Thursday, May 10, 2007

A Discover Magazine Interview

Interrupting my series on "From The Sublime to the Ridiculous"...

...for a sideways veer into the handsome and sagacious!


The June 2007 issue of Discover Magazine features a four page spread and interview about yours truly - and my record as a prognosticator. My successes and failures at peering into the future. Despite a few awkward mis-transcriptions, they did a good job. I even look credibly penetrating!


See: David Brin Predicts the Future

Recognize any of the books on my table?

Oh... because they are changing their domain, DISCOVER is allowing free access to their site for a while! One of the best magazines, ever.


Would you rather be living 100 years from now, when we’ll presumably have access to so many more answers? 
Is it better to sow than to reap? Jonas Salk said our top job is to be “good ancestors.” If we in this era meet the challenges of our time, then our heirs may have powers that would seem godlike to us—the way we take for granted miracles like flying through the sky or witnessing events far across the globe. If those descendants do turn out to be better, wiser people than us, will they marvel that primitive beings managed so well, the same way we’re awed by the best of our ancestors? I hope so. It’s poignant consolation for not getting to be a demigod. 

9 comments:

David Brin said...

Not interesting? Brin's in a magazine? Yawn.

Okay, I posted a long reply to TCO about Iraq Invasion doctrines and how the 3rd Infantry Division saved Donald Rumsfeld's hash... under comments in the previous posting.

Unknown said...

I couldn't find it on the web page!

Searching for "Brin" only turned up Sergey and some other.

Is it in dead-tree format yet?

Anonymous said...

Me neither. It's great that you're in a magazine, but it's not so great that we can't read it!

Unknown said...

I guess it is a case of watch this space...

Google searching Discover for Brin

David Brin said...

Agh you guys are so grup.

(Grup = slang for citizens of Century Twenty-One = the age of grownups = grup = with-it.)

I am an old twen-cenner and so I realize that the magazine will deliver FIRST to paid paper-mail suscribers. (Like those of you who know DISCOVER is one of the best parts of any month.)

Then to news-stands and book stores. Where all of you should rush out and get a copy so's you can frame my glaring/shaman-perceptive face!

Anonymous said...

Hah! You still have a beard, David? Pay no attention. That just popped into my head. I still think of you without one. Anyway...congrats. Both on your foresight and the interview. Think of you often. :))
B Abell Jurus
WB&H

sociotard said...

I just went to the bookstore and read it. There wasn't too much to react to, since most of the stuff you said to the interviewer you've already said on your blog. Were you really one of the first to talk about global warming? Because I thought that had been discussed long before. Hold on while I google. Ah, here we go.

The next major scientist to consider the question was another man with broad interests, Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm. He too was attracted by the great riddle of the prehistoric ice ages. In 1896 Arrhenius completed a laborious numerical computation which suggested that cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half could lower the temperature in Europe some 4-5°C (roughly 7-9°F) — that is, to an ice age level.

Were they just talking about putting global warming predictions in science fiction novels? Speculation on what a world with lots of global warming would be like?

I do like Discover magazine. If I ever get a real job I plan on subscribing. That article about sending probes into the core while riding 100,000 tons of molten iron slag was just awesome.

David Brin said...

They blathered a bit and I blathered more. There were many places where I certainly would have edited both the questions & answers. The sentence about cyberneticists doesn't even make sense, as-is!

Gustaf Arrhenius (the grandson) was on my doctoral committee. Does that count? ;-)

Hi Betty!

Anonymous said...

The article said there is even a website devoted to your novel "Earth". Do they mean Brin's Blog? Or is there another one? Anyway, bravo.