Futurology

OP is a sci-fi writer himself, so he's in a good position to comment. The TLDR of this piece is that most sci-fi is produced by commercial writers trying to earn a living by producing relatively formulaic work that follows genre conventions. The problem is some of today's tech-billionaires are acting as if these books are bibles of future prediction.

Oddly, people seem less influenced by the positive, utopian sci-fi visions. 'Star Trek' depicted a humanity that moved beyond money, and where society was devoted to exploration and the advancement of knowledge. You rarely see billionaires go on about making the world like it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as there were no billionaires (or any need for them) in 'Star Trek'.

But there is a problem: SF authors such as myself are popular entertainers who work to amuse an audience that is trained on what to expect by previous generations of science-fiction authors. We are not trying to accurately predict possible futures but to earn a living: any foresight is strictly coincidental.

This may be true for Mr. Stross. I don't believe Farenheit 451 or Nineteen Eighty-Four were written just because the authors needed a pay day.

It's an interesting point, but doesn't that imply a science fiction tradition grown from a more benign history would feature totally different technologies?

My natural intuition is that available technologies that could be developed are a pretty rigid consequence of the laws of physics and our current economic situation. Campbell may have been racist, but neither he nor Asimov invented the idea of robotics and AI.

As for TESCREAL, it doesn't seem like a natural group to me. EA says send mosquito nets to Africa. Extropianism says send Elon Musk to Mars instead. There's not much overlap really, except in that they have opinions, and that they have a following in the same industry-subculture.