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Vernian Imagination

A friend has been pushing me to read the book Daemon for a while now, more recently I became aware of Feed. Not being a sci-fi fan, I have yet to read either book though I have them on my to-read list. In this article about the what the future holds beyond data and technology, the author writes in reference to a Jule's Verne book Paris In the 20th Century, which happened to be remarkably prescient about the world in 1960, a hundred years ago :

Returning to the present day, it is this type of Vernian imagination that will carry us into the future. And the first step is to move beyond the 'data city', move beyond the delights of the digital and start scratching our heads about what is to come next. That's how we will become New Millennium People.

From what I have gathered, both Daemon and Feed are about "delights" and the potential of the digital. It is not about the stuff that might come next - the kinds of things that cannot as the author says be "projected forward" based on where we are now. I wonder if there is a modern day Jules Verne. That would definitely be sci-fi worth reading even for those who are not the biggest fans of the genre.

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