If you need any further proof that we now live in The Future, consider this: The Economist is blogging about the effect of robots on labour markets.
Of course, like any good pundit, they hedge their case:
Of course, full human employment may not be a part of a sentient robot overlord’s grand plan. As always, politics constrains economics, and so it’s difficult to make good predictions about future labour markets without knowledge of the institutional environment the machines will put in place once they become self-aware and enslave humanity.
And no mention of Asimov, presumably because it is no longer necessary.
And no mention of Asimov, presumably because it is no longer necessary.
Actually, I was quite surprised there wasn’t even a passing reference, if only to say “lol, Ike got it totally wrong” or whatever. I suppose it’s possible that his work is such a part of an average Economist-reader’s cultural vocabulary that to mention it would be superfluous.
Interestingly, to me anyway, just this week I saw an interview with JG Ballard forty years ago, where he seemed to think we were already in The Future: “Dammit, we’re living in the year 1970, the science fiction is out there, one doesn’t have to write it any more. One’s living science fiction. All our lives are being invaded by science, technology and their applications”. Of course, back then people were landing on the moon.
The interview was in Penthouse and conducted by Lynn Barber (whose schooldays were portrayed by Carey Mulligan in her Oscar-nominated An Education turn); as well as a number of other jobs in the mag she was literary editor responsible for reprinting a bunch of New Worlds stories by the likes of Ballard, Dick and Moorcock.