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SXSW panel preview: ‘How Sci-Fi Shapes the Internet’
“How Sci-Fi Shapes the Internet”
Friday, March 12 at 02:00 PM
9ABC, Austin Convention Center
Adria Richards is a self-described tree-hugging IT consultant. Crunchy, but wired. “I buy most of my food at the co-op. I’ve been doing yoga for several years,” she says, “and I’m really passionate about technology because it empowers people to change their lives.”
Her brain has been picked by The Rachel Maddow Show, The Associated Press and ComputerWorld, and her presentation today will focus on the influence the science fiction genre has had on the world of technology, including the Internet.
“I guess what I see now is that we have so much cool stuff, you know? We have these smart phones which are great. People are interacting on the Internet and they’re creating authentic relationships and connections,” she says.
Richards likens the creation of the Internet to the initial space launches, which she was too young to see.
“Imagine if you were a contractor — let’s say you made airplanes. And this new organization called NASA came to you and said, ‘We’re going to need you to build a spaceship. It’s going to need to go into the sky, with people, and come back down. Could you build that for us?’ and you said yes and you made it happen,” she says. “It blows my mind. And it’s the same thing with the Arpanet and all the geeks and they’re like, ‘We tried it.’ And so I think that a lot of the inspiration for our technology — and hopefully our future technology — will continue to come from not only the space program but from stories people are exposed to.”
Richards talks about the tellers of those stories — visionaries such as Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchock and Welles and Wells (Orson and H.G.) whom she calls “big picture thinkers.”
“And I see that by thinking ‘big picture,’ we have been able to take leaps and bounds,” she says. Richards has a list of devices and technologies that were inspired by, among other things, the technology of Star Trek: wireless headsets, communicators, big-screen video …
“One thing that I always liked about it was that it seemed like it was very believable technology,” she explains. “I could see people looking at it, thinking about it, wondering how they could make that work.”
But just when you think to yourself, ‘Imagine that — a geek who enjoys science fiction’ — Richards’ crunchy side emerges. Science fiction’s sway goes far beyond such practical applications as technology, she contends, noting the genre’s humanitarian themes and talking about how the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise’s missions were those of peace and understanding. She indicate, the genre’s embrace of the themes of acceptance and tolerance. “There are all these really great messages about how people can and should interact with other folks,” she explains.th
One senses there will be more of a vulcan mind-meld than a potential Kirk vs. alien smackdown between Richards’ two sides but, either way, her panel should be enlightening and entertaining.
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