Neanderpundit

“I had too much beer last night. I don’t trust my fart/shit detector, I better find a john”

and you can’t even get decent internet service.

Sorry I was inblognito for a couple days. And typing on a treo was gonna get me killed, no question.

Anyway, to finish this discussion:

The entire premise of my previous post was, that science and science fiction writing, (and to a lesser degree fantasy) are responsible for the lions share of what passes for today’s technology. This is not a guess, or a supposition, or a theory, but in a large number of cases, like the taser, the robot, the rocket, the palm pilot- all of those things were directly or indirectly affected by the inventors reading habits.

I’ll go back to the taser here, for a specific example. There are plenty, but this one is pretty obvious and clear.

In 1974, a NASA scientist named Jack Cover invented the first stun gun, which he named the TASER, or “Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle,” after Tom Swift, a fictional young inventor who was the hero of a series of early 20th century adventure novels. Because it relied on gunpowder, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms classified Tasers as registered firearms.

(Talvi, Silja J. A.. “Stunning Revelations“, In These Times, November 13, 2006)

Now, it is possible that even though Jack Cover has a clear memory of the event, and in fact named the weapon at the moment of it’s completion after the science fiction story, that he received inspiration from elsewhere. it’s possible he received inspiration from, as Mrs D says, Neptune’s trident. He may have gotten the inspiration from HG Wells “20,000 leagues under the sea” where Nemo has a firearm that kills with a paintball-like electric charge. he may have gotten his inspiration from a group of travelling faeries who prized his eyelids open and pantomimed the saga of Thor, the God of Thunder for him in his sleep, and the subconcious idea surfaced and he invented the weapon. It’s just as likely, that the Flying Spaghetti monster touched him with His Noodly Appendage and infused him with the wisdom required to build his weapon.

William of Ockham helps me decide which explanation to choose. I will assume since the inventor SAID that was his inspiration, and he has no specific reason to mislead anyone, it’s a safe bet that is what happened.

Let’s assume, for a moment, that there was some other, less obvious explanation. Say, Jules Verne. Wait- that’s STILL science fiction. Faeries? well, hell the explanation itself is science fiction.

All of which makes my point, over and over again:

People who write science fiction stories, people who read science fiction stories, people who invent things, people who grow up to be engineers and geeks, people who have the geek gene, are the people responsible for most of the technology you are surrounded by today.

There are clear cases. When someone of the caliber of Joseph Engelburger (who would later become a good friend of Asimov) looks at you and says “I was a huge fan of Asimov, and the idea of calling our creation a robot was just natural” I have no specific reason to disbelieve.

Is it correlation, or causation? Pretty clear in my mind that whether it’s correlation or causation, no technology exists without geeks. Do the geeks who invent things, from the airplane to the ballpoint pen to the family radio service handheld radios take their inspiration from science fiction? Personal experience (and I have a LOT of it) tells me this is true. Is it possible that there is less causation than mere correlation? Sure, anything is possible. I understand post hoc ergo propter hoc. I also know when someone comes right out and says a specific novel or source or group of sources were their inspiration, I’m willing to accept them at their word. I can’t imagine why I shouldn’t.