The Blurb Blog: The Future is Here-& it’s Complicated

/ 6 Degrees Writer / By

The future is here…

FROM PARIAH TO PARTNERSHIP: MY AI JOURNEY

I’ve been using AI for about two weeks to help me ‘punch up’ some of the posts and even the Ebooks and stories I have written. I had always heard we should be alarmed about the ‘takeover’ of AI in our lives. But recently, I took a workshop with the acclaimed writing guru Jane Friedman, and she admitted that she was using AI as a tool in her own writing.

In a way, that was a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval’ for those of us (of a certain age), who might feel alarmed at allowing some robotic entity to muck around with our ‘darling babies.’ That is-the written word.

So now I have no qualms at all in allowing the AI ‘eye’ to look over my copy. I am always in control of the content. And there is some part of me that always knows how my own unique voice will appear and what I do not want to allow in terms of edits to my own material.

But that is not the entire story. There is another part of ‘future world’ that is quite scary and opaque for those of us who are used to a linear pattern in our timelines of life. What will future generations think of the first humans who wrestled with the “Information Age’ and the dawn of AI?

Will they consider us to be Luddites, who opposed modernity to the point of denying climate change and electric vehicle production? Would they simply laugh and point at how silly and primitive are ways of thinking about the future really are?

Would they feel pity on us? As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out about his own mixed views on writing about the past and World War II, would we be compared to Lot’s Wife, that person who is always doomed to look back and in turn, be turned into a pillar of salt?

How should we be thinking about the future?

Well, in many ways, the future is here. We are living in the future that was predicted in a film that I saw in grade school about the future.  ‘The Philco Film ’ was a very stylized and sterile look at the future and it was produced by the Philco company. It predicted this wonderful world free of poverty and without any type of interracial community or interaction. Women were subjugated to the “Tradwife’ Role.

It was prescient in some ways, but in many ways, it was much more troubling in the things that were left out, rather than the things that went in to their thinking about the future! We’ve put together some of the articles from the magazine to give us a glimpse of what is coming that might be shaping our future lives.  Hopefully, we can improve on the ideals and ideas formed from those who worked at the Philco company in the sixties!

Here are some of the things that ‘6 Degrees into the Future’ has been reporting on in the magazine lately:

QUANTUM COMPUTING

This is the quiet revolution — and it’s gaining speed.

IBM’s new system, Starling, is set to debut in 2029. Many experts believe quantum tech could reshape industries even more than AI will.

Quantum computing, 3D Printing, robotics and rapid energy innovations all dominate the topics about our ‘world of tomorrow.’ AI will affect the workplace of course. And sometime in the near future (2027 is the date pinpointed in one article!), we will see a tipping point for the use of AI.

More on Quantum Computing from 6 Degrees: 

 

SPACE IS STILL CALLING

I’ve come late to the Star Trek fandom, but I get most of the hype now. Some of their wildest ideas aren’t science fiction anymore.

 

PREDICTIONS THAT FEEL STRANGELY FAMILIAR

The future is here… We are living in a future-world right now that many people could never have imagined! Our Iphones and AI and computer technology have advanced our civilization to another level. Yet what will be the new innovations for the next 100 years? There are plenty of predictions in our magazine.

 

A PHILCO FUTURE, REVISITED

I often think about that short film I saw in the eighth grade, made by Philco, that predicted their version of our high-tech future. It promised a smooth, efficient life — but was eerily narrow in vision.

No diversity. No real community. Women were sidelined. It was more dystopian than they realized.

The film taught me something: what we exclude from our future visions is just as important as what we put in. And that’s part of why I edit & curate our 6 Degrees Into the Future Magazine — to ask the right questions and look at what might be missing.

COMING NEXT MONTH: THE ARTS & THE UNKNOWN

 

Next month, we explore something more human: the arts. Because even as technology accelerates, our music, film, literature, and creativity remain core to what makes us who we are.

To quote Shakespeare:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

 

Let’s keep dreaming — with open eyes.

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