💾 Archived View for yujiri.xyz › storytelling › fake-sci-fi.gmi captured on 2024-06-16 at 12:38:44. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Sci-fi but everything is just like it is now

Almost every sci-fi story does this: adds groundbreaking technology, but doesn't account for how it would change society. Let's look at Star Wars for an example.

The Star Wars universe features interplanetary travel, ships that can engage in cool-looking space battles, seemingly sentient robots, and human cloning. But how has their way of life changed? It hasn't. There are still farmers, childbirth pains haven't been solved, they still age, wars are still fought with infantry, and in general, they seem to have less automation than we do now.

Here are some things that could probably be done given the other technologies we see:

reviving the dead (they have human cloning)

genetic enhancement (extra strength could be a game changer in lightsaber duels)

brain implants that give everyone portable access to the internet and some sort of built-in AI assistant like modern phones have only much better

brain implants that allow people to turn off their perception of pain (we already have painkillers in real life)

For that matter... why not just live in virtual reality? If they're that much more advanced than a society that can already tamper with perception to some extent, why do people need to deal with physical limitations at all?

This is actually such a big obstacle that I can't think of a single sci-fi story that's really solved it. Honestly even being slightly more advanced than our current society would lead to massive changes and automation of so many things. I think it would be very interesting to embrace all these implications and explore the conflicts that would still arise, but super hard.