Dystopian sci-fi is making us fear all new technology
wired.co.uk
wired.co.uk
The problem is, his argument is that science fiction has always been a startlingly good predictor of the immediate future, but now that science fiction warns us of dangers and should perhaps inspire extreme caution—now that science fiction is saying something the author doesn't want to hear—we ought to ignore it as dangerous and silly imaginings.
Maybe anyone born since 1970 expects a cyberpunk dystopia, over starry-eyed scifi alternatives. Graeber writes, "The greatest and most powerful nation that has ever existed has spent the last decades telling its citizens they can no longer contemplate fantastic collective enterprises, even if—as the environmental crisis demands— the fate of the earth depends on it."
You are enabling others who feel more compelled to build the environmental dreams by making sure their information is relevant and clean. Garbage in, garbage out. Humans can clean up garbage. Robots can help us clean up garbage faster than we could ourself.
Finally, by removing unnecessary barriers, maybe they get more done or do it more accurately.
Edit: Maybe, we can help to make this seemingly inevitable dystopian future a little less bad?
The point the article is trying to get at is that science fiction used to inspire. Sure, we never did get hyperdrive, terraforming or sentient robots, but people raised on such stories gave us weather satellites, flu vaccines and cell phones. What will people raised on more recent science fiction give us? I hope the answer doesn't turn out to be a world where we bicker over politics until we run out of fossil fuel and sink back into the mud.
Most of what passes for sci-fi today is a far more mainstream product. Mainstream products tend to closely track pop culture, which to a large extent, tracks socioeconomic conditions. Today's stuff is really just romance, thriller, or adventure tropes with sci-fi window dressing. The recent fascination with dystopian futures reflects the current zeitgeist to some degree: we're living in a more uncertain, economically unstable age than the sci-fi writers of the 40s through 60s were. Everything was looking up-and-up back then,[1] and the sky really seemed to be the limit. These days, people are more skeptical and more concerned. We are getting a literature (and cinema) that is equal parts fear and escapism.
It's certainly possible that dystopian sci-fi is creating a feedback loop, and that it's making us more scared and more cynical. But I don't see compelling evidence for a causal or directional effect there. More likely the directionality is the opposite: people seem to be buying that stuff, and so the publishers in the market select and publish more of it. What we're seeing is largely an artifact of selection -- by the publishers and studios, and accordingly, by all the dystopian stuff floating around in pop culture.
I wholeheartedly support the call to action in the article, namely, that "It's time for us to dream again." But that's easier said than done. The market wants what it wants. Publishers want what the market wants. Few people are in a position to challenge that consensus. Perhaps it will take a few breakout hits of a more optimistic, exciting, less morbid vein to change things up a bit. I would certainly back any ambitious Kickstarter projects of that nature.
[1] A notable caveat is that Cold War nuclear paranoia played a discordant note in the overall melody here. The effects were interesting, and the interplay between bold optimism and end-of-the-world panic made for a rich and complex output.
Plenty of older sci-fi was pessimistic as well. Star Trek TNG was produced before the fall of the Berlin Wall, at the height of the cold war. I doubt we will be talking about most current scifi TV 20-30 years from now. It's the stuff that changes the world that will be remembered, not the spoon-fed fear mongering of mainstream dystopian sci-fi drama.
Yes, but it was always a niche. Stuff from Philip K. Dick on down to J.G. Ballard was an acquired taste in its day, and it was never mainstream-definitive. It was a creative and interesting counterpoint to a mainstream literature and cinema that was largely dominated by optimism.
Today's mainstream is mostly pessimistic (and boringly, generically so). Pessimistic sci-fi from previous eras was bold and thought-provoking, perhaps because it was playing against the grain. And it was also very personal. Philip K. Dick wrote directly from Philip K. Dick's mind, not from some dispassionate calculation of the market's tastes. Today's pessimistic sci-fi is really just warmed-over teen romance or paint-by-numbers action/adventure with dystopian settings, a lot of it written (and selected for publication) to capitalize on a trend.
"Star Trek TNG was produced before the fall of the Berlin Wall, at the height of the cold war."
Yes, but TNG was created under Gene Roddenberry's watchful guidance. At least in its early run (really, up until his death), it was following the philosophical precepts he'd laid down in TOS, way back when. You could make an argument that TNG was a 1960s show, made in the 1980s and 1990s.
"It's the stuff that changes the world that will be remembered, not the spoon-fed fear mongering of mainstream dystopian sci-fi drama."
No argument here. I have little doubt that the dime-a-dozen dystopias of today will not be remembered in three or four decades as anything more than a market-driven fad. Truly groundbreaking works, be they optimistic or pessimistic, break the mold and establish a new one.
> But I don't see compelling evidence for a causal or directional effect there.
You don't? Mass media consolidation, pop-culture more promiscuous and superficial than ever, powered by unprecedented media consumption levels and immediate feedback through surveillance. Commercial, government and rogue. Sometimes, a mix of the three. Sorry about no referrence, I'm on the phone now. I think it's common knowledge among people who value being informed greatly.
There's a famous Orwell vs Hauxley comparison. I think it sums up the case pretty well.
I think you'd be a bit surprised by how "optimistic" a time that was--for all the rocketships, there was also a large state security apparatus, huge civil unrest, and great existential threat from the Russians.
But it's been downhill from there.
Distopian sci-fi is just a mirror of our current political climate, and fears that already exist. Human fears, that don't require fictional technology.
You don't need a time machine to see militarised police, imprisonment without trial, apartheid, terrorism, corporations influence over government, ethnic cleansing, privacy stripped bare, perpetual war, 1% of American adults incarcerated, etc. These are human problems, human politics, human fears. Sci-fi is just a sandbox that avoids polarising people.
Even if I humour the author and talk about new technology, it's rational to be concerned about how technology will put more power into the hands of people who are already adequately demonstrating their distopian leanings.
It's not the technology we're afraid of.
In the developed world we're living longer in bigger houses with more cars. Our food is better, our toys are cooler, crime is at record lows... Life just isn't enough of a struggle for us any more, we don't have any excuse for not being happy, so we go out of our way to find some unhappiness, or to make it for ourselves.
Obviously there is plenty of dysfunction to go around, and we should demand better, but the "sky is falling" narrative is popular because it doesn't ring true, not because it does.
Suspect I wasn't clear enough somewhere; feedback appreciated.
All this moody, gritty ambivalence about what the future could become? That just encourages people to reflect and think about stuff, rather than working hard and uncritically towards a goal that - while we might not even understand it - is definitely awesome in every way.
The interesting question is not "what should authors write?" but "why does dystopia sell so well nowadays?"
Or as Chuck Palahniuk put it: "When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?"
We have to do a great amount of work to fix "skepticism" before encouraging it will be a universally good thing.
Let's be fair here:
1. Companies like Montsano aren't exactly doing wonders for the 'face' of GMOs.
2. Nuclear energy could be made safe, but many of the reactor designs that people tout have not been proven, and they also don't take into account the human factor. Much of what happened in Fukushima can be chalked up to the human factor. I think that it's disingenuous to only talk about nuclear power from the technical side without considering lax oversight on the human factor.
3. I think that there is a very real fear that as the barriers to entry come down on 'garage' genetic modification, we could see someone accidentally (or purposely) create a deadly disease in their garage.
2. I don't recall disingenuously talking about nuclear power from only the technical side. You are correct to note that the discussion should revolve around whether or not we have the technology to account for human error. You are incorrect to assume that the discussion in the corresponding academic, industrial, and regulatory circles does not revolve around this matter. "Technology has failed to take certain kinds of failures and human errors into account, therefore technology can never be expected take enough failures and human errors into account to be made safe" is a very defeatist attitude of the precise variety that TFA was complaining about. It's the lazy conclusion that dystopian SF authors default to in order to sound profound and relevant without wading waist-deep through boring technical analysis (which is what you need to do to actually be profound and relevant).
> Much of what happened in Fukushima can be chalked up to the human factor.
Straw man. Just like software engineers don't dismiss UX problems by saying "there's nothing to be done about stupid users," nuclear engineers don't dismiss catastrophes (hypothetical or actual) by saying "there's nothing to be done about stupid regulators." Instead, they find a way to fix the human problem by using the technology at their disposal. That's their job and they're quite good at it.
Unfortunately, there is ~50years of lag between industrial best practices and the point at which we can evaluate the safety record of said best practices. The first academic nuclear reactor was constructed 70 years ago. The first commercial nuclear reactor was constructed 60 years ago. Fukushima was built 50 years ago. 45 years ago, the mode of failure that did it in was discovered and corrected in new designs. Still, it's quite correct to note that the safety practices of nuclear engineers 50 years ago were not robust to mismanagement (which would have retrofitted or retired the reactor). But that has little bearing on the question of whether or not the safety practices of nuclear engineers today are robust to poor regulation, and that's the question that is relevant to our policy regarding new reactors. I'm convinced that today's safety practices are robust to poor oversight. Robust enough to make them an extremely compelling alternative, in any case.
3. How is that relevant to commercial GMO development?
I apologize for my wording. It wasn't directed at any specific individuals.
> "Technology has failed to take certain kinds of failures and human errors into account, therefore technology can never be expected take enough failures and human errors into account to be made safe" is a very defeatist attitude
I never said that. I am not personally anti-nuclear, but I do tend to see people pop up that sweep issues under the rug in their pro-nuclear comments. To be fair, these aren't necessarily the academics that are working in the field. [
[Also to be fair, I think that it's worth taking people whose livelihood is tied to the industry with a grain of salt too. Sure, they don't want the industry to sink, but that doesn't mean that they won't sweep issues under the rug that they don't think are relevant or that will "Never Happen" or that "The Liberal Media Will Blow Out of Proportion."]
> Straw man.
I wasn't intending it to be. I was just stating a fact.
> 3. How is that relevant to commercial GMO development?
Well, GMO stands for genetically-modified organism. It's not always food-/crop-related, so I tossed that in.
I suppose George Orwell and Yevgeny Zamyatin were just big ol' downers who wanted us all to be miserable?
No. They just mused on what's possible.
We are out of the pure postmodern cynicism, but the rebuttal isn't a swing back to modernism as the author seems to vaguely hint at. Personally I subscribe to the idea that we have moved into a new cultural period that many call Meta-modernism. There are many other theories alongside this, Digimodernism and 'New Sincerity' being the ones I've heard the most about. Point being is that this new approach blends the cynical with the optimistic to have a more holistic view. Objectivity and subjectively co-exist.
In this frame, there has been a movement in the design world for the past ten years called Design Fiction that works in this space I think. Dunne and Raby at the RCA London pioneered it and sci-fi author Bruce Sterling is an adamant supporter. From MIT Media Lab, Design Fiction is:
"How to provoke discussion about the social, cultural, and ethical implications of new technologies through design and storytelling."
In short, it creates objects that imply worlds of the future. It is not completely dystopian, nor is it completely optimistic. Those views are left up to the viewer to decide on. I definitely feel this approach is much more valuable than the authors' knee-jerk out-of-date push to happy-up sci-fi.
Do people really fear new technology? The last real story of fear I can really remember was the LHC and the concerns about black holes, and that was a tiny minority that were given far more media exposure than they deserved. Maybe the Glasshole thing, and fear of decreasing privacy, but that's also a fairly tiny percentage. Most people seem pretty happy when a new technology comes along that improves their life.
In otherwords, we need to stop imagining terrible futures so maybe we'll stop building terrible futures. Our future is defined by what we can imagine, and if all we spend time thinking about is awful things, then thats what we will bring about within a margin.
Its why Star Trek: The Next Generation is to me, the most influential and daring Science Fiction piece in the last 50 years, because Roddenberry dared to imagine a positive future full of possibility. And we've already built many of of the pieces of technology he imagined (Communicator, PADD, talking computer etc)
The purpose of sci-fi as always been to provide ethical/moral thought experiments to provide insight regarding possible innovation. Sci-fi is just doing its job.