities, Future Visions conference that we were at earlier today.

First of all, LSE wasn't quite what I was expecting. I'm not sure what type of building I was expecting; something more obviously old, I think, rather than the peculiar collision of old-and-new that I actually found. Flatscreens dot the walls of the entrance hall to the Old Building, which itself looks as though it's a once-external-now-roofed-over passageway. The lecture theatre had hard seats; I couldn't decide whether they were comfortable or not.

We went to the opening plenary ('Dan Dare or Dan Daren't?), the film session ('From Dystopia to Myopia') and the session on space exploration ('To Boldly Go...?'). You may think that this doesn't actually encompass much in the way of discussion about the cities of the future. You'd be right; it was more-or-less an excuse for various panellists to muse on how we got from there to here in general, and where we might be going next. And the whole enterprise had a subversive bring-SF-to-the-mainstream feel about it. It was a very odd experience to see people frantically taking notes on all the things I've absorbed by osmosis, from rocket science to the spirit of cyberpunk.

Not that that made it a bad day, mind. One of the things the day convinced me I haven't ever really believed in is the shiny, high-tech space future - the one that everyone apparently believed in in the 1960s. I've read about it, of course, endlessly, and obviously I wasn't around in the '60s so there's no reason for me to believe in it; but it was strange to realise that absence, all the same.

A few bullet-points that caught my imagination:

• How political is technology? Obviously, the space race was funadmentally political, despite the fact that it was sold as a dream to benefit humanity - actually, because of that fact, the free and aspirational technology of Western democracy against the shadowy science of the Soviet bloc. Arguments were raised that technology subsequently became non-political and that it's become even more political; now, we don't believe in science for the benefit of the humanity, whether it's coming from the Governmenent or from Big Pharma. There must be a hidden agenda, we think.


• As a related point, it was suggested that we can say: "We put a man on the moon, but we can't do [this technological thing]" and have it be the truth - in other words, that if we fail it must be a human or political failure, not a technological one. This isn't really accurate, though; Tom pointed out that [this technological thing] doesn't often have moon-programme money thrown at it, and others pointed out that quite often [this technological thing] works just fine in other countries, thanks. Public transport, for instance.


• Back in the '60s, they said, everyone was optimistic. 'They just went out and bloody did things,' claimed one of the panellists. Now, we're far more aware of the consequences of our actions (which is obviously a good thing), but in the process we've become almost paralyzed by risk-aversion. I agree with the suggestion that this is a maturation, of sorts; I just think it can be desperately dull.


• Space travel is easy to get excited about. It's outward-looking, bold, explorative. The new frontiers now - biotech, cybertech - are inward-looking. Inherently narcissistic, it was suggested: Focused on the improvement of the individual to a far greater degree than the improvement of society. Added to which, we trust our technology less now. One interesting suggestion was that it's becaue we literally don't see our technology being made; we no longer have a manufacturing, doing-clever-things-with-your-hands culture in the UK.


• The most charming of the panellists in the space exploration discussion had model rockets, spaceplanes, and a hot air balloon to illustrate his point. His point was that within fifteen years fully reusable spaceflight technology will have made space tourism possible. Apparently. The cynical riposte from the audience was that the prospect of stag nights in zero g isn't exactly a vision that captures the best of the human spirit...

...And reading Ansible just now, I've come across two more dates for the diary: Sci-Fi London, over 29th Jan - 1st Feb and Picocon, on the 7th February. What with going to see both parts of His Dark Materials in a similar timeframe, and a probable gig-trip to Birmingham to see Ryan Adams, it's looking like the first two months of next year will be busy (and expensive)...

Comments

[wg.livejournal.com]

Dan booked you a ticket for Ryan Adams this morning, so thats a definate my dear

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

My heart says woohoo!

My bank balance weeps.

[ex-kharin447.livejournal.com]

A related article from the chair of the 'to boldy go' session:
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DF1E.htm

To a large extent, I think risk aversion is the key. As one anedcote I heard on GM put it, an American thinks of GM and thinks of the possible benefits, a European thinks of GM and thinks of the possible dangers (though I suspect said anecdote underplays similar attitudes in the US). Here's an interesting piece on that theme; http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DD7A.htm

[(Anonymous)]

It's officially called the Quiet Room, and the institute is the MRC LMCB (the MRC (http://www.mrc.ac.uk/) being the organisation which pays for it). David Ashford (http://www.bristolspaceplanes.com/about.shtml#Director) had a helium balloon, not a hot air balloon.

I'm not sure i buy the 'inward-lookingness of bio- and information technology' thing (and i positively refuse to use the term 'cybertech'). It depends on what you want to do with them; using them to make designer babies and the next version of windows are pretty narrow-horizoned, but remember that these are the technologies which will enable us to reshape the very fabric of life on earth and, ultimately, transcend our physical forms. And since when was space travel about the improvement of society anyway?

I was also shocked by the degree to which everyone accepted that nanotech was going to happen. For a technology which is pure fantasy, with absolutely no basis whatsoever in the physics of our universe, it's getting very good press (as long as we're talking about classic Drexlerian nanotech, which i think we are; nanomaterials, nanoelectronics and bionanotech are realistic and happening now, but they're not terribly exciting or threatening).

I found the space tourism stuff depressing; tourism is not an honourable industry, not something that makes you feel proud we're doing it. High-tech manufacturing, asteroid mining, 3He harvesting, global communications, power generation - these are what we should be doing in space.

-- Tom

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[(Anonymous)]

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