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  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:14PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:14PM (#456134) Homepage Journal

    With today's self driving cars, it seems obvious that starships would be self driving in a similar way. Just give the order for where to go and forget it.

    That's pretty much how space ships work in my fiction. The captain inspects engines and makes sure all four computers agree with each other, and that's about it. Robots do the actual repairs.

    And another thing. Dirty gritty humanity. Crime. Poverty. Corruption. All the trimmings. By the time I watched DS9, the utopia aspect of Star Trek starts to wear thin. Man will get better. Be peaceful. Etc. It won't happen.

    I don't agree, and neither does history. The past has always been worse than the present in every era. Hell, just fifty years ago (I was a teenager then) the world was a hell of a lot dirtier, more violent, and more corrupt than today. And when robots grow all the food and construct all the "things" and anyone has anything he or she wants... well, I just finished a story about that, a sequel to Kurt Vonnegut's 2BR02B. In my story, society's biggest problem is boredom. It's one of three I haven't posted, you guys will have to wait for the book.

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    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @02:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @02:12AM (#456334)

    I don't agree, and neither does history. The past has always been worse than the present in every era.

    You're full of shit, old man. Where's my basic income? Oh right, it was over 2000 years ago, that's when.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses [wikipedia.org]

    I see plenty of circuses in the modern era, but where's my bread??

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 20 2017, @02:13PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @02:13PM (#456534) Journal

    I tend to think we presently live in what is probably the best time ever to be alive. You're probably right about violence and corruption being worse in previous times.

    But people have not changed. And will not change. Ultimately everyone is greedy for limited resources. Unless we can create enough wealth (eg, resources, food, housing, smartphones, etc) to satiate all of that greed, there will be human conflict.

    As for the utopia of the Trek universe, yes, I enjoy that. That is the world I would like to live in. But I think it is a fantasy that can never be unless we had some of the kinds of technology of Trek. Even then, the trek universe seems to have plenty of conflict. People competing for power. Position. Title. There will probably still be plagiarism. It is highly likely there would be conflict over the affections of other people.

    Nonetheless, I like the utopia of Trek. It's just that after many years of it, I found B5 a refreshing view of what will probably be reality.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.