I'm not much interested in extrapolating science and technology; I merely use extrapolation as a means of putting people into new quandaries which produce colorful pressures and conflicts.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.
Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics.
I don't put a very clear label on my work. If anything, I write science fiction - looking at a moment now, in the present, and then extrapolating outward to think about what the future might look like if this particular trend goes on, or if this particular trend is the most dominant. That's a science fictional tool.
I have always believed that astrophysics should be the extrapolation of laboratory physics, that we must begin from the present universe and work our way backward to progressively more remote and uncertain epochs.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
The highest compliment I can give a science fiction book is that it's 'plausibly surreal' - it manages to feel like a relentless extrapolation from today even as it overwhelms with unexpected consequences of that extrapolation.
The reason I spend so much of my time doing science is that the whole point of science is to help people resolve conflicting claims by saying: 'Show me the data.'
Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
I say I write extrapolations. I look at data points and ask what the world could look like.