Science fiction is closely linked to the development of science and technology

The first industrial Revolution gave birth to science fiction, and with the gradual establishment of the post-industrial system, science fiction has undergone different changes and emerged various branches.

On the one hand, science fiction is closely connected with the development of science and technology. Many science fiction works are based on modern science and technology, closely following or even surpassing the frontier, which is more advanced than science and technology.

On the other hand, the world view in science fiction is conventionalized, not just to express opinions, but to create a whole, strange new world, including every detail of the world. For example, Verne's "Moon World", Wells's "Future World", Liu Cixin's "Three-body World", Hao Jingfang's "Folding World".

However, different from the real world in all aspects, the science fiction world requires strong scientific logic and crazy imagination. Understanding the construction of a work to the science fiction world may also help us have a deeper understanding of the real society.

The two dimensions of hard science fiction

Science fiction is divided into "hard science fiction" and "soft science fiction" according to how much science and technology are displayed in them. Among them, hard science fiction works refer to those works based on more scientific and technological details and more current scientific and technological knowledge. On the contrary, soft science fiction refers to science fiction works with more fantasy elements and less technical details.

In fact, hard science fiction is the first realm of science fiction -- science and technology, which contains two dimensions: the axis positioning of existing science and technology; Design the future through science fiction technology.

In terms of the positioning of existing technologies, many people, including scientists, tend to be influenced by the expression of science fiction in their understanding of various scientific controversies encountered in daily life. This also means that one of the potential roles of science fiction is to provide an accessible explanation of "science and the truth it reveals" and to make it widely known.

With the popularization of film and television, science fiction has become an effective medium for the popularization and dissemination of science. Some scientific and technological concepts can be transmitted to a wider audience with the help of science fiction to achieve higher discussion heat. Recent episodes of Creed, with their stunning setting and storytelling, have sparked a lot of discussion about how to reverse time, how to increase and decrease entropy through transition gates, how time pincers work, and whether free will can change cause and effect.

The Creed's second law of thermodynamics -- thermodynamic processes are irreversible, and isolated systems always evolve spontaneously toward thermodynamic equilibrium; Similarly, time also flows in one direction. A system will increase in entropy with the passage of time, and the system will become more and more disorderly. We can distinguish the past and the future by this, which can be used as the "foothold" of the film to get out of the circle.

Kurzweil, a futurist known for his "technological singularity" theory, believes that the fundamental reason why we are bad at looking into the future is that our minds have inherited linear thinking patterns from our ancestors. However, because of Moore's Law, humanity is facing exponential change, and linear thinking has become too limited to predict what will happen in the near future from the rate of change in the past period.

Science fiction, on the other hand, can combine storytelling and technology to create strange magic. Just as stories are reflections of human experience, science fiction archetypes use fiction to explore new technologies, create science fiction archetypes by using science fiction based on scientific facts, depict technological futures, and bring them into reality by scientists.

In the 1999 sci-fi classic The Matrix, we can navigate the computer world by plugging a cable into the back of our heads. With a single thought we can change "reality"; Knowledge doesn't need to be learned through books, videos or other media. It doesn't need to take a lot of time. It just needs to be transmitted directly to the brain.

However, this seemingly far-fetched fantasy is based on a long-established brain-computer interface technology, which is now making science fiction real. In 2017, Musk founded Neuralink, a brain-computer interface company. Two years later, Musk and his Neuralink team unveiled their first product, a new technology called "back-brain intubation," which reads brain signals by implanting electrodes into the brain, and announced their plans to further develop brain-computer interfaces.

In early September, Musk went on to show off his latest work on brain-computer interfaces at the event, including a simplified, coin-sized Neuralink implant and a surgical robot that carries out device implants.

Thus, the hard science fiction foundation gives us a reasonable axis of the existing technology, and at the same time, gives us more imagination to adapt to the changes in the real world in advance.

Soft science fiction set in technology

If hard science fiction shows the charm of science and technology itself, then soft science fiction is a deep reflection on the infinite development and application of science and technology in the future society.

Specifically, the plots of science fiction can create virtual contexts, which can lead to unusual new thinking. Fantasy works can make certain hypothetical stories work, and these story frames provide a virtual space for thinking. Therefore, in terms of its relationship with science and technology, hard science fiction takes science and technology as its theme, while soft science fiction takes science and technology as its background.

While science and technology have greatly changed the way of human existence, various problems brought about by science and technology have gradually become prominent. Ethical thinking is a means to explore solutions to problems. Therefore, science fiction works start from different aspects of ethical thinking and reflect the multiple contradictions faced by human beings in society and nature, even including hidden possibilities and bitter irony, which is another major contribution soft science fiction brings to society.

Ethical inquiry under soft science fiction can be roughly divided into "virtual" ethics, environmental ethics and bioethics, but the further reflection caused by these three ethics runs through many aspects of social life.

From the perspective of "virtual" ethics, while Internet information technology connects the world more closely, the endless expansion of "virtual" technology in the field of life makes people have a sense of nihilism of existence. "If technology is a medicine, and it feels like a medicine, what are the side effects?" black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker once said. And somewhere between rejoicing and unease with technology is where Black Mirror exists."

In fact, with the development of mobile Internet and other information technologies, the real life of human beings is gradually integrated with the "virtual" world, and the boundary between real and virtual is blurred. When everyone has a mobile phone, every home has a screen and every desk has a monitor, online information technology is a black mirror of today's reality.

For environmental ethics, since the emergence of industrial society, human beings have been destroying the ecological environment efficiently and rapidly. In the past hundred years, the changes of natural conditions and ecological balance have attracted many people's attention.

Science fiction shows that human interests should be connected by depicting natural disasters, including not only the big picture of global ecological collapse, but also environmental disasters under closed conditions that most people will not be exposed to. Based on the reflection of science and technology ethics in reality, science fiction movies show many horrible scenes after the deterioration of living conditions.

Take the Day After Tomorrow and Waterworld. The two films depict polar opposites of ecological collapse, the cold sweeping the world in the former and the rising sea levels caused by global warming in the latter. The warning nature of such films is often obvious and undisguised, with "the day after tomorrow" and "the future" pointing to the disadvantages that humans will face if they do not properly adjust the relationship between technology and nature.

The grim reality makes natural ecological ethics visible everywhere in science fiction movies. Even in the movie Interstellar, which focuses on time travel, the main reason driving the protagonist to take action is the collapse of natural environment, the decrease of grain production and the deterioration of living conditions.

The destruction of the ecological environment threatens the survival of all mankind. However, science fiction movies foretell a new ethical problem -- space junk. In the science fiction film gravity, discarded space junk destroys the space station and reminds viewers of pollution damage and space-age ethical issues that are not directly related to one's own survival.

Finally, there is the deeper question of bioethics, which is particularly heated in the discussion of the relationship between ARTIFICIAL intelligence and humans.

Throughout the history of civilization, from the code of Hammurabi on clay tablets to artificial intelligence in supercomputers, it is reason that has made every effort to transcend the human body. Therefore, the conflict between "productive forces" and "relations of production", namely the most fundamental alienation of human beings, and the ultimate extreme alienation, does not mean that human beings are increasingly inseparable from machines, but that the world operated by machines is increasingly suitable for the survival of machines.

In a sense, when we contact the machine more and more closely, we put the road of memory to navigation, the memory of the knowledge to the chip, and even the emergence of gender robots can help us to solve the physiological needs and spiritual needs, so in seemingly move forward, more convenient and efficient way of life, The uniqueness of being human also achieved irreversible "degradation" with the help of machinery. The more we can do with technology, the less we can do without it.

Thus, two important propositions about bioethics are derived: the possibility of robots replacing human beings as the masters of the world; And where to draw the line. The former includes Terminator and the Matrix, while the latter includes I, Robot and Blade Runner. This is the eternal contradiction between man and machine, and also the most concrete manifestation of technophobia after technology has greatly affected life.

From hard science fiction to soft science fiction, the builders of science fiction world walk on the edge of imagination, giving people freedom, but also subverting people's freedom. Even if it makes people feel dangerous and fearful, it's a fantastical world architecture that continues to inspire and provide technology with good will.