• grubberneonbelly@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    When he started his presidency he also asked White House staff where the war room was, like the one from Dr. Strangelove

    • Wataba@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      Apparently he picked up Gene Roddenberry’s cane for him when he visited the set of Trek one time.

      Bastards look out for bastards.

    • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      That’s arguably one of the greatest values of scifi, to get people to ask what might happen in a world where plausible technological or cultural changes take place, or what we could learn about our own world from such possibilities.

  • bufalo1973@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    Are they saying that the president that named the Strategic Defense Initiative as “Star Wars” was deeply influenced by sci fi?

  • IWW4@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    WarGames pretty much defined what hacking was until the late 90s. Any business and organization that didn’t change policy because of WarGames was going to feel pain.

  • Manjushri@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    Yep. He even requested recommendations from SciFi authors of the time who were part of the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy.

    Reagan’s search for space-based options to enhance America’s military had context prompted the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy to convene at [Larry] Niven’s house. [Jerry] Pournelle chaired the meeting, and the result of a three-day weekend was an ominously titled document: “Space: The Crucial Frontier.”

    Pournelle’s preamble for the policy, published in 1981, calls space “our most valuable natural resource” and a place that opens up “significant and possibly decisive military and economic advantages.”

    “We worked all weekend and produced a paper for the transition team, then at the president’s request we started in on a plan for after inauguration at another meeting,” Pournelle wrote on his blog. “The president read the full reports, which strongly recommended Strategic Defense. In 1983 he made his Star Wars speech. It included several phrases from the Council reports.”

  • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org
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    1 day ago

    At that time, nobody had an idea how much time there would be left until AI could have such abilities as shown in the movie.

    • quick_snail@feddit.nl
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      17 hours ago

      AI is dumb tho. It would never conclude that the only way to win is not to play. It would destroy all life on earth first.