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welcome to, um, 2008
Jan. 1st, 2008 07:28 am2008, is it? Another number that looks as if it ought to exist only in science fiction. As it does: according to the frame story of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot (1950), this year the soon-to-be-famous robopsychologist Susan Calvin will turn 26 and earn her Ph.D. in cybernetics from Columbia University.
This interests me because I know a young woman of just about that age who really is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University, though her field is astrophysics. If you want to know anything about "hot Jupiters" (a term I hadn't heard until she mentioned it to me, though its meaning should be obvious to anyone following recent astronomical discoveries), she will politely refrain from telling you about it, because it's way too technical for most people outside of the astrophysics department. (I know, because I've seen her scientific papers. Oy.)
Undoubtably the same is true of robot positronic brains, at least if sufficient handwaving from the author can make it so. The thought of fictional Susan and real-life Emily working diligently away on the same campus at the same time, and maybe even meeting somewhere in the campus of Asimov's imagination, tickles the sense of wonder.
Oh, and that damp squishy sound you hear is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
davidwilford (via supergee) finding another Asimovian 2008 reference: "The Isaac Asimov short story Franchise (written in 1955) is set in 2008. In it a computer surveys one man to choose all representatives of the U.S. government. So far, the best we've managed to do is have five people pick one president in 2000. Oh well."
This interests me because I know a young woman of just about that age who really is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University, though her field is astrophysics. If you want to know anything about "hot Jupiters" (a term I hadn't heard until she mentioned it to me, though its meaning should be obvious to anyone following recent astronomical discoveries), she will politely refrain from telling you about it, because it's way too technical for most people outside of the astrophysics department. (I know, because I've seen her scientific papers. Oy.)
Undoubtably the same is true of robot positronic brains, at least if sufficient handwaving from the author can make it so. The thought of fictional Susan and real-life Emily working diligently away on the same campus at the same time, and maybe even meeting somewhere in the campus of Asimov's imagination, tickles the sense of wonder.
Oh, and that damp squishy sound you hear is
davidwilford (via supergee) finding another Asimovian 2008 reference: "The Isaac Asimov short story Franchise (written in 1955) is set in 2008. In it a computer surveys one man to choose all representatives of the U.S. government. So far, the best we've managed to do is have five people pick one president in 2000. Oh well."
