April 19, 2004



ITF #132

In the Future...

...all of Philip K. Dick's short stories will come true.


Futurist: M104 member Chris Hall (our all-time favorite Rocket Scientist), who is back blogging up a storm. Pay him a visit!

Posted by Phil at April 19, 2004 10:02 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Agreed. Targeted assasignations are the wave of the future. They are cheaper and more efficient (less collateral damage) than open warfare.

A cheaper option than the Apache and cheaper even than the Predator is the Pelican UAV.

http://web.nps.navy.mil/~cirpas/flight.htm

"The vehicle is a highly modified Cessna 337/O-2A Skymaster twin-engine airframe with the forward engine removed. The Pelican functions as a standalone, manned sensor platform or a manned Predator UAV surrogate with the installation of the Predator Avionics Module and associated Ground Station."

This is a brilliant idea. The navy had a huge stockpile of these airplanes mothballed. They are too slow for traditional combat missions - they would be too dangerous for a pilot. As a UAV the entire passenger compartment could be filled with fuel and the wings could carry multiple hellfire missles.

The removal of the front engine means that sensitive equipment can be mounted forward and still be away from the engine.

Here's a picture:

http://web.nps.navy.mil/~cirpas/pelican.html

Posted by: Stephen Gordon at April 20, 2004 08:25 AM

For those of us who haven't read much Philip K. Dick, can someone provide references for the story that predicted this?

Posted by: Andrew Salamon at April 20, 2004 08:36 AM

it's not so much that this specific event was predicted, but rather that many PKD stories have bizarre technological twists that were way ahead of their time. when i saw this article, it just made me think of him. an excellent story that includes an evolving robotic assassination concept is Second Variety, which was made into a movie called Screamers. as with most PKD story -> movie connections, the story is much cooler than the movie. the most glaring example is We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, which accomplishes so much more in its 10 pages or so than the two-hour film version Total Recall.

Posted by: chris hall at April 21, 2004 07:57 AM

well, those links didn't work, so i'll suggest that you google the titles if you're interested.

Posted by: chris hall at April 21, 2004 07:58 AM

here's an interesting essay on the idea of pkd's futures coming true:
http://www.mtulode.com/viewarticle.php?ArticleID=3247

Posted by: chris hall at April 21, 2004 08:11 AM