SciFi

The greatest predictor of our cyber enabled future has always been science fiction- SciFi.

For decades, starting with the greats like H.G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le, Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, Neal Stephenson, we were treated to exciting, imaginative tales of technology enabled drama.

And one of the really greats, William Gibson, is credited with creating the construct of cyberspace itself, which he defined in his work Neuromancer. “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.”

SciFi has never been more important. Humanity must think through concepts of drones, warrior robots, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and the cybersecurity of all the above. SciFi old and new can help us through this.