the past and future of entertainment in SF/F....

Well - one thing to bear in mind is that whenever a new game of some sort comes along it often becomes a fad, everybody wants one, but once it's ceased to be a fad it dies back. Like skateboards - at one point it seemed like practically every district in the UK had a skateboard park and the streets are full of them, but now there are only a handful of dedicated skateboarders.

So whatever period you're in, they will not only have whatever their current entertainment fads are, and a remnant of our entertainment fads (just as we still have a substantial minority who play games like chess and draughts which are thousands of years old). There will also be little pockets of hobbyists playing some weird game or movie-form which had been the latest craze 30 years previously.

I'll wager that more people will have super deluxe home theater systems. In order to compete, theatre chains may have to go bigger with more offerings akin to IMAX events.

CGI and other special effects will reach its peak perfection; same with video game technology.

Interesting question. I'll post a few of my thoughts, category by category.

Books - I personally do not believe that any technological advances can improve the book-reading experience. Curling up on a couch with a good book or sitting on a park bench on a lovely day with a paperback are hard to change. There isn't really any reason to make the book lighter, and the print shows up pretty well. I don't see how turning the book into an electronic gizmo could make it easier to read, and it would complicate matters a lot. E-books might be cheaper, but even now the majority of the cost of a book is not the paper but the labor involved in making it. You could add sound and animation, but that would make it something more like a portable DVD player and not a book. So I believe that books will be largely unchanged in the future. Maybe less popular. Or maybe not. Printing technology may be a bit different, though - we may yet see the POD kiosk actually work.

Movies - now there I can see some technological improvements. Imagine pictures that are giant 3D holograms that you can view from every angle. And technology may someday add the capability for you to experience the movie with five senses rather than two. Computerized special effects may allow you to show virtually anything on screen - or floating in midair with no screen, as the case may be.

I have to wonder if the rise of impossible special effects may spur a backlash. This could simply be directors chosing to leave out special effects to avoid the temptation to substitute effects for good storytelling. Or it may be a revival of live stunt and magic shows for people who would rather have a dosage of analog special effects.

I predict pop music may show a more Asian influence in the future, but that is all I am willing to predict there.

Cards seem to have endured for centuries, and I think a couple hundred years into the future we will still see some games that involve the traditional card deck. Some are likely to be recognizable (I don't think poker and blackjack are going to go out of style for a long time). Some may be completely new inventions or fads. And there are likely to be regional games as well. Out of curiousity, is euchre only played in the Great Lakes region? Board games may also be around for a while, especially the simple classics like Checkers, Chess, Go, and Chinese Checkers. Their popularity may rise and fall, but I think any game that has been around for centuries (or I believe Go has been around for millenia!) is likely to endure.

Sports seem to evolve and change, but there are a few that stay with us. Soccer comes to mind. Usually, it seems the simpler ones achieve international popularity, while the ones with more arcane rules (American football, cricket, etc.) tend to be confined to one country. There's likely to be a few new sports that spring up and others that go out of popularity for no apparent reason.

I remember reading in a Larry Niven book where the "drug" of choice was called a droud. It plugged directly into the user's head to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain. You may not be surprised to hear that these devices actually exist. However, it seems the effect they produce is nothing spectacular in humans, even though it can seemingly be overwhelming in rats and other animals. I don't exepct an "automatic pleasure device" to be very popular in the future.

I do not know what means of transportation will be widespread in the future. But I will bet that if it is something that is widely affordable and takes any skill to operate, people will race them.

I suspect electronic book-display screens *will* catch on, because of the storage implications. As I write this I am in the middle of moving a household which includes about 3,000 books - which make up to around 50 large cardboard boxes of what is basically processed wood, each one almost too heavy to lift. Basically we have to have a removal van just for the books. A palmtop book-viewer and 3,000 books on disc, on the other hand, would probably fit in a briefcase.

But it will be worrying if large numbers of books start coming out in digital format alone, because - as previously discussed on another thread - most digital storage media are far less durable than good-quality acid-free paper. No doubt there will be appeals to the public to find and preserve rare electronic books, just as there are today for rare acetate films.

For the purposes of a story I invented a PC the visible parts of which consisted of two rolled oblongs of cloth - when you unrolled them one was a screen, which you stuck to the nearest vertical surface, and one was a keyboard which you laid out like a placemat. I assume keyboards will remain in use for a long time, in tandem with things like voice recognition, because it's much quicker and more efficient to type "!" than it is to say "insert exclamation point." I would imagine somebody dictating to a computer, for example, would get into a rhythm, and speak the words but type the punctuation and paragraph breaks as they went along.

whitehound said:

... it will be worrying if large numbers of books start coming out in digital format alone, because - as previously discussed on another thread - most digital storage media are far less durable than good-quality acid-free paper. No doubt there will be appeals to the public to find and preserve rare electronic books, just as there are today for rare acetate films.

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Were that books were printed on such acid-free paper--or parchment, which lasts even longer--but alas, few are. A well kept CD or DVD will last longer than a wood pulp paper book, but that's not so much the issue as that when we approach the end of the lifespan of the CD, will there still be the technology around to read them? I have a stack of my childhood 78 RPM records, one of my parents' Glen Miller albums, which consists of a dozen 78 RPM records, and although I still have my turntable to play MY albums (the 33 1/3 RPM ones), I can't play the old 78s.

As an aside, I am rooting for solid state crystal matrix storage media. With it, your briefcase full of books would fit easily into a volume the size of a sugar cube.

For the purposes of a story I invented a PC the visible parts of which consisted of two rolled oblongs of cloth - when you unrolled them one was a screen, which you stuck to the nearest vertical surface, and one was a keyboard which you laid out like a placemat. I assume keyboards will remain in use for a long time, in tandem with things like voice recognition, because it's much quicker and more efficient to type "!" than it is to say "insert exclamation point." I would imagine somebody dictating to a computer, for example, would get into a rhythm, and speak the words but type the punctuation and paragraph breaks as they went along.

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The flexible keyboard exists. If you came up with the idea before they did, you should see an attorney . The roll-out monitor isn't far behind. There is even a prototype digital newspaper, which changes text as the news changes. As for your voice recognition scheme, I agree up to the point of needing the keyboard for punctuation. Why not just invest the software with enough smarts to recognize punctuation needs by tone of voice and syntax as we human beings do when we hear another speaking?

I don't like the idea of a perfectly flat roll-out keyboard myself. I'm a touch-typist and would have a horrible time typing if I could not feel where the keys were.

As society gets nicer, martial arts and combative sports will become more important, especially because improved body armour will allow more realistic fights. Western Martial Arts will be on a par with the Eastern, if not more popular.

If the personal shield becomes readily available, expect whacky hobbiests reenacting battles with real weapons.

The terrible thing is that there have been a lot of ideas patented that simply haven't actually been invented yet. Personally, I think that is wrong for a government agency to give a patent to someone for an idea they're incapable of actually developing. In other words, the patent should be given only for those ideas that are actually produced and only to those responsible.

I brought this up because some of what was mention previously about rolled up screens and such have already been patented. It makes me sick that anyone who then comes up with the how to make it work will have to pay a royalty to the person who gained the patent without doing a lick of actual development.

On the flipside, patent rights only last 17 years. If you had done any original development work that went into the patent and such a thing was only invented after 17 years using the work you had put into the patent, you'd be screwed.

Pthom said:

I have a stack of my childhood 78 RPM records, one of my parents' Glen Miller albums, which consists of a dozen 78 RPM records, and although I still have my turntable to play MY albums (the 33 1/3 RPM ones), I can't play the old 78s.

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I haven't played my LPs for years - since I became self-employed I just don't have time for music. But so far as I remember a) my 30-year-old record-player has a 78rpm option, and b) it has a jack plug enabling it to be connected directly to a cassette player or, theoretically, a PC. If you are worried about these 78s, and if you are somewhere vaguely accessible (and assuming my player still works of course) you could send them to me and I would convert them to CD for you.

Pthom said:

The flexible keyboard exists. If you came up with the idea before they did, you should see an attorney .

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Seriously, I may well have done: I came up with this idea in about 1986. But it occurred in a fan-fic story which never got printed and distributed, owing to an accident with a train door which destroyed dozens of meticulous illustrations, and me never having the time to re-do them. So I don't think I could claim they pinched my idea, because only a handful of people ever got to see it.

Pthom said:

Why not just invest the software with enough smarts to recognize punctuation needs by tone of voice and syntax as we human beings do when we hear another speaking?

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Because in order for such a system to operate correctly the speaker would have to be able to speak their text in a perfectly natural tone of voice - they'd have to be able to act, in other words. Most people, when speaking to a machine, err and um and hesitate in mid-phrase and if the machine recorded their apparent punctuation from their tone the result would be a mess. I suppose a very sophisticated system - preferably an AI - would be able to make intelligent guesses. But it would still need to be read through and corrected as one does with an OCR, and two keystrokes would still be quicker than having to say "Replace question-mark on line seven with exclamation-point." I'd prefer it myself, anyway.

whitehound said:

I suppose a very sophisticated system - preferably an AI - ...

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Precisely. After all, aren't we talking about the future, and the possibilities it holds?

But it would still need to be read through and corrected as one does with an OCR, and two keystrokes would still be quicker than having to say "Replace question-mark on line seven with exclamation-point." I'd prefer it myself, anyway.

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Yeah, me too. Although, I think if the machine and I were very good friends, such as in Pohl's Heechee Saga, it might not be so bad.