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 鈥渢he metaverse鈥� and spend both our working and playing hours with our heads crammed into VR headsets?
That didn鈥檛 really work out, did it?
Virtual reality technology has been around in some form since the 1990s, and although it can work, it isn鈥檛 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鈥檚 Burning Chrome and Virtual Light and Idoru, Bruce Sterling鈥檚 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鈥檚 fiction.
Zuckerberg is back with another take on VR with a new set of glasses, these ones promising an 鈥渁ugmented reality鈥� experience. Maybe this time, the idea will finally take off. Maybe 10 years from now they鈥檒l 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鈥檝e lost track of the number of times I鈥檝e 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 鈥� you can text and send photos, listen to music and podcasts, find anything on a map.
That鈥檚 the thing about science fiction 鈥� writers are just making stuff up. They鈥檙e not prophets. Maybe they鈥檝e got a message, a prediction, but mostly they鈥檙e trying to write cool stories. They aren鈥檛 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鈥檙e too committed to the ideas from Neal Stephenson novels, they shouldn鈥檛 be allowed to try to force the future.
