Re: DHS calls in sci-fi writers as consultants

Καλά, ΞΏ Niven δΡν χάνΡι Ρυκαιρία Ξ³ΞΉΞ± τέτοια. ΞšΞ¬Ο„ΞΉ λέΡι στο άρθρο Ξ³ΞΉΞ± αρχές 
90... πιο πριν δΡν Ξταν ΞΏ Niven ΞΌΞ±ΞΆΞ― ΞΌΞ΅ κάτι άλλους που τους ΡίχΡ φωνάξΡι ΞΏ 
Ξ‘ΞΞ³ΞΊΞ±Ξ½ Ξ³ΞΉΞ± τον Ο€ΟŒΞ»Ξ΅ΞΌΞΏ των άστρων (SDI);

Ήταν ΡκΡίνη Ξ· σύναξη στην οποία αρνΞΞΈΞ·ΞΊΞ΅ Ξ½Ξ± πάΡι ΞΏ Arthur Clacke.

Αυτά τα καταραμένα think tanks ΞΈΞ± ΞΌΞ±Ο‚ φάνΡ...

Dimos




----- Original Message ----- 
From: <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 1:53 PM
Subject: [SFGR] DHS calls in sci-fi writers as consultants


>
> Ξ‘Ο€ΟŒ το The Register --το link Ρίναι Ξ±Ο…Ο„ΟŒ Ρδώ:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/31/sci_fi_consultants_at_the_dhs/
>
> ...ΞΊΞ±ΞΉ το αρθράκι:
>
> The feds at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have this week 
> called in some self-described "deviant" consultants to aid them in the 
> battle against terrorists, illegal immigrants, smugglers et al.
>
> The deviants in question are a group of science fiction writers, namely 
> Jerry Pournelle, Arlan Andrews, Greg Bear, Larry Niven, Yoji Kondo and 
> Sage Walker.
> "We need to look everywhere for ideas, and science-fiction writers clearly 
> inform the debate," Christopher Kelly, spokesman for Homeland Security's 
> Science and Technology division, told USA Today.
>
> The writers are members of Sigma, a "think tank of patriotic science 
> fiction writers" founded to advise government officials by Arlan Andrews 
> when he worked in the White House Science Office in the early 1990s. He 
> recruited only authors with advanced technical or medical degrees, in 
> order to pass the "laugh test."
>
> "If you don't read science fiction, you're not qualified to talk about the 
> future," he told the St Louis Post-Dispatch.
>
> "We're well-qualified nuts," added Jerry Pournelle, co-author with Larry 
> Niven of the bestsellers Footfall (alien invasion) and Lucifer's Hammer 
> (comet strike apocalypse).
>
> The educated scribes were invited to attend the Homeland Security Science 
> and Technology Stakeholders Conference as guests of the DHS. The writers 
> weren't paid, and like scribblers everywhere seem to have been reluctant 
> to give out their best ideas for free. According to the Post-Dispatch, all 
> they offered up was:
>
> "material that becomes armor when struck by a bullet; an antibiotic that 
> cures martyrdom; a satellite that beams solar energy to earth."
>
> Oh, and "mind-reading helmets for bomb-sniffing dogs," apparently.
>
> The armour material is old hat, so to speak. So is the solar-power 
> satellite, which Pournelle for one has been advocating for decades.
>
> The sci-fi scribes might not have given of their best and freshest at the 
> conference, but it's certainly true that science fiction has sometimes 
> predicted the course of technology a long time in advance.
>
> Robert Heinlein for instance, author of Starship Troopers among many 
> others, was writing about recognizable cellphones in 1948. (In Space 
> Cadet.) He also has a passage in Friday (1982) in which he gives a fairly 
> prescient idea of how computer networks could operate in looking for 
> information - years ahead even of Gibson's cyberpunk works, let alone the 
> consumer web. (Though not, quite, ahead of Lexis-Nexis.)
>
> Still, Heinlein also predicted nuclear-powered rocket ships, household 
> robots which could "put dishes away after the dishwasher was through", 
> human colonies throughout the solar system and beyond, "Beanstalk" orbital 
> elevators etc etc. Not to mention a dystopian future for America in which 
> a crazed religious zealot would establish a theocratic dictatorship. The 
> all-American hero in that book joins a successful secret rebellion against 
> the US government. Not something that the feds at the DHS are likely to 
> smile on.
>
> But the Sigma writers are patriotic as well as qualified, and mostly 
> haven't written anything off-message like that. They've produced some 
> imaginative stuff nonetheless, and could well offer the DHS some pointers.
>
> There will always be a stiff laugh test to pass when government takes 
> advice from novelists. Nonetheless, the feds may have history on their 
> side here. The DHS was formed as a response to the outrages of 9/11, after 
> all - events fairly similar to the suicide-747 attack on the US Capitol at 
> the end of Tom Clancy's bestselling 1994 airport doorstopper Debt of 
> Honor.
>
> Scoffers beware.
>
>
> AlxUnder
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
> 



 
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