It’s almost as if you think that some people will live for ever, but at 90 years of age Arthur C Clarke has had a pretty good innings, but it is still very sad to hear of his passing today. I’ve written before of the importance of Science Fiction as a predictor of future technology and behaviour and Clarke is no exception.
As both a scientist and a writer of great and thoughtfull fiction, he has left a legacy of some importance as it is likely that many inventors and developers have been influenced by his stories. of course he did also write a considerable amount of non-fiction, but that wasn’t really my interest.
It is said that although he didn’t conceive the concept of geosynchronous satellites, he certainly propogated it around the end of World War ll, when he served in the Royal Airforce as a radar specialist. In honor of his writing and ideas about stallites which would follow the rotation of the Earth so that they stayed above the same spot for 24 hours a day, the International Astronomical Union named this orbit as a ‘Clarke Orbit’.
In my working world this is part of the legacy that we now enjoy in our GPS products, but also the Satellite TV I watch most days of the week, that gives me access to news, sport and entertainment from around the world in near real time.
He also gave us a lot to think about in 2001 A Space Oddysey which is still one of my favorite movies of all time, when the computer on his space ship Hal 9,000 was given artifical intelligence and thought of itself as a living being with emotions and which didn’t bow to the concepts such as Asimov’s 3 Law’s of Robotics that said that no Robot could ever hurt a human being, even if told to by one. I guess that was a little over the top, given that part of many human beings desires are to hurt and kill other human beings. Nevertheless I have no doubt that scientists developing artifical intelligence from nanobots to military jets will have cut their teeth on some of Clarke’s books.
Clarke will not be forgotten, he has left a legacy in science and techology, in film, in books and has had an impact on the world as we know it. Thanks for the ride Arthur:)
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