Transhumanism: How do we know?

[rom65536]

How do we know our vision of transhuman tech isn't anymore quaint than the fifties thinking the seventies would have flying cars?

A flying car is both a terrible airplane and a really flimsy car. It takes all the dangers of a car and multiplies them by airplane. It takes all the physical abuse of a car but has to do it to a frame designed to fly. It takes all the weight-saving measures of an airplane and makes them endure the punishment of bad asphalt. Drunk flying....texting while flying....inattentive pilots....poor maintenance... There's too much stacked against the idea for it to be practical.

Long ago I made mention of this in the old worldbuilding list in hopes of identifying such bogus fictional technologies. "Flying Cars" and "Jetpacks" are not held back by a technological problem. They are held back by the fact that they are impractical. Up until the point that we actually HAD a flying car, no one could understand the reasons as to why they wouldn't work as described on the tin.

We embrace this "problem" and we call it "The Singularity" - now, a pessimist might say we're fooling ourselves in thinking that we can make any sort of intelligent guesses beyond it. But - a pessimist can't write decent speculative fiction.

Now - this might suggest (it does for me) the question "What parts of OA are jetpacks and flying cars?" (meaning that they're not exactly impossible, just so impractical that they won't exist)

Likely whole swaths of our canon fit this bill - but we kind of have no way of knowing....what are we going to do? Such is the danger of speculative fiction. Maybe, if we are both smart and lucky, we'll have more "communicators" than "transporters".

Honestly, it kind of doesn't matter. People are willing to suspend their disbelief pretty damn far - as long as you don't go changing the suspension bridge while it's under a load. Internal consistency is more important than accuracy.