Registered: 09/29/06
Posts: 12506
Loc: Scandal City
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For centuries unarmed men have been called subjects....since 1776 the armed man has been called citizen.
"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery." - Thomas Jefferson
"See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay ... If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system." --French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)
"The liberty of any person to own a military style assault weapon and a high-capacity magazine and keep them in their home is second to the right of my son to his life." - David Wheeler, father of Newtown shooting victim.
Registered: 08/17/07
Posts: 20055
Loc: Outside the Matrix. Where RU?
Originally Posted By: FUELMAN
Originally Posted By: bronzilla
Originally Posted By: TupennyConan
This is a comic book thread, begun outside of the rampant homoeroticism & misogyny of Comics General.
I would like to award this thread a FUELMAN APPROVED THREAD banner..............I'd like to....but I just can't.
This song is one of my guilty pleasures. Does this make me light in the britches?
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Populations suffer from a fear of change, for their conditioning assumes a static identity. Challenging ones belief system usually results in insult and aprehension. Being wrong is eroniously associated with failure, when in fact to be proven wrong should be celebrated, for it elevates us to a new level of understanding. There is no such thing as a smart Human being, for it is merely a matter of time before their ideas are updated, changed or eradicated. This tendency to hold on to a belief system, any belief system and sheltering it from new possibly transforming information, is nothing less than intellectual materialism. Dominant World views operate with the same social irrelevancy, they exist as barriers to social and individual growth. Major institutions exist as barriers to personal and social growth for each group perpetuates a closed world view.
Registered: 08/17/07
Posts: 20055
Loc: Outside the Matrix. Where RU?
Your secret is safe with me.
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Populations suffer from a fear of change, for their conditioning assumes a static identity. Challenging ones belief system usually results in insult and aprehension. Being wrong is eroniously associated with failure, when in fact to be proven wrong should be celebrated, for it elevates us to a new level of understanding. There is no such thing as a smart Human being, for it is merely a matter of time before their ideas are updated, changed or eradicated. This tendency to hold on to a belief system, any belief system and sheltering it from new possibly transforming information, is nothing less than intellectual materialism. Dominant World views operate with the same social irrelevancy, they exist as barriers to social and individual growth. Major institutions exist as barriers to personal and social growth for each group perpetuates a closed world view.
TupennyConanTupennyConan I deserve all of the love & adoration from the True Legend that this has won for me.
TOTAL NEWBIE
Registered: 07/15/07
Posts: 29911
Loc: I survived TBCC 2013
Neal Stephenson has seen the future—and he doesn’t like it. Today’s science fiction, he argues, is fixated on nihilism and apocalyptic scenarios—think recent films such as The Road and TV series like “The Walking Dead.” Gone are the hopeful visions prevalent in the mid-20th century. That’s a problem, says Stephenson, author of modern sci-fi classics such as Snow Crash. He fears that no one will be inspired to build the next great space vessel or find a way to completely end dependence on fossil fuels when our stories about the future promise a shattered world. So, in fall 2011, Stephenson launched the Hieroglyph project to rally writers to infuse science fiction with the kind of optimism that could inspire a new generation to, as he puts it, “get big stuff done.”
He got the idea at a futurist conference last year. After lamenting the slow pace of technological innovation, Stephenson was surprised when his audience leveled blame at sci-fi authors. “You’re the ones who have been slacking off,” said Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University and co-founder of the forward-looking think tank the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes.
To be sure, 20th-century sci-fi prefigured many of today’s technologies, from smart phones to MRI scanners, as you can see if you spend 30 seconds on YouTube reviewing such “Star Trek” gadgets as communicators and tricorders. Yet Stephenson argues that sci-fi’s greatest contribution is showing how new technologies function in a web of social and economic systems—what authors call “worldbuilding.”
Denise Caruso, a science policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, agrees that “science fiction helps [scientists] think about how the work they’re doing might eventually turn out.” It can even help them think about morality. Worldbuilding, she says, helps people anticipate how innovations might be used for good or ill in daily life.
Take Isaac Asimov’s novels and short stories about robots coexisting with humans, most notably his 1950 anthology I, Robot. He wrestled with such weighty issues as whether artificial beings have legal rights and the unforeseen dilemmas that could result from programming robots with moral directives. Upon Asimov’s death in 1992, the flagship journal of computer engineers credited him with demonstrating “the enormous potential of information technology” and highlighting the difficulties of maintaining “reliable control over semi-autonomous machines.”
The Hieroglyph project’s first concrete achievement will be a sci-fi anthology from William Morrow in 2014, full of new stories about scientists tackling big projects, from building supertowers to colonizing the moon. “We have one rule: no hackers, no hyperspace and no holocaust,” Stephenson says. He and his collaborators want to avoid pessimistic thinking and magical technologies like the “hyperspace” engines common in movies like Star Wars. And, he adds, they’re “trying to get away from the hackerly mentality of playing around with existing systems, versus trying to create new things.”
Stephenson’s greatest hope is that young engineers and scientists will absorb ideas from the stories and think, “If I start working on this right now, by the time I retire it might exist.”
Registered: 08/17/07
Posts: 20055
Loc: Outside the Matrix. Where RU?
Back to the futurism:
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Populations suffer from a fear of change, for their conditioning assumes a static identity. Challenging ones belief system usually results in insult and aprehension. Being wrong is eroniously associated with failure, when in fact to be proven wrong should be celebrated, for it elevates us to a new level of understanding. There is no such thing as a smart Human being, for it is merely a matter of time before their ideas are updated, changed or eradicated. This tendency to hold on to a belief system, any belief system and sheltering it from new possibly transforming information, is nothing less than intellectual materialism. Dominant World views operate with the same social irrelevancy, they exist as barriers to social and individual growth. Major institutions exist as barriers to personal and social growth for each group perpetuates a closed world view.
BlowUpTheMoonBlowUpTheMoon Don't let these guys jerk you around. To change your custom title, go to My Stuff, then go to Preferences. You can change your custom title there.
TOTAL NEWBIE
Registered: 01/07/07
Posts: 21788
Loc: Buffalo, NY
