Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come

Science / speculative fiction often deals with technology, and how it affects people, culture, and society. Less often, the idea that people affect technology is explored.

I've seen quite a change in attitude towards technology, over the decades. Tales of Future Past, a remarkable collection by David S. Zondy, celebrates the days when:
"...our future was supposed to be a sort of technocratic, atomic-powered, computer-controlled, antiseptic, space-travelling Jerusalem that would at last free us from the curse of Eden and original sin. We expected some how, some way that we would be on the road to being freed from the human condition. We expected a sort of bloodless, benign French Revolution with Hugo Gernsback as our Voltaire and Carl Sagan as our Robespierre. And what did we get? The City of Man with Tivo. The fact is, science fiction and popular science had set the bar so high that only the Second Coming with ray guns would have satisfied...."
(Tales of Future Past)
I watched that view change to the 'and we're all gonna die' belief that technology was evil. Or, for the more up-to-date: polluting; dehumanizing; depersonalizing; and humanity is doomed anyway.

Beware the Demon Technology and Other Silliness

My guess is that some circles still see technology as a sort of secular demon bent on reducing humanity to a deplorable state of ungrooviness, Although the post-apocalyptic future of mutant frogs (Hell Comes to Frogtown) and armored dune buggies has a certain panache, I really don't think it's all that likely.

Humanity somehow survived agriculture.1 If we can do that, we can take on just about anything.

Although some technologies are more dangerous than others, I don't think that anything human beings mess with is, strictly speaking, safe. That's because of some assumptions I have, about the nature of reality.
  • Some people aren't generally
    • Nice
    • Competent
    • Careful
  • Technology is most dangerous when it's used by people who are
    • Not nice or
    • Not competent or
    • Not careful or
    • Some combination of the above
I also don't think that any technology makes people do things. Yes: it's easier for people to travel, for example, now that we've got automobiles and airplanes. But people had been traveling for years before the automobile was invented.

People are People, Tools are Tools: There's a Difference

What we do can be done on a larger scale if we've got tools: but it's the human mind directing the tool; not the other way around.

Buck Rogers and the Temple of Doom

Technology can be part of the background, or it could be a central part of the conflict.

Take the early days of the industrial revolution, when people who didn't like the new technology sabotaged it with their wooden shoes. Or, didn't. Makes a good story, though. (Merriam-Webster Inc. has a pretty good discussion of where the word "sabotage" comes from.)

The point is: that's conflict, centering around technology.

A few short references to technology can place a story in history - or quickly establish a setting. Mention blowguns, poison darts, and a dugout canoe, and many (most, I hope) readers will fill in the rest of the setting from their own (more-or-less accurate) knowledge. Talk about a disrupter, shield generators, and a landing pod and you've evoked a very different setting.

Show your readers someone donning a space suit, getting into a dugout canoe, and dodging poison darts on the way to a shield generator - and you've either hooked or confused the reader.

All of which leads into another list of posts. This set deals with inventions: strange; feared; and (in the case of the warp drive) yet-to-come.

Unless otherwise noted, these posts are from Apathetic Lemming of the North.And, this decade's 'it's gonna kill us all' invention, CERN's Large Hadron Collector:
1 Agriculture may have been the single most dangerous technology humanity has come up with yet. It took us thousands of years to recover from the devastating effects of its use. ("Agriculture as a Mistake" Apathetic Lemming of the North (October 29, 2007))

2 This isn't a perfect world. Sometimes not-nice people do naughty things; and won't stop even when they're asked nicely. Which leads me to this set of thoughts:
  • War isn't nice - things get broken and people die
    • This is not good.
  • Diplomacy can lead to mutually-acceptable compromise
    • This is good
  • War is not nice
    • But sometimes it's better than the alternative
(I value individual freedom, even for people who don't agree with a country's dominant culture. I'll admit to having a rather counter-cultural attitude on this topic: which I discuss in Another War-on-Terror Blog.)

What's pertinent to writing in the science fiction / speculative fiction genre(s) is that 'dangerous' technology isn't
  • Always a weapon
  • Bad by itself
Think LP gas, computers and movable type. (Discussed in Individual Freedom: a Treasure, Another War-on-Terror Blog (June 27, 2008))
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Advice, Opinions, Resources, and How-2 for Writers: Over a Hundred Micro-Reviews

There's a wealth of information (accurate and otherwise), advice (helpful, sometimes), and opinions (fact-based, idiosyncratic, and just plain weird) on the Web. Quite a lot is useful, one way or another, for writers.

Some of the 3,019 posts I've published to date on Apathetic Lemming of the North are micro-reviews of articles and other resources that might come in handy for a writer. Earlier today, I stumbled on one ("Plotting a Novel - Like a Snowflake?!" (February 10, 2009)) and realized that I didn't remember each of the one hundred forty or so posts about writing.

Looks like Socrates was right. New information technologies can be dangerous. More about that in another post.

On the other hand, I think the trade-off between concentrating on wrote memorization and learning how to index, store and retrieve information is a no-brainer when it comes to benefit/cost ratios.

Problem is, in this case, I hadn't indexed those posts about writing. Until now.

I've divided the posts into four catgories, plus the usual "miscellaneous" for the occasional oddball topic: The posts in each category are in reverse chronological order.

A few of the usual disclaimers: The links in those micro-reviews may not still work. Websites and blogs change, or disappear entirely; I have no control over what's on other websites or blogs; I've provided links to pages and posts I think are interesting, but have not verified any of the claims or assertions on other sites or blogs. In other words, before you spend money or sign up for anything: check it out on your own! "Due diligence" may seem dull, but it can save a lot of time, grief, and money.

Enough. Here are those posts:
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Sunday, August 23, 2009

The Threat of Dangerous New Technologies: It's Not All That New

An expert recently said:
"...'My issue is that it's not just gaming. It's social networking. It's the Web in general,' said [analyst at In-Stat Jim] McGregor. 'We've gained so much, but still it puts people in front of a computer screen for hours on end. It gives Americans just another reason to be fat, dumb and lazy.'..."
Apathetic Lemming of the North (August 23, 2009)
I'd be a bit more aghast at that proclamation, if I hadn't heard it before. About the Internet, cable television, television, and the telephone. As long as I can remember, someone's been concerned, sometimes with reason, about newfangled technologies.

Science fiction/speculative fiction stories can center around the effects of technology on people and cultures. Even when the story doesn't, I think it's a good idea to give a thought to what technologies are being used, how they affect people - and what people think about them.

An author doesn't have to start from scratch, imagining how technological change might affect people. Over the millennia, we've gone through quite a bit. And, sometimes, there seem to be repeating patterns.

Agriculture as a Dangerous New Technology

And yet, somehow, we've survived. Ever since some reckless maniac shoved seeds in the ground and stuck around: instead of doing the decent, sensible thing and following the herds like a proper hunter-gatherer. Pretty soon, all the counter-cultural elements in society were putting seeds in the ground and ignoring all that was noble and decent. Well, maybe not: but my guess is that a few people saw it that way.

Somewhat after agriculture destroyed humanity's culture and heritage - or opened new vistas of promise - someone developed writing. Probably several someones.

Writing as (Dangerous) Information Storage and Retrieval Technology

As long as writing was used exclusively for recording business transactions, the damage was limited to the commercial sector.

But no: some wiseacre decided to start recording ideas in this dangerous new information storage and retrieval technology.

That's where Plato comes in.

Around 360 BC, Plato wrote a work we call Phaedrus. Yes: wrote. That's the verb used in quite a few discussions of Plato's work, and it's quite possible that the ancient Greek philosopher did use the new information technology.

New, and apparently controversial.

In Phaedrus, Plato has his mentor, Socrates, enlightening someone in a dialog. I'll pick up where Socrates tells about a story he picked up in Egypt:
"...one of the ancient gods of that country; the same to whom that holy bird is consecrated which they call, as you know, Ibis, and whose own name was Theuth. He, they proceed, was the first to invent numbers and arithmetic, and geometry and astronomy; draughts moreover, and dice, and, above all, letters. Now the whole of Egypt was at that time. under the sway of the god Thamus, who resided near the capital city of the upper region, which the Greeks call Egyptian Thebes...."
(Phaedrus, p. 103-104) 1 [emphasis mine]
Interesting story, if somewhat long-winded by contemporary standards - that's just a brief excerpt. Socrates goes on, and eventually gets to where a ruler is evaluating this invention: letters. This king, it would seem, invented regulatory agencies.
"...'The king replied: 'Most ingenious Theuth, one man is capable of giving birth to an art, another of estimating the amount of good or harm it will do to those who are intended to use it. And so now you, as being the father of letters, have ascribed to them, in your fondness, exactly the reverse of their real effects. For this invention of yours will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it, by causing them to neglect their memory, inasmuch as, from their confidence in writing, they will recollect by the external aid of foreign symbols, and not by the internal use of their own faculties. Your discovery, therefore, is a medicine not for memory, but for recollection,--for recalling to, not for keeping in mind. And you are providing for your disciples a show of wisdom without the reality. For, acquiring by your means much information unaided by instruction, they will appear to possess much knowledge, while, in fact, they will, for the most part, know nothing at all; and, moreover, be disagreeable people to deal with, as having become wise in their own conceit, instead of truly wise.'..."
(Phaedrus, p. 104-105) 1 [emphasis mine]
This was over two thousand years ago: a tad over 23 1/2 centuries. We're so used to the idea of recording and retrieving information with writing that we don't think of it as a technology. These philosophers were much closer to a time when writing was starting to affect how people handled information in a big way.

And, apparently, some didn't like it.

Socrates, of course, has more to say:
"...Soc. For this, I conceive, Phaedrus, is the evil of writing, and herein it closely resembles painting. The creatures of the latter art stand before you as if they were alive, but if you ask them a question, they look very solemn, and say not a word. And so it is with written discourses. You could fancy they speak as though they were possessed of sense, but if you wish to understand something they say, and question them about it, you find them ever repeating but one and the self-same story. Moreover, every discourse, once written, is tossed about from hand to hand, equally among those who understand it, and those for whom it is in nowise fitted; and it does not know to whom it ought, and to whom it ought not, to speak. And when misunderstood and unjustly attacked, it always needs its father to help it; for, unaided, it can neither retaliate, nor defend itself...."
(Phaedrus, p. 107) 1 [emphasis mine]

This Could be the End of Civilization as We Know It - 360 BC

Socrates was right, in a way. Before the development of writing as a medium for storing complex ideas, philosophers like Socrates and Plato relied on their own memories, and on their ability to talk about what they'd thought about. Memorizing massive amounts of information like that required a sort of mental discipline that's lacking today. I'm pretty sure that I have to work harder at wrote memorization than I probably would if I didn't know how to read and use an index or table of contents.

On the other hand, if it weren't for this dangerous new technology rotting away the mental powers of its users and (potentially) deceiving them into thinking that they actually understood what they'd read: we wouldn't know what Socrates and Plato had on their minds.

And, although they didn't have a perfect track record when it came to figuring out what things were and how they worked, they and others like them helped lay the foundation for the sciences, philosophy, and the arts.

Socrates had a point, too, when he talked about the lack of interactivity that's nearly unavoidable with writing. We didn't have a workaround for that until Information Age technologies started destroying humanity's culture and heritage - or opening new vistas of promise. Maybe a little of both.

This Could be the End of Civilization as We Know It - 2009 AD

We've gotten used to the sort of lazy memory that writing encourages, and discovered that there were advantages to being able to get at the actual words of great thinkers like Plato - not what a succession of well-meaning but less gifted people remembered someone telling them about what their teachers said Plato thought.

Don't get me wrong: oral traditions are more accurate than some people were willing to believe.2 I'd still prefer the words set down by someone like Plato or Bhagwan Swaminarayan, than what someone remembers about what those people said.

I don't think that writing - symbols on a flattish surface which record ideas - will disappear, or become something that always needs a keyboard. Anyone who remembers the 'paperless office' knows what I'm talking about.

Oral tradition, I'm pretty sure, will also continue.

It's just that it looks like we're on the edge of another radical change in how people handle information. 'Information Age' technology is already changing how news is handled - and how people communicate with each other.

Me? I'm not worried. We survived agriculture: I don't think cell phones and Internet cafes will destroy us.

Related posts:
1 All excerpts are from:
  • "The Phaedrus, Lysis, and Protagoras of Plato"
    By Plato, Josiah Wright, Immanuel Bekker
    • The book's title page reads: "The Phaedrus, Lysis, and Protagoras of Plato"
      A new and literal translation mainly from the text of Bekker
      by J. Wright, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge,
      London: MacMillan and Co., Limited New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900
Another translation is available online:
  • "Phaedrus"
    By Plato
    Written 360 B.C.E
    Translated by Benjamin Jowett
    The Internet Classics Archive, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law faculty website has something to say about Plato and Socrates.

2 "...The validity and reliability of this type of transmission are confirmed by modern researchers of the Nahuatl culture such as Miguel León Portilla
(Miguel León Portilla, El destino de la palabra. De la oralidad y los glifos mesoamericanos a la escritura alfabética, FCE, Mexico City 1996, pp. 19-71)...." ("Our Lady of Guadalupe: Historical Sources" L'Osservatore Romano, via EWTN (January 23, 2002))
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