
Dystopian sci-fi is making us fear all new technology - riaface
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-08/15/dystopian-scifi-is-damaging-us
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belovedeagle
The argument made in this article is somewhat... disingenuous. The author
states, "science fiction has always built our culture powerful frameworks for
thinking about the future." He argues that much of the "future" we now live in
was predicted by science fiction of the past, and he portrays this fact in a
positive light. But then he makes a logical about-face and warns that "the
very real danger here is man's tendency to look to his illusion for
inspiration"!

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.

~~~
rwallace
Perhaps the argument could have been better phrased, as it could be read to
indicate that science fiction is a good predictor, whereas in reality, science
fiction has always been not only a bad predictor, but actually worse than you
would expect from random chance.

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.

~~~
jonnathanson
I think it's hard to pinpoint cause and effect here. Science fiction in the
golden age was the product of an interesting coalition of nerds, dreamers,
rocket scientists, hippies, and idealists. It was a product of a very
optimistic age, and it was also built by, and for, a niche audience.

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.

~~~
angersock
Go back and read "Repent, Harlequin" or _The Forever War_ or or _Make room!
Make room!_ or "Solution Unsatisfactory" tell me that all sci-fi from that age
is all up and up. Go read the _Dangerous Visions_ anthologies compiled by
Ellison.

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.

~~~
jonnathanson
I didn't say that "all sci-fi was up and up." I don't think you and I are in
any real disagreement. I think you're misreading my comment a bit.
Alternatively, given the rambling and unstructured nature of my comment, I'm
probably not being clear enough. :)

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richmarr
This article couldn't miss the mark more completely if it tried.

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.

~~~
repsilat
Funny, I was thinking the exact opposite -- I think the news is so bad and the
politics is so polarised and the fiction is so grim because the world is
better place than it has ever been, and we don't know how to deal with it.

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.

~~~
richmarr
We're absolutely living more comfortable lives than we did in the middle ages,
or in the 50s, or whenever. That wasn't my point. I don't agree with the
"things were better in the old days" sentiment either.

Suspect I wasn't clear enough somewhere; feedback appreciated.

------
andrewparker
Neal Stephenson identified this same issue, and created Project Hieroglyph as
his solution. They're about to release their first anthology of optimistic,
progressive sci-fi short stories this fall.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hieroglyph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hieroglyph)

------
omgtehblackbloc
This is absurd. It sounds like the kind of thing you'd hear from Stalin, or
something. The author is claiming that fiction should only celebrate the
glorious future we are surely destined for, and never promote ideas which
might inspire doubt or bad feelings about the grand project of technological
progress.

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.

~~~
jjoonathan
The trouble is that it encourages the kind of "critical thinking" that we
often see regarding, say, GMOs and nuclear energy. To most of the population
"skepticism" seems to mean "believing the loudest, scariest person in the
room," not "I've got some reading to do." When people _do_ decide to read,
they use google which heavily skews its results away from the expert consensus
and towards sensationalist outsiders.

We have to do a great amount of work to fix "skepticism" before encouraging it
will be a universally good thing.

~~~
pyre
> The trouble is that it encourages the kind of "critical thinking" that we
> often see regarding, say, GMOs and nuclear energy

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.

~~~
jjoonathan
1\. How heavily have you actually looked into this issue? The first time I was
forced to do my homework on this subject was for a school project (5 years
ago, IIRC) and I was blown away by two things that ran completely against the
"informed" opinion I had developed by passively consuming media. First, the
professionalism, restraint, and abundance of goodwill gestures I saw coming
out of Monsanto (see: their press releases, their research papers, and their
stance on terminator genes). Second, the extent to which Monsanto's political
adversaries were willing to lie and intentionally mislead in order to pursue
their objectives (see: Percy Schmeiser, the Seralini paper, Greenpeace's
Terminator Gene media sprint). My preconceptions going into the project were
astonishingly far from the truth -- they were the exact opposite of it. If
your intent is to be fair, that means considering both sides of the story and
trying to determine where the truth lies. Be honest with yourself: have you
actually done this for the Monsanto/GMO debate? Or have you let your political
view align itself to that of the news articles that occasionally percolate
through your feeds (as I had done)?

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?

~~~
pyre
> I don't recall disingenuously talking about nuclear power from only the
> technical side

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.

------
madaxe_again
Oh balderdash. Sci-fi makes us _think_ about the _possibilities_ that new
technology will present, dystopian or not. Many of them are positive. Many of
them are negative. To simply ignore the negative aspects would be folly.

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_.

------
jamesdelaneyie
The author calls for creators to present a new future world that is optimistic
and to me, that feels a little shallow and half baked. It is certainly not
subversive, it is naive.

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.

------
Houshalter
But who is to say that all pessimism is wrong? There are very good reasons to
be concerned about artificial intelligence ([http://intelligence.org/ie-
faq/#FriendlyAI](http://intelligence.org/ie-faq/#FriendlyAI)). Robots really
could create mass unemployment. It may be possible for people to create
engineered plagues. Technology is making mass government surveillance
extremely cheap and effective. Military technology increasingly favors the
side with the most money.

------
nicholassmith
The article doesn't really justify the thrust of the headline, there's no
support of the 'fear all new technology'. Sci-fi shows certain things as
technology run rampant sure (Transcendence comes to mind), but it often shows
the effects of a societal problem. Using the Hunger Games, which they mention,
there's plenty of far flung technology but the dystopia boils down to a
wealthy elite exploiting a lower class that they've subjugated through a
bloody war.

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.

~~~
platypii
Fear of AI is widespread: [http://www.thinkartificial.org/web/the-fear-of-
intelligent-m...](http://www.thinkartificial.org/web/the-fear-of-intelligent-
machines-survey-results/)

~~~
nicholassmith
That's a tricky one, but for people that were afraid of AI itself as a
technology the numbers are lower than the people who aren't. The numbers for
people afraid of how humanity will use the technology are overwhelming, is
that specifically because of the technology or is due to our mistrust of our
fellow humans? The technology plays a component of course, possibly a large
one, but it's hard to quantify whether it's the technology itself that induces
fear.

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tsunamifury
I actually found Clog Magazine's (no link print-only) take on Scifi and its
effect on society more convincing. The authors argued in a 100 page issue with
several essays that we built the futures we imagined in SciFi.

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)

~~~
jamesdelaneyie
Ah cunt! CLOG: Sci-Fi is out of print! :( I would kill for that. Is there any
way I could offer something for a share of that?

------
voidlogic
As we become more powerful as a species I find nothing wrong with proceeding a
little more judiciously; a little caution might provent us from going extinct
afterall, all at least perhaps encourage a more equitable world and make us
better stewards of the planet we live on.

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.

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rsynnott
I assume then that the widespread fear of, say, early locomotives, was due to
the great popularity of science fiction in the early 19th century? Or possibly
it's just that people have generally been a bit wary of new stuff for all of
recorded history.

------
trhway
it mostly makes us fear not the new technology, it makes us fear that other
people will do to us using the technology.

------
thrill
Why do I envision a sci-fi future only allowing variations on the Dummi Bears?

------
happyscrappy
You can see it right here on HN. Someone making cheaper blood tests? "They're
planning eugenics to make us INVALIDs".

