I wrote this essay a couple of years ago and toss it out now for thought.
Thirty-some-odd years ago I was working at KSC on shuttle payload processing. We were building a programming language. The idea was that the language would run on multiple platforms and would be used in the factory where users built payloads, in the payload processing centers (horizontal and vertical) at KSC where they installed payloads into the cargo bay, on the launch pad, and in space. One programming language for users of varied disciplines: assemblers, installers, testers, astronauts. An ambitious project to be sure.
Because the Shuttle program was planned to last thirty more years, we had to consider what computer programming would be like over that time span. Given that the time has elapsed and how programming has evolved, some of our guesses back then are laughable with hindsight.
Looking forward and predicting technology is a slippery slope at any point in time. But that's exactly what we do when we write, for example, in the speculative fiction genres. I've written one space opera and a post-apocalyptic novel, and they had me scratching my head trying to forecast how people in the future will use technology to deal with travel, conflict, economy, ecology, and so on.
Recently I scanned several space opera titles' Look Insides in the bestselling lists. I found several common themes that seem to look more backward than forward. Control panels, indicator lights, buttons to press, communications cables, ray guns, even touch panels, and so on. Star Trek. Star Wars. 20th Century.
The following are speculations, not predictions, tossed out here for thought.
The first thing we learn from today's events is a prediction of how wars will be fought. Not on-the-ground wars like we have in Afghanistan, for example, but cyber wars similar to the Russian attacks on the USA's election process. Civilizations won't have to kill off their citizenry with firepower. They'll destroy economies and let their enemies starve or surrender. They'll use ones and zeros, not bullets and death rays.
What is the point of disintegrating a spaceship? They'll just send in another one.
It's not like there are turfs and boundaries in outer space, territories more desirable than others to motivate conflicts and conquests. There's enough space to go around, and it's all the same. As writers, we have become used to applying earthly concerns to the extraterrestrial.
Why is a spaceship always right-side up? Why does it bank to make a turn? And go swish?
Who needs control panels with components to use and maintain? Holographic images, speech recognition and simulation, and pilotless craft already exist. Why are our heroes pilots who zoom around shooting ray guns at one another? Tomorrow's heroes will most likely be computer hackers. That is if they survive the apocalypse.
And I wonder how we'll be programming in thirty years.
Just rambling...
