Near foresightedness
The past couple entries have been based on shows that have atypically high concentrations of robotic weapons systems, which may lead one to wonder, am I becoming a mecha fan? If I had to self-diagnose myself, the answer is in the negative. I can't let many things slide like I may for other series; the goodwill is practically non-existent. I complain about premise, I complain about holes big enough to drive a RTX-440 through, about combat mechanics, about blunt-force trauma moralizing.
I complain about pretty much everything except the machines themselves.
Truth be told, I love the CG of Macross Zero and MS IGLOO to bits, and for the past couple of days I've struggled to articulate why. They're excellent models of what is and what might be, and there's physics or a convincing attempt at such, but there's something else that pushes these scenes from fluid eye candy into the realm of enchantment.
Given enough time, energy, and sufficient heat dissipation, the computer can explore the most outlandish of ideas. I don't, however, find that nearly as compelling as employing technology in the exploration of what's already in the pipe. Putting on the engineering hat for a moment, it's like Intel using the 80486 to explore, design, and eventually synthesize the Pentium.
CPU's designing CPU's. A CRT monitor with the layout of an LCD screen with the schematic for an OLED panel. Technology imagining technology, the next iteration just a gleam in the transistor's eye. It's organic, but not biological; it's technological.
Could the 80486 have been used to imagine AVX instructions, multi-core processors, the Nehalem microarchitecture? Of course. It'd also be a pointless exercise at that point in time. Waiting for the revolution doesn't pay the bills.
Fair warning: now walking out to left field, and quite possibly out to lunch. You may want to vacate the premises, as demonstrated above. Science!
Being on the short end of the yield tech curve is also somewhat comforting. Any depiction of futuristic technology is inevitably a bet. Obviously no money is at stake, but being "wrong" can lead to laughable premises and general disillusionment. I mean, I'm still waiting for compact fusion reactors and the mass adoption of flying cars. I suspect that I'll be waiting for a while yet.
At one point, projecting decades or even centuries into the future had the effect of motivating thousands of would-be scientists, programmers, and engineers. They wanted to make that flying car a reality. Aim for the stars and you'll at least land on the moon.
We don't have to do that anymore. As we speak, a would-be engineer is running out of disk space, their laptop is setting their pants on fire when it's not kicking the battery in the rear, their wireless connection is slow and Twitter is down. This, ladies and gentlemen, is motivation, and the solutions to these and other pressing problems will set the stage for the next round of innovation.
People are quite happy to imagine what bells and whistles we will have in 10 years and change, because they or someone else is going to go implement it in less.
To butcher an idiom: Don't animate the cart before animating the horse.
In a keynote on gaming, a bold but medium term prediction was made that all the necessary technology and infrastructure needed to realize an augmented reality system similar to Dennou Coil would be in place by roughly 2020. I did not make comment 24, but I wish I had.
If you can't wait that long for AR glasses, there's a mobile AR browser that may serve as a step towards newer and better things. And rest assured that devices and software will get better over the next 10 years. You don't need to write science fiction to make that call.