Tech fright

If I had a  pound for every time a woman had said to me "I don't read science fiction" I'd be fabulously wealthy by now.  What makes these women turn away from a genre that predicts the future of everyone?

In some cases I suspect it's tech fright.  Some of these women are ensconced in family backgrounds where they've never stretched their talents to the full. And many of them don't even know how to set up their own computers or use the software properly.

Women's unwillingness to get to grips with high tech worries me, frankly.  Because there's going to be an awful lot more of it in the future.  Yesterday I read a big newspaper article about inventor Sir James Dyson.  It was headed 'The Robots are Coming'.  He's setting up a new robotics research facility to design household robots.  His view is that they'll take over all routine household tasks in the future.  Google is busily buying up robotics and AI companies all over the place.  These visionaries know that high tech will be a key part of our lives in future.

Technology is already re-shaping our society. The Internet gives us an almost limitless research resource at our fingertips.  We can talk instantaneously with someone on the other side of the planet.  And there's been a lot of talk recently about security agencies on both sides of the Atlantic hacking into mobile 'phone calls and processing the data they collect from them.

If we don't want Big Brother to rule our lives we must engage with tech, and decide what we want and what we won't tolerate.  And we can't do that unless we're willing to understand the issues.  And reading SF is great preparation for that, stretching our minds to accept wild new ideas that make today's decisions on tech look easy in comparison.