Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:19:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Fwd: The Future Is Now (acc. to WaPO's Achenbach...)
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

From: kevrob <AnSpideog at gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:56:51 -0700 (PDT)

One of my local papers reprinted this article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103328.html

or http://preview.tinyurl.com/646r6f

from the 13 April 2008 edition.

In it, Joel Achenbach quotes Christine Peterson, vice president of
Foresight Nanotech Institute in Menlo Park, CA, who says:

[quote]

"Even smart people are really pretty incapable of envisioning a
situation that's substantially different from what they're in,"
...... Peterson has one recommendation: Read science fiction,
especially "hard science fiction" that sticks rigorously to the
scientifically possible. "If you look out into the long-term future
and what you see looks like science fiction, it might be wrong," she
says. "But if it doesn't look like science fiction, it's definitely
wrong."

[/quote]

If WaPO disappears this, it's also on the Achenblog:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2008/04/letter_from_technological_palo.html

I was pleasantly surprised to see, in the MSM, a rationale for
reading SF that I have long held to:  that aside from SF's imperfect
predictive power, its readers acquire a habits of mind that help them
deal with change.

Kevin