Here's an idea.
William Gibson is a modern day oracle.
If you've never read a William Gibson novel, first, what?
Really?
Are you sure you're watching the right channel?
And second, they're really very good.
William Gibson is a sci-fi writer
of incredible renown, awesomeness,
and as it turns out, soothability.
In "Neuromancer" he predicted the internet,
and in "Burning Chrome" he coined the word cyberspace.
In "Idoru" he predicted Miku Hatsune and in "Virtual Light"
the coming popularity of reality television.
But William Gibson is, in essence, just an entertainer.
He's not an oracle.
I mean, Apollo doesn't speak through him.
We don't pick up the newest Gibson novel and think, OMG,
I hope he says we're going to have flying cars
next year because having a flying car would be so sweet.
Come to think of it, we don't really treat anybody like that
anymore, as a kind of earnest to gerd fortune teller.
Sure, we still read horoscopes, but we've kind of
moved past fearing the ends times
or wanting predictions for the coming harvest.
The vague superstition we all sometimes engage in
is a kind of cultural residue from the time when we were all
really interested in casting bones and omens and stuff.
Back in those days, the world was incredibly
difficult to understand.
There was no Google to answer questions
like, why does it rain?
Why is the sky blue?
Or how does Zac Efron get his hair to look like that?
And so the oracle provided a kind of utility.
Even if they said you were going to have a bad time,
at least you knew it was coming.
Which actually happened kind of a lot.
The Oracle at Delphi, said to have direct communication
with Apollo, let the Athenians that they
were going to be torn limb from limb by the Spartans,
and that later Nero's time as emperor of Rome
was short at best.
Nostradamus, who was essentially a 16th century
French Italian inverse Tony Robbins with a penchant
for plagiarism, predicted plagues, floods,
apocalyptic earthquakes, and even the coming
of the Antichrist.
And of course, the Mayans.
Their story is a little complicated
so we're going to save them for another day.
So in their place, please enjoy this picture of John Cusack.
[MUSIC PLAYING PETER GABRIEL, "IN YOUR EYES"]
So but anyway, the reputations of these predictors
aren't exactly stellar.
Astrology joke.
You see, it's funny because stellar
is an astrology thing that could-- it means that-- never
mind.
Some careful reading reveals that a lot
of the correct predictions are really
just the result of clever or purposefully unclear wordplay.
And Nostradamus wrote hundreds of predictions,
ranging in effect from one person to the entire world.
He was playing the odds.
But was mostly bad at playing them.
By comparison, modern sci-fi writers
have a much higher batting-- ah, sooth-- soothsaying average.
For all the works penned by William Gibson, Vernor Vinge,
Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Neal Stephenson, Orson Scott
Card, Arthur C. Clark, and the list goes on,
there seems to be a larger number of correct predictions
than from the group of people who in the past
actually called themselves oracles.
Virtual reality, augmented reality, a jam
packed media ecosystem, nature and retreat from human growth,
it's all kind of there.
And why might that be?
Why such a high success rate?
Sci-fi writers take on the deceptively complicated task
of imagining a future which is connected to the present.
Old school future lookers, especially
if you take into account some of Nostradamus' more creative
techniques, spent a lot of time trying to pick future stuff out
of thin air.
When they were right, a lot of the time
they were lucky or sufficiently vague.
Or both.
Kind of like fortune cookies.
They were, in essence, starting at the present
and imagining a future without consideration
for the intervening space.
From point A to point C. William Gibson,
as a matter of comparison, has a particularly good knack
for imagining a near future and then building a far future
based on it.
From point A to point C by way of B. Which is not only
why his books are great and interesting
but why he's someone we should probably listen to.
(WHISPERING) He sort of predicted SOPA and ACTA too.
So but who cares that William Gibson has predicted
some things a couple times?
The need for sage-like characters
has basically disappeared.
Way, way back when, things like hurricanes and earthquakes
and disease were mystical events with very real consequences
on your family and society and the planet.
Not knowing their cause or source
made them essentially magic and so we needed the oracle
to help us understand them.
Well, quote finger understands, not science understand.
Today, most of us aren't responsible for the harvest
and we understand where hurricanes and tsunamis
come from.
But this doesn't mean there aren't still some things
about the world that are incredibly hard to understand.
Arthur C. Clark's third law is, famously,
any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic.
If you showed your iPhone to someone from the 19th century
they would probably burn you as a witch.
We'll find the witch, may we burn her?
Dare I say, it is essentially magic.
The cultural and societal implications
of all of these mysterious technological boxes
is hard, if not, impossible for us to imagine
until it's already happened.
It's good, in that case, to have Mr. Gibson and his pals around
to help us steer the ship and understand not only the future
but also the present.
What do you guys think?
What sci-fi predictions are right around the corner?
Let us know in the comments.
And Nostradamus actually predicted that you would
subscribe which means you probably won't.
YouTube comments about YouTube comments
about YouTube comments.
Let's see what you guys had to say
about the cultural singularity.
First of all, there were some really great conversations
on Reddit's Explain Like I'm Five
subreddit and richarddawkins.net so we'll
put some links in the description
so you can check those out.
Driftmaste and a bunch of other people
point out that internet culture might actually
be made for something called the attention economy.
Things like up votes and karma and lulls and whatever.
Which is very true and very real.
The attention economy is very interesting.
We have a definitive answer.
Something that describes something
that is Nick Cage-esque.
It's Cajun.
James Carville would approve.
Skyswordsman points out that one of the integral parts
of the cultural singularity is the speed at which all
of this stuff can be produced.
Which is very important.
Especially if you're making a comparison
to movies which take forever.
Insert reference to insertion of witty response.
Jadraptor makes a really interesting comparison
between the cultural singularity and bacteria culture.
He breaks the metaphor a little bit but we forgive him.
It's really interesting.
Dastweeper makes a point about something called the meme
the half life, which is the amount of time
that a piece of internet culture stays popular
and how that could lead to homogenization
of overall internet culture.
I promise you, KingAmongNerds, I will be fine.
Going bald is awesome.
You don't have to get haircuts as often, haircuts are cheaper,
and I don't have to worry about what my hair does.
It just, just kinda does this.
Huh.
Thanks for the recommendation, trexlord1.
I'll check it out.