Links
- < a href="http://news.google.com/">Google News
- Refdesk
- email Dan Goodman
Archives
- 05/01/2003 - 06/01/2003
- 06/01/2003 - 07/01/2003
- 07/01/2003 - 08/01/2003
- 08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003
- 09/01/2003 - 10/01/2003
- 10/01/2003 - 11/01/2003
- 11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003
- 12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004
- 01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004
- 02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004
- 03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004
- 04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004
- 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004
- 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004
- 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004
- 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004
- 09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004
- 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004
- 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005
- 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005
- 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005
Dan Goodman's prediction and politics journal.
Sunday, July 06, 2003
Saturday 5 July 2003. Overheard: "I'm not going back in that store! They're a bunch of Republicans and nuts!"
Futurology Opera: Michael F. Flynn, _The Country of the Blind_. I consider this book well worth reading. However, it has interesting flaws.
Premise: A small group built computers from Babbage's plans, and used 19th-century statistics to accurately forecast future events and trends. They went on to influence the future. By our time, they've split into two groups -- one good, one evil. An innocent bystander sets off a small war between them -- complicated by the discovery of several other groups with the same skills. Originally published in Analog 1987; book publication in 1990; revised version published 2001..
In 1988, Analog had a two-part article by Flynn on predicting the future. He seemed quite certain that using historical and economic cycles and other regularities, the future could reliably be predicted. A revised version of this article is packaged with the current edition of the novel.
I compared the current versions with the magazine versions, to see what had been changed.
Novel: The latest book version is quite a bit longer than the magazine version. I'd say the added material improves the story. I'm not sure how much of it was in the earlier book version.
One obvious change -- a scene in which the Soviet Union is discussed as still being around has been altered.
One thing which didn't change -- this is a world in which cell phones apparently haven't caught on. People who aren't near home or business phones use pay phones. In some cases, they're trying to make calls harder to trace. I would expect them to use throwaway cell phone accounts, rather than be seen doing something so odd these days as using a pay phone.
Given the novel's flaws, why do I expect to reread it for pleasure? Because Flynn deals with the psychological effects of knowing what the future is likely to be, and how it could be changed. And there are interesting characters, backgrounds, and action.
Article: The name of the predictive science has been changed. It was psychohistory (taken from Asimov's Foundation trilogy). It's now cliology.. Historians have something else they call psychohistory; that's given as the reason for the change.
A warning against overestimating the effects of glasnost has vanished.
What hasn't changed: The bibliography doesn't seem to have been updated. And it's still all printed matter.
Given the article's flaws, why do I consider it worth reading? Because it gives a good overview of one approach to forecasting the future.
Futurology Opera: Michael F. Flynn, _The Country of the Blind_. I consider this book well worth reading. However, it has interesting flaws.
Premise: A small group built computers from Babbage's plans, and used 19th-century statistics to accurately forecast future events and trends. They went on to influence the future. By our time, they've split into two groups -- one good, one evil. An innocent bystander sets off a small war between them -- complicated by the discovery of several other groups with the same skills. Originally published in Analog 1987; book publication in 1990; revised version published 2001..
In 1988, Analog had a two-part article by Flynn on predicting the future. He seemed quite certain that using historical and economic cycles and other regularities, the future could reliably be predicted. A revised version of this article is packaged with the current edition of the novel.
I compared the current versions with the magazine versions, to see what had been changed.
Novel: The latest book version is quite a bit longer than the magazine version. I'd say the added material improves the story. I'm not sure how much of it was in the earlier book version.
One obvious change -- a scene in which the Soviet Union is discussed as still being around has been altered.
One thing which didn't change -- this is a world in which cell phones apparently haven't caught on. People who aren't near home or business phones use pay phones. In some cases, they're trying to make calls harder to trace. I would expect them to use throwaway cell phone accounts, rather than be seen doing something so odd these days as using a pay phone.
Given the novel's flaws, why do I expect to reread it for pleasure? Because Flynn deals with the psychological effects of knowing what the future is likely to be, and how it could be changed. And there are interesting characters, backgrounds, and action.
Article: The name of the predictive science has been changed. It was psychohistory (taken from Asimov's Foundation trilogy). It's now cliology.. Historians have something else they call psychohistory; that's given as the reason for the change.
A warning against overestimating the effects of glasnost has vanished.
What hasn't changed: The bibliography doesn't seem to have been updated. And it's still all printed matter.
Given the article's flaws, why do I consider it worth reading? Because it gives a good overview of one approach to forecasting the future.
Comments:
Post a Comment
