Quote:

Original post by ffx Considering technological advancement in sci-fi games, developers always add plasma guns, energy weapons, etc. However in RPGs players have more time to explore and investigate worlds.

My pet peeve is sci-fi worlds that have less happening between now and the year 2400 or 2300 or whatever AD than happened between now and 1990. I just recently threw down a book called Iapetus because the hero carried a glock, the bad guys were arab oil men, and people were walking around with Levis and Nikes. Oh, yeah, and the year was 2650 or something, I think. :/

Quote:

This leads to some interesting facts : What will in sociological sense evolve or advance? I've had this conversation with my friend and funny thought suddenly exploded. In 500 years considering biotechnological advancement, will humans go to bathrooms? Quite interesting thought.

I think everything is going to depend on one single factor: What is our purpose?

If we remain a competitive and agressive culture, I think our long term chances for survival are going to dim as our ability to affect nature broadens. Imagine a future of nanotechnology where corporate controls are as sloppy as they are today and rogue strains of erant nano are as much a problem as vermin are in slums today (growing precedent: contamination of the food supply with GMOs)

Our purpose will determine what we build and why we build it, which technologies are invested in and which are proscribed. We could have a global Khmer Rouge which sets us back generations in terms of development because enough people embrace some form of fundamentalism. We could live inside of a world-wide panopticon where because of microscopic cameras the right to privacy has been annhilated. Or we could come up with a mental health technology which ends war and crime.

Quote:

Where should change begin? - Evolution of mass transit : Reducing personal travel to rare in big, planned cities. - Fast food : Faster than you think. - Food : Helthier than ever and also it never tasted better. - Communication devices : holographic as in Minority Report - Clothes : changes texture, animated logo - Plants : Everywhere - Dust : history book, page 341. - etc.

What's really cool, I've been finding, is that designing an RPG puts you in close touch with the idea of necessity being the mother of invention. I was thinking about town design in the future and realized that it would be very convenient if cars just disappeared somehow when they weren't needed. This beget the idea that your car goes away and drives itself somewhere convenient after you get done with it, creating streets lined with trees, homes and walkpaths and the occassional knot of people waiting for their car to show up.

Quote:

I beleive that overall design of future society must be in line with techonological advancement. You want to have pet? Not robotic, androidal. Evolving our way of life? Absolutely.

Don't forget biotechnology, though. And be sure to take into account the general public's phobia of gadgets.

Quote:

It is quite hard to imagine where we'll be in 5 years not to imagine 500 years but that's what artists are for. Any thoughts, suggestions.

I think it was Greg Bear or Gregory Benford who actually used statistics and economic analysis to figure out the deployment of inventions, wars and economic cycles like the Kondrietev wave. I remember in one "how to write science fiction" article he broke down how the Earth could have survived two more World Wars, what the population would be, where economic power would be concentrated, who got to explore space and thus who the hero of the story would be.

I think the more you know about history, different sciences both soft and hard and other cultures, the better a future you can create.

Plants everywhere? Do you think so? You would think we would no longer need them, everything could be artificially produced, including air and fuel from water(oxygen and hydrogen, respectively).

This is interesting, check out what BT's chief futurologist has to say in what we'll be doing in the future: http://www.bt.com/sphere/insights/pearson/

Quote:

Original post by Anonymous Poster "First, the whole "AI takes over and kills us all" theory has one big gap. Why would we create an independent AI in the first place?" To make robots and computers able to handle more tasks, they must be made independant and adaptable. The more independant and adaptable you make them, the more capable they are of disobeying commands.

Big no, no.

You are making huge mistake here. AI cannot take over the world, AI is artificial intelligence. It is just a program while not procedural or objective but rather weighted over known data and gathered data. In other words, self adapting program.

Only sentient self-aware AI can decide to disobey order. In order for AI to disobey AI must be aware of:
- himself
- fact that he obeys orders
- fact that he must obey orders to do something
- fact that he is doing something
- knowledge about object that he is creating

Only then can self aware AI through some interior mechanism decide to not obey order.

And to take over the world, there are two possible ways:
1. such sentient self aware AI must be contained within such hardware that can replicate itself or has access to self-replication mechanism. This is planned take over or true "machines take over the world" scenario. Note that AI must be aware of concepts of:
- ruling
- taking over
- elimination of potential threats (e.g. humans)
- distributing management (AI bureoucracy)

2. If it is ordinary AI(program that isn't aware of its existence, not self-aware) that can replicate itself or can access replication mechanism can only take over the world if it malfunctions and replicates itself too much times.


Note thet second scenario is more likely because we are all programers and know what damage can bugs cause.

[qoute]
My pet peeve is sci-fi worlds that have less happening between now and the year 2400 or 2300 or whatever AD than happened between now and 1990.

Yes I was aware that you are making sci-fi RPG so I was actualy looking forward for you post.:-)