And This Was Before Covid (update 2.21.23)



                        Wired Magazine 


There IS NO PATH back to "normality" if by normal you mean like it used to be. Not the 1950s or the '80s, or the '10s or yesterday.

Things are just changing too fast and too much. It's going to get stranger and stranger.

The fine article (and podcast) in Wired is actually about how sci-fi writers are getting more political, and how the "abnormality" is Trump, etc., but this back-to-normality thing is way bigger than politics. 

Science is becoming science fiction. Artificial intelligence, CRSPR gene editing, hypersonics, supercomputing, crowdsourcing, gravity waves, Instagram, augmented reality, virtual sex, quantum stuff, nanotech, fracking,  climate freaking change... And, really, don't get me started on world politics.  There's not a path back to when all that isn't happening.

Are you going to the sock hop tonight?


Being a science fiction writer myself (I'm comfortable saying that after three books published), 
I'm sure not contemplating normality in the same color palette as normality in our recent past.

My current work-in-progress is about SuperIntelligence.  Lucas, the superbrain, is a computer mind of vast and fast growing power. The other odd names are also superintelligences. Shandry is the protagonist.  A tiny excerpt:

 Lucas, Snow Leopard, Gage, The Fleet, Amanda are the biggest players ever, he thought. Presidents and Kings and Popes are suddenly all second string players. The superintelligent minds are the top guns on the planet now.  They’re the new gods, Shandry thought. And Lucas is Zeus or better.

You gotta admit, that's not normality in any past time, but I give it a good chance of becoming a new normal, and not that far into the future.  

I'm  optimistic that the accelerating March of Science will overshadow the dumber side of politics.

 Sci-fi collage credit

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