Ponderings on "I, Robot"...
 
Thirty years from now when we have the maglev trains, the shining ivory towers and the ever-helpful, ever-vigilant robots... what will I have to write about?
 
Apparently this invisible brick wall in the future is not just a phenomenon peculiar to me.  The recent (and ongoing) preponderence of purely fantasy movies shows the trend -- there are more vampires, wizards, Hobbits, etc., in the last few years than starships and robots.  The Matix movies were loosely cyberpunk.  I say "loosely" because the whole computer thing seemed to be beside the point -- the simulation was "reality", not cyberspace, and sometimes I thought the whole thing was a convenient excuse to watch people go chopsocky all over the place.  There is Star Wars of course, but it really is high space fantasy.  They weren't like 2010, where it showed the near future in a positive light with believable advances in technology. 
 
We're not seeing a believable, hopeful vision of the future anymore.  We're not seeing anything new, no ideas about what may be after nanotech.  What we do see is dystopian at best, where technology is screwing up the world instead of saving it.  I know, I know, I do the same thing myself. 
 
There is that invisible brick wall, that dark electron fog that we can't see through -- the Singularity.  Named so because like the singularities of black holes all the rules will break down once we are within it.   Science-fiction has caught up with reality. 
 
What will be the next paradigm?  I have no idea.  I can't write what I can't see. 
 
Two articles in the latest PopSci -- one on this very subject.  Then you turn the page to the very next article and there is a sight I know -- Dr. Clarke.   
 
He's so old now.  Forgetting things. 
 
"This is the way of things.  The way of the Force." 
 
How can we inspire people to look forward to the future with hope when all we see is a blank wall?   
 
I think I'm one of a dying breed.