Nothing Is New
Luckey: I read a lot of science fiction. One of the things I've realized in my career is that nothing I ever come up with will be new. I've literally never come up with an idea that a science fiction author has not come up with before at some point.
Which makes sense. There's a lot of them. They've been around for a long time. And they don't have to make things. They don't have to wait for the right moment. A science fiction author doesn't have to wait for something to be possible to think about it and write about it.
I've literally never come up with an idea that a sci-fi author hasn't come up with before.
Starship Troopers, 1959
Luckey: Every time I've come up with something, I've been able to find — usually many, sometimes one — science fiction pieces addressing literally exactly that idea by some guy who thought about it 50, 60, 70 years ago.
Some of the stuff I'm building today — augmenting the vision of soldiers in the AR/VR space — these are ideas from 1959. Starship Troopers. These are old ideas that have only very recently become technologically feasible.
Augmenting soldier vision? Starship Troopers, 1959. Old ideas that only recently became feasible.
The Tech Wasn't Ready. The Idea Was.
Luckey: The idea of autonomous fighter jets — that's been around for about a hundred years. The idea of making a computer so good you can program it with a general intent and it executes a mission all on its own — people have been thinking about this since computers were programmed with punch cards.
They were imagining a punch card computer that could do the whole management of a bombing mission during World War II. The tech wasn't ready. But the idea was.
They imagined a punch card computer managing a bombing mission in WWII. The tech wasn't ready. The idea was.