Just read a sci-fi book called “Blindsight“. I’m not going to do a great job with a plot synopsis or anything so here’s a killer quote stolen from the Wikipedia entry.
The book has been described by Charles Stross as “Imagine a neurobiology-obsessed version of Greg Egan writing a first contact with aliens story from the point of view of a zombie posthuman crewman aboard a starship captained by a vampire, with not dying as the boobie prize.”
It’s a pretty good book. Since it’s released to the public under the CC license, I read it on my laptop all in one 7-hour glorious sitting. Reading a whole book online for the first time, I finally might see the reasoning behind getting one of those digital books.
Anyway, as part of my job, I am often asked to think about “the future”, often, in particular, the future cast as a technologists wet-dream. Sometimes it’s called “trend analysis”. I’ve been looking at advertisements and concept movies out there and a lot of it looks very similar. Using a watch as phone has been an idea since the days of Dick Tracy. And yet, it still seems to be a big deal to Ideo and Nokia.
So in search of unusual ideas, I’ve been looking at sci-fi as background research. Peter Chung’s old Aeon Flux(s) might have some ideas worth keeping.
Filed under: art, books, movies, technology
