Monday 2 March 2020

Bernal And Anderson

Undoubtedly, if modern tendencies have any elements of permanency in them, a great deal of the activity of the future will be devoted to the end of a greater understanding of the universe. Humanity, or its descendants, may well be much more occupied with purely scientific research and much less with the necessity of satisfying primarily physiological and psychological needs than it is at present. This character may stamp the whole of future development, so that machinery will be organized not for production but for discovery. Indeed, the great necessity for production either of food or other articles of consumption will disappear rapidly with the progress of dehumanization.
-copied from JD Bernal, Synthesis.

This passage describes the universe-exploring, post-organic intelligences in Poul Anderson's Genesis.

The world might, in fact, be transformed into a human zoo, a zoo so intelligently managed that its inhabitants are not aware that they are there merely for the purposes of observation and experiment.
-copied from JD Bernal, Possibility.

This passage describes the attitude of the sophotects in Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy.  

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And of the increasingly powerless and impotent humans we see in GENESIS when the AI that became Gaia took over all the REAL managing and governing of the world.

Ad astra! Sean