Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos both own rocketship companies.
Two of the richest guys in the world poured billions of dollars into building better space launch systems. This has actually reduced the cost of launching stuff into space, a famously expensive and risky enterprise.
The weirdest thing about this, is that it worked.
Because the world is full of rich guys trying to turn their sci-fi dreams into reality, and most of them keep failing, over and over and over again.
Consider Mark Zuckerberg, of Meta. Remember a few years ago how we were all going to enter “the metaverse” and spend both our working and playing hours with our heads crammed into VR headsets?
That didn’t really work out, did it?
Virtual reality technology has been around in some form since the 1990s, and although it can work, it isn’t that fun for extended periods of time. It has niche uses in video games or certain types of training. But, who wants to wear a restrictive, often heavy set of goggles for 10 to 12 hours a day? And why do you need to when we have laptops, cellphones, and other tools?
Who would really think that was a good idea?
Well, people who read a lot of cyberpunk novels as kids. Which I have some personal experience with. Yes, I read William Gibson’s Burning Chrome and Virtual Light and Idoru, Bruce Sterling’s Heavy Weather and Holy Fire. Those books make cyberspace seem cool!
But take it from someone who has read and written science fiction for decades: it’s fiction.
Zuckerberg is back with another take on VR with a new set of glasses, these ones promising an “augmented reality” experience. Maybe this time, the idea will finally take off. Maybe 10 years from now they’ll be cluttering up electronics recycling centres.
The weird thing about our present era is that there are loads of wealthy geeks trying to force the future into the shape they imagined when they were kids, reading Snow Crash under the covers by flashlight.
Do you know how many companies keep trying to create flying cars? Or jetpacks? I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve seen someone compare some new gizmo to something from Star Trek.
This keeps happening, despite the fact that computer technology and electronics have, in many respects, vastly outstripped what sci-fi of a few decades ago imagined.
A modern smartphone is vastly more capable than a Star Trek communicator – you can text and send photos, listen to music and podcasts, find anything on a map.
That’s the thing about science fiction – writers are just making stuff up. They’re not prophets. Maybe they’ve got a message, a prediction, but mostly they’re trying to write cool stories. They aren’t thinking about the reality of wearing a VR headset for an interminable business meeting, because that would make for a boring story!
I think we need to start screening our tech billionaires for dangerous levels of sci-fi nostalgia. If they’re too committed to the ideas from Neal Stephenson novels, they shouldn’t be allowed to try to force the future.