Author: Rauf Aliev

June 09 2021, 22:32

Arthur Clarke, 1964:

“The only thing one can say about the future is that it will be utterly amazing! If what I am about to tell you seems quite plausible, then my attempt to describe it has failed. My vision has a chance of success only if my words seem absolutely incredible to you.

Let’s start with a look at the city of ‘tomorrow’. Some people think that it will be just so, and they are essentially right. Everything you see now already exists. All materials, all ideas—they can all be implemented in practice right now. But what if we try to imagine the city of ‘the day after tomorrow’, say in the year two thousand?

I think it will be completely different. Generally, it may never come to exist. No, I am not thinking about a nuclear disaster and a new stone age; I am thinking about the incredible breakthroughs that will be made thanks to discoveries in the field of communication. Particularly, I am talking about transistors, and above all, communication satellites.

These things will make possible a world in which we can instantly contact each other, no matter where we might be. We will be able to communicate with friends around the world, without even knowing where exactly the person is located.

Conducting your business from Tahiti or Bali as successfully as from London will become possible in this century (or maybe in about fifty years). Managing anything will be possible from anywhere on the globe regardless of distance. I presume that someday a surgeon in Edinburgh will be able to perform brain surgery on a patient in New Zealand.

When this time comes, the world will literally shrink to a single point, and the traditional role of cities as places where people meet will no longer make any sense. Generally, people will no longer make business trips, they will be accessible always and everywhere. People will travel primarily for pleasure, not money.”

Arthur Clarke died in 2008, in his 97th year of life. Thus, he did get to see the internet, robotic remote surgery, and the system of geostationary satellites orbiting, which is named after Arthur Clarke (http://lakdiva.org/clarke/1945ww/).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT_8-pjuctM

June 07 2021, 13:55

I remember how we all watched Felix Baumgartner’s jump from an altitude of 39 km. Back then, everyone was writing about it. And two years later, as I recently discovered in a space museum, Felix’s record was quietly broken by Alan Eustace, the senior vice-president of Google’s science division, who fell from 41 km reaching speeds up to 1320 km/h. Well, not so quietly. He talked about it at TED: https://www.ted.com/talks/alan_eustace_i_leapt_from_the_stratosphere_here_s_how_i_did_it?language=en

June 05 2021, 16:32

Lying on the grass, reading about cicadas. Suddenly, a familiar dog comes by. She licked my ear and lay down next to me. Her name is Sasha. A husky. She has heterochromia and is very nice. We’ve been lying here for about 10 minutes, reading together.

Cicadas are interesting creatures. This year, our periodical cicadas have emerged en masse from the ground and are clumsily flying almost everywhere. Their males scream so loudly that you have to shout over them. It’s said to reach up to 100 dB. How do they all simultaneously understand that after 15-17 years underground, it’s time to emerge? Molecular clocks, set in the same way for all cicadas of the same species in one place. On the year when it’s time for them to emerge from the ground and turn into adult cicadas, the massive exit of larvae is triggered by the soil reaching a certain temperature. As a result, they often synchronize to the hour.

June 05 2021, 12:29

Something new indeed – “remote guides”. You walk up to the monitor, ask a question, below which a real-time voice recognition subtitle runs – both for you and the guide. The same kind of monitor is installed at the museum information stand. The only humans present are security staff.

In the photo behind the remote guide is the shuttle Discovery. This particular one flew to space 39 times from 1985 to 2011, covering 240,000,000 kilometers.