in the shell

LOL! Well, in reality it's not hard for anyone to predict cyber technology at this point; what with people implanting chips in their fingers and what not already; however there is something sort of hilarious and surreal to this news article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7248875.stm

2029, eh? Coincidence... or are many futurists secret anime fans, lol?

I honestly think it is pure coincidence, because I read another article about those challenges and these are for the next 20 years.

The funny thing (at least in my opinion) is that one of these challenges is to make the cyberspace more secure

Sylphisonic wrote:LOL! Well, in reality it's not hard for anyone to predict cyber technology at this point; what with people implanting chips in their fingers and what not already; however there is something sort of hilarious and surreal to this news article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7248875.stm

2029, eh? Coincidence... or are many futurists secret anime fans, lol?

If you think about it. Fiction writers have always lead the way. From going to the bottom of the sea to space flight. The Sci-Fi writers were not only taking us there but doing it in a surprisingly realist way. Theres an old silent movie about going to the moon that used a capsule that looks a lot like an apollo spacecraft. There seems to have always been some prophitic visions going on in the minds of some of the more inventive writers.

If you think about it. Fiction writers have always lead the way. From going to the bottom of the sea to space flight. The Sci-Fi writers were not only taking us there but doing it in a surprisingly realist way.

Yep! Actually, I think some of the various Discovery Channels have shown cool documentaries in the past solely on this theme (of sci-fi inspiring science). They're always fun viewing ^_^

Eh... Excuse me if this sounds like an idiot post/thread to have started; I just got a kick out of seeing certain things in the article (like the year "2029", and -as Thyren pointed out- the bit about "making cyberspace more secure"), and I thought I'd share.

Now I am going to go look out my window and see what the heck a police car thinks it is doing trying to play a tune with it's sirens... (I swear, they really are beeping out some kind of actual tune or song with them. It is too early in the morning to listen to policemen goofing around with their cars... ^_^*)

I know this tread has been dead for a while, but since things seem to move slowly here at the moment I'll comment a bit.

I'm quite sure that Kurzweil predictions have little to do with GitS, as his first predictions date back to his first book, that was published in -90. And the GitS manga (wtf firefox spellchecker doesn't have the word manga?) was first published in Japanese in -88 if I'm not mistaken.

See a nice list of Kurzweils predictions here: Predictions made by Raymond Kurzweil

Digging a bit, history often reveal that ideas we think of as modern have been around for a while. For example speculation of life on other worlds can be found in Kepler's writing (more specifically, on the moon) and robots go at least back to ancient Greece.

The future that is presented in GitS is quite interesting, however there is at least thing that we can expect to unfold differently and that is how the cyborgs are depicted. In GitS cyborgs are depicted quite a bit as today's machines, while cyborgs in the future will without doubt be more "organic" in character. The trend as I understand it is to use the kinds of advantages from nanotech to make inorganic components analogous to the current components of the body that are vastly superior. So instead of ditching our bodies altogether, they could be reengineered component by component.

Genetics has a head start for the redesign of our bodies and is probably going to the de facto standard for a while, until nanotechnology gains momentum. With our current technology red blood cells for example may look sophisticated and efficient but once we have nanoassemblers even the best genetically engineered blood cell analogues we could possibly design will look like a joke.
Respirocytes—a hypothetical red cell analogue—have 236 times the oxygen transportation capacity of blood cells per volume. We should expect other similar replacements for neurons, muscle fibers etc. So there will be no need for bloody amputations and brain transplants, we will just painlessly and progressively slip into new bodies.

Looking at it this way, GitS's bulky robotics are more of step backwards.

Lets not forget that some things will look different from how is it depicted in GitS and how it is actually will be simply because GitS is a few years old now and the story designers were constrained to their then present-time to make decisions on how the future would look.

Perfect example is look at the cell phones they use in GitS. Not too advanced looking by today's standards (no touchscreen or even a color screen : ref. Togusa's in SSS:)

I just have to applaud at how many of the elements and perceived technologies are still "cool" and believable to this day from the S.A.C. series. GitS has done a much better job of projecting this than other storylines.---Take K.I.T.T from Night-Rider...

Now I am going to go look out my window and see what the heck a police car thinks it is doing trying to play a tune with it's sirens... (I swear, they really are beeping out some kind of actual tune or song with them. It is too early in the morning to listen to policemen goofing around with their cars... ^_^*)

We do so only to seranade and keep the world on it's toes. The old dreary tones are so bland. We're only trying to keep the citizenry alert since the old tones are now, mostly ignored.

stand-al0ne wrote:Lets not forget that some things will look different from how is it depicted in GitS and how it is actually will be simply because GitS is a few years old now and the story designers were constrained to their then present-time to make decisions on how the future would look.

Perfect example is look at the cell phones they use in GitS. Not too advanced looking by today's standards (no touchscreen or even a color screen : ref. Togusa's in SSS:)

Well actually the ideas of miniaturization and nanotech have been around quite a while, I would rather suspect that writers just did not read up about it.

I did not mean to imply that it was some negative, it would be quite silly to judge fiction on a basis of prediction. It's entertainment after all.

And to keep fiction on a somewhat focused concept, it's probably often better to focus only on the technology that makes the concept click. From as storytelling perspective, everything would drown in the noise if any kind of realistic predictions were attempted. But it's always a balance, as you mention it's not unusual (especially in American series and movies) to just pick up a single idea that makes no sense in the greater whole.

As with the phones, it might just be done for stylistic reasons, rather that any technological considerations.

Synthetic wrote:As with the phones, it might just be done for stylistic reasons, rather that any technological considerations.

Or armor plating.

Freitag wrote:

Synthetic wrote:As with the phones, it might just be done for stylistic reasons, rather that any technological considerations.

Or armor plating.

lolol...nice

Well, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if there was a cybernet in 20 years.
Or not too surprised in any case.

I would be surprised, however, if there were Tachikoma level, Strong AI's.

It's my opinion that when one makes a Sci-fi tv-show like this, it's better to just skip putting a date altogether...