At the Verge, Joshua Kopstein interviews sci-fi author Neal Stephenson about what is to come. An excerpt about self-fulfilling prophecies, which can lead to Manifest Destiny or paralysis by analysis:

“Stephenson noted the cultural changes that have occurred since sci-fi’s ‘golden age’ in the 1950’s, when radio, computers, and nuclear power inspired our outlook on the future. ‘Since then, everything kind of looks the same,’ he said. ‘The cars look different, but they’re still cars … The space program tanked, and a lot of stuff just didn’t happen the way we were expecting.’

But in the grim sci-fi narratives that followed those disappointments, Stephenson wonders how deeply the dystopian abyss stares back into us. ‘If all of our depictions of the future are incredibly depressing, it doesn’t give us a hell of a lot of incentive to go out and build a future,’ he said. ‘It kind of gives us an incentive to do the opposite.'”