Comment by nvm0n2
3 years ago
If the people inspired by sci-fi have a "dangerous political outlook" then what does that say about the people who write it, like the author Charles Stross?
Stross greatly over-estimates how much influence sci-fi has. I've been in the tech world my whole career and have encountered plenty of sci-fi references in that time. It never went beyond cute codenames for projects. In particular, I've never encountered a project that could be traced back to someone saying, "hey that sci-fi story had this cool thing in it, how do we make that?". It just doesn't happen.
The boring reality is that new tech or even long term research visions tend to be extrapolations of what already works, occasionally disrupted by an accidental breakthrough. ChatGPT didn't get invented because researchers watched Star Trek and then sat in a brainstorming session wondering how to make it. It came out of a decade long research programme in which many different directions were explored to see what could be done with GPU powered neural nets. When we finally did get AI that talks like Cmdr Data, it was almost accidental and the next year was spent figuring out what exactly had been built.
Similarly, the idea that colonizing Mars or living in space wouldn't have occurred to anyone except for sci-fi is just daft. These ideas are extremely obvious. Musk isn't inspired by sci-fi; he's explained many times that what drives him is the idea that humanity should be multi-planetary as a risk reduction measure. Peter Thiel wants to extend life because living forever has been a dream since before the start of writing. Why should we give sci-fi authors any credit for these common visions?
I think it's pretty well understood that few things happen in a vacuum and while you're probably right that it's rare for people to sit down and say to each other "alright, let's make star trek" people certainly gravitate to things that interest them and I imagine that certain genres of fiction have embedded themselves deep within the psyche of a lot of people in tech.
Related tangent, the first time I met a meme IRL was when I first sat down with the CTO of a pretty well funded "startup" in the valley and as he was trying sell me on working there, regaling me with the story of him and his cofounders (good 30 years my senior) hustle and grind in the Stanford library before they started while I looked at his model of the Enterprise on his desk...
I mean sure I thought it was well understood too, but the article opens with:
"Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook."
So the author seems to think that tech billionaires do actually sit down and ask how to make Star Trek real.
People being generically inspired by science and technology can happen in many ways. Like, is Musk primarily inspired by sci fi, making money, a love of business, a love of engineering, politics .... you can't really separate out the different factors like Stross wants to do.