Charlie Stross literary salon with Krugman, MacLeod, et al

The Crooked Timber politics blog is holding a literary salon on the works of Charlie Stross, with commentary from a variety of writers and specialists in different disciplines, including Nobel-prizewinning economist Paul Krugman and sf writer Ken Macleod.

But what makes Stross’s version different from everyone else’s is that he’s noticed something: the fantasy thought experiment, in which someone brings modern science and technology to a backward society, isn’t a fantasy. It is, instead, something that’s been tried all across the very real Third World, as businessmen and aid workers fanned out across nations in which the typical person, two generations ago, lived no better than a medieval peasant. And you know what? Modernization turns out to be pretty hard to do.

I may have a better sense of this than most, because I’m an economist of a certain age. When I went to grad school in the mid-70s, I thought about doing development economics – but decided not to, because it was too depressing. Basically, circa 1975 there weren’t any success stories: poor countries remained obstinately poor, despite their access to 20th-century technology.

Since then the success stories have multiplied, with China and India finally emerging as the economic superpowers they ought to be – though if truth be told, we really don’t know why development economics started working better around 1980. Even now, however, there are lots of places that have access to modern technology, and use it – but remain, in the ways that matter most, firmly stuck in the poverty trap. Feudalism with cell phones is still feudalism.

Charles Stross book event (Thanks, Austin!)

[#1 posted by pauldrye, January 28, 2009 9:04 AM]

Wait, wait, wait, wait...when did Charlie Stross acquire hair above his eyebrows?

[#2 posted by IWood, January 28, 2009 9:55 AM]

What about autonomous collectives with fax machines?

[#3 posted by Ian Holmes, January 28, 2009 10:15 AM]

I saw him at a book signing in SF. Someone asked him about CC licensing and the first line of his answer was "hash include cory doctorow dot h".

(hash=pound to us Brits. cue bad jokes about pound of hash, etc)

[#4 posted by Jeff, January 28, 2009 10:32 AM]

Stross is such a magician. The last book of his I read was Saturn's Children. Pure robot porn, but in such a great sf kinda way. It was like the bots from Futurama had taken over and become real. That book was made for illustating.

[#5 posted by Xopher, January 28, 2009 11:11 AM]

Ian 3: That's a great answer! Love me some Charlie Stross.

As for #, the programmers I know say "sharp" when reading it aloud. (Typopedants, I know it's not quite the same mark.) But then they're all also musicians, so maybe there's a bias.

[#6 posted by Nelson.C, January 28, 2009 11:35 AM]

Ian @3: £ or #? I has confuzion.

[#7 posted by jjasper, January 28, 2009 1:41 PM]

@ # 1 - post singulhairty ;-)

[#8 posted by tgwoe, January 28, 2009 2:35 PM]

"Since then the success stories have multiplied, with China and India finally emerging as the economic superpowers they ought to be – though if truth be told, ......."

Up until apx 1850, China accounted for 50% of the world's GDP

"the fantasy thought experiment, in which someone brings modern science and technology to a backward society"

Let's hope the "bringers" of this latest round of modern technology are wiser than their predecessors.

Has Charlie discovered something, or just pointed out something you hadn't heard about before?

[#9 posted by Ian Holmes, January 28, 2009 9:02 PM]

Nelson @6: it's #, as in tic-tac-toe (the only winning move is not to play), as in

#ifdef CIVLIB
#include "cory_doctorow.h"
#endif

[#10 posted by Anonymous, January 28, 2009 9:28 PM]

Interestingly, the success stories are the countries where the US hasn't "helped" by privatising the national resources...