Posted 11/12/09 at 02:30:00 PM by David Gerrold

Alan Turing should have been knighted. He should have been Sir Alan Turing. Instead he was prosecuted for being homosexual and committed suicide in despair. The British government conveniently forgot that Turing was the genius behind the Allies’ code-breaking efforts during WWII. The “Ultra Secret” is generally credited as the single most important advantage the Allied Forces had against the Axis powers, to the point that Eisenhower was sometimes reading Hitler’s mail even before Hitler.

Fifty-five years after Turing’s death, in response to an Internet campaign, the British government finally got around to acknowledging Alan Turing’s contributions and apologizing for its failure to honor him appropriately.

Sorry, guys, but an apology does not erase an egregious wrong.

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Posted 10/29/09 at 03:00:00 PM by David Gerrold

Editor's Note: We're very pleased to welcome David Gerrold, an acclaimed and prolific science fiction writer, to Maximum PC as a regular columnist. David, best known for his numerous contributions to Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, will share his thoughts on topics including the influence of science fiction on technology, the develop of tech trends, and notable technologists. 

I try not to tell people I write science fiction. Too often, that turns into a conversation I don’t want to have: “Dude, it’s already ten past 2000. Where’s my flying car? Where’s my jetpack? Where’s my Lunar colony?”

This is "The Y2K Meme," the idea that the future was supposed to start in the year 2000 and we forgot to build it. And of course, because science fiction writers (allegedly) predicted all these glorious futures, it’s our responsibility to explain why it didn’t happen.

This meme began at least a century ago. The father of modern science fiction, Hugo Gernsback, made specific predictions about the future, everything from motorized roller skates to night baseball. Within a short time, many science fiction writers were functioning as futurists, telling tales of fabulous technologies to come.

But predictive science fiction misses the point. 

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