Interesting article.
Science fiction may well be a way we create the future, but if we look back at SF of the past, it certainly looks like it tends to tell us more about the time it was written in, rather than how things turned out. There are innumerable stories out there which have technology changing incredibly rapidly, but society remains stuck in one place. I mean, just look at all those zeerusty 50’s stories populated by walking film noire clichés and hysterical housewives.
I think that SF can’t help but produce flawed futures. Stories always tend to go to conflict to provide the plot. No matter how shiny and perfectible the technology is, we can’t get away from the characters being human.
Anyway, I’m rambling now, but in conclusion, SF has a chance to be both a profoundly revolutionary genre which tells us what we can change and what we can achieve, while at the same time being doomed to being profoundly conservative, when it tells us that some things are unchangeable, whether by accident or design.
