Kimmo’s Blog 2.0

Arthur C. Clarke died today 19. March 2008 at the age of 90. 8´-(

ACC was one of my favourite authors. Hes books filled me with hope when I had no evidence whatsoever that things would ever get better. But I also love his prose. It is a joy to read, to which I have seldomly ran into before or after. As a personality he was encouraging, he convinced me that this was a good time to be alive, to see the future happen infront of our eyes.

If you wish to have your conscience expanded try these books by him:

• Rendezvous with Rama (1972) (suom. Uhka avaruudesta*)
• The Songs of Distant Earth (1986) (suom. Kaukaisen maan laulut)
• The Fountains of Paradise (1979) (suom. Paratiisin suihkulähteet)
• Childhood’s End (1953) (suom. Lapsuuden loppu)

Clarke told in an essay of his (The Memoirs of an Armchair Astronaut (Retired) (1993?)(suom.Nojatuoliastronautin (evp.) muistelmat)) about an encounter he had with J.R.R.Tolkien. ACC was a member of the British Interplanetary Society since the 1930’s. BIS were a fierce advocate of space exploration. Note that this was decades before we even scratched the earth orbit.

The members of the British Interplanetary Society and two opponents of extra-planetary research C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien had a discussion about the meaningfullness of space exploration, Lewis and Tolkien were vehemently opposed to the idea, claiming that it was madness to ruin this planet and then run off to ruin others. The two sides never reached an agreement and after the discussion Tolkien told Clarke that he was absolutely convinced that he (Clarke) was an evil person, but it would be extremely boring if everyone was good. Parahprased from memory.

(*) I know, it’s a terrible translation.

<o Good night, Sir!

This goes to all my bitches out there.

NOTE: This article was supposed to appear in a Gaming related website (one more prominent than this) but due to certain re-arrangements concerning the operation behind the website, this plan has been (now finally) abandoned. Cheers and all the best to Nick.

We are peering in to a crystal ball to see what kind of developments we might see in gaming in the next 10-30 years. Usually when people make predictions they tend to exaggerate the short term development but underestimate the long term development. I take 10-30 to be short term so I’m taking the safe route proposing that things will stay mostly the same. We wont have the “holodeck” or “brain-computer -interfaces”. The computers we use will look mostly like the ones we use today. Perhaps they will be smaller, quieter but not light-based or quantum-anything. Programming of sort will still be required, Artificial Intelligence (AI) won’t be doing the job of game development for us, and cars will, for the most part, stay in the ground.
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