GIGO

Isaac Asimov

I was sad to hear of the death of writer Isaac Asimov recently. I don't think it too far-fetched to assume that many of you may well, like me, have had your first introduction to the joys of science through the Good Doctor's writings.

The first Asimov book I read was "Asimov on Astronomy", at age eight or so, beginning for me a life-long interest in the subject. "Asimov on Chemistry" soon followed, where I discovered that scientists were real people, and scientific discovery as much a matter of good luck as good management.

Asimov was better known as one of the grand masters of science fiction in a writing career that spanned the Golden Age of science fiction in the 1940s-50s and which continued for the next four decades. In a sense, he, and others like him, helped to give us "memories of the future", preparing us for the changes that have characterised lives in the latter half of this century.

Through science fiction, people became familiar with geostationary satellites, cordless phones, population pressures and environmental catastrophes long before they began to appear in our homes and on our television screens.

Predictions for the future make interesting reading, whether in the form of science fiction or put forward by forecasters, technologists or economists. Ten years ago, the science fact/science fiction magazine Omni predicted that by the late 1980s, we'd see common use of a male contraceptive pill, automatic collision avoidance systems on all commercial vehicles, and reliable human-dolphin communication.

For the coming year, Omni foresaw the first successful fusion reactor system on-line at Princeton University. They may be right -- the first actual sustainable fusion reaction was heralded at the end of last year in Europe. Whether it will be able to provide the clean, cheap energy beloved of the optimistic 1950s atomists is another matter.

More optimistic, and probably less viable, is the prediction of the 1992 development of a computer which can be programmed and operated by voice command. Simple systems of this type have been in use for some time, but considerable further development is necessary before a computer can handle the ambiguity and oddities of human speech. It'll be a long time before we meet a Daneel Olivaw, Asimov's intelligent robot who passed for human.

It's often said that change is accelerating, making the world ten years from now unrecognizable to us today. I don't believe that this will be so. Post-war generations, particularly those born from the 1960s on, have become accustomed to change. Technology will not change a great deal in kind, but only in degree.

To someone born in the 1920s, there is a massive shift between travel by horse or Model T to continent-jumping in a supersonic plane. To later generations, the change from a 747 to a sub-orbital jet is merely one of speed, not concept. In part, we can cope with the future, because we have already seen it, thanks to people like Isaac Asimov.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.