I thought you might be interested in this video from a recent Kim Stanley Robinson talk in which he describes life in the present as a science fiction novel we all collaborate on. This is an excerpt from a pair of talks he gave at the Duke in January; the entirety of the other talk is available here. Here's a transcript of the first part of the video:"
KSR: I think it's very true that we are living in a science fiction novel that we all collaborate on, and it's because everything that science fiction was about through its historical named period, the twentieth century, has kind of come true. And also we live in a world that is so intensely structured by science and technology that we can't get out of it. If we were to get out of it would still be a science fiction move, the retreat to the farm. So it's hegemonic, you can't escape it, we're in that world created by science and technology.And also there's this intense sense of futurity, in that if you opened up your newspaper or laptop tomorrow and it said,"They've cloned six South Koreans successfully and they're all named Kim," you would believe it, there would be no surprise there. Anything could happen. You could say, well, we just got a signal from Alpha Centauri, there are intelligent aliens there, they sent us the code for pi and the Pythagorean theorem. There's no reason to disbelieve that, either. So we live in this world of anticipation of strangeness, of change, rapidly accelerating change.
I came through the Atlanta airport today, and you know those speedwalkers that are underneath the various terminals? When I was young there was this famous bestseller, Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler. Future shock: we don't talk about that anymore because none of you are shocked. And that's because the shock comes at the moment you step on the walkway and you feel the drag between one acceleration and another. At the moment you're being accelerated to a new speed there's a little gravity drag on your body, and that's the moment of "future shock"--1972 or '3--and when you're walking with the walkway that's moving at a different speed there's no shock there. You simply are moving at that speed. So now we're moving a new historical speed that's faster than the historical speed was when I was a kid. That moment was marked by this book Future Shock, and it's an archaic term, obsolete, because there's nothing in our experience now-- I don't think there's anything that could happen that would shock us, because we're moving at such a fast speed now, and because we're conditioned by science fiction.
GC: What about the other end of the runway?
KSR: When you slow down? Well, that's another--you feel that too. This is like when your connection to the Internet goes out for three days, or your phone line, or when your cell phone dies--these moments when you're suddenly not having the sixth sense of the cloud--
Bonus Kim Stanley Robinson Video: 'We Are Living in a Science Fiction Novel That We All Collaborate On' (Thanks, Gerry!)Previously:
- Kim Stanley Robinson's alternate time-travel life of Galileo ...
- Free Kim Stanley Robinson and Eric Simons reading in San Francisco ...
- Kim Stanley Robinson on "Comparative Planetology" - Boing Boing
- Boing Boing: Kim Stanley Robinson's new book, Forty Signs of Rain
- Boing Boing: Kim Stanley Robinson on eco-disasters on Earth and Mars
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So, science fiction has conditioned us to more easily accept the future? Bring on the sci-fi, then. Make sure it saturates the world.
I agree we are conditioned more to technological change than people in the 19th century, and yes, part of it may be due to science fiction reminding us that technology changes, but I fail to be convinced that we are more conditioned than people in the 1970s (when Future Shock was a bestseller). Not much has really changed since the 1970s. Yes, the Internet is no longer the private realm of a few university geeks, and the Big Bad from the West's perspective isn't the Soviet Union, but neither really fundamentally changes life the way say, electricity or indoor plumbing did to people in the late 19th/early 20th century.
This seems like a rather common-sense concept, this "collaborating on the future" business; how it's a newsflash to people I don't know. May people be able to tell the science from the fiction, however.
Unfortunately, it's a bleak, dystopian sf novel...
After reading (but not watching) this, I tried to think of technlogies that would still create future shock. Obviously this is a biased attempt, since anything truly shocking is unlikely to be something I'd think of.
Cloning? Just a extension of reproduction.
Growing new replacement organs? Extension of donors and normal medicine.
Teleportation? Unless it is faster-than-light or really cheap, not too different than supersonic flight. It make make national boundaries unenforceable, though.
Extraterrestrial life? Shocking to some religions, but otherwise just a fascinating extension of the study of foreign cultures.
So I can imagine technologies that are *politically* and *culturally* destabilizing (which may or may not be a bad thing), but nothing so new and different my mind recoils from it.
Mind readers not good enough?
I see future-shocked people every day. They're not keeping up with change and have a sort of stunned or confused look on their faces when they try to deal with the wired and wireless world. Some avoid dealing with it. Some percentage of folks over 40 are in this group, although we can all point to the grandma that is keeping up, twittering to the grandkids and blogging. Most of us just don't use that term to describe those that are falling behind.
Wait, by this methodology, shouldn't we think 'future shock' was always impossible?
Flight? Just jumping that lasts longer.
Steel? Basically just a harder rock.
Skyscrapers? Just a taller version of mud hut.
Automobiles? Just a carriage without the horse.
Internet? Essentially just an extension on what scribes do.
....
And extended into fantasy and/or the future:
Raising the dead? Just an extension on waking people up from naps.
Invisibility? Just an extrapolation on wearing black at night.
Mind control? Just a more reliable form of asking someone to do something.
Mind reading? Basically just asking someone what they think.
Pyrokenesis? Not essentially different from having a butane lighter.
Oh sure, there's no future shock for the whatever small percentage of us heavily invested in the net, technology, etc... but what about older folks just now picking up on social media, blogging, etc? We're busy creating a culture that is 2 steps+ removed from theirs, maybe more. At what time do we stop being able to have meaningful interactions?
Between the 1970's and now it became possible to sit down at a compute rand access a good deal of ALL RECORDED KNOWLEDGE, and that amount is growing all the time. I'd say that's at least a little shocking.
if what you are is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Surely the only real experience of future shock left to be had is the moment in which mind perceives it's first interaction with a post-singularity technology.
...or perhaps the drugs/magick revolution really will lift the lid a little.
Or should that read; '...will have lifted...'?
Ugh, it's a "seventh sense". Our sixth sense is the sense of balance. If you all the sudden got vertigo, you'd feel that too.
(Sorry, it's a little pet peeve of mine.)
Those that rely on self-deception to cope will take it the hardest. Abstract thinkers do see this as living in a movie or a book. As a 33 year old, i've never known a time before MAD, and have grown up in a world that just accepted that it was a button push away from annihilation. Living in a sci fi world full of zombies on their cell phones with no time for anything but to be corporate and make a paycheck and complain that the Dalai Lama and The Joker tells them to stop taking small trivial things so seriously. And yet, i can't believe i get paid for the job i have. But i'm not sitting around waiting for intra-dimensional travel through just a thought. But i love my ipod touch, as i can fandango the movie times, twitter my wife to meet me there, catch a matinee after work, then do a mini review on facebook and look forward to meeting my friends in a week or two to sit around in the snow drinking beer and talk about fun things like Avatar and "kevin" from undercover boss.
"...I tried to think of technologies that would still create future shock. Obviously this is a biased attempt, since anything truly shocking is unlikely to be something I'd think of."
Try 5-MeO-DMT intravenously.
The difference between now and the early '70s is that science fiction has permeated our entertainment media (mainly TV and movie, sadly not print). We've become desensitized to the fantastic.
Add to that the special effect tech that makes these fantastic gadgets/technologies/whatever merge seamlessly into the "real world" that's being shown on-screen.
Back in the words-on-paper days of sci-fi, it took an intentional use of imagination to "picture" the future.
Then, in the early movie and TV days, effects were there, but they were lame enough that it still took a bit of effort for the viewer to suspend disbelief.
Now, we have stuff like Avatar. While there's still things that require your cooperation to suspend disbelief (an exoskeleton equipped with a hunting knife in a sheath???), these are primarily plot-oriented and not visual. None of us had to make any real effort to buy into the fact that human actors were interacting with blue aliens.
So if the blue aliens showed up on our doorstep in the '60s, we'd have a bit of trouble believing our eyes. If they showed up today, we'd just have a sense of deja vu.
We might be overwhelmed at the pace or sheer number of things that are changing at once, but the *shock* has diminished significantly.
Cory;
Used to enjoyably read KSR.
Then came the "Mars" series, "Red" was good, "Blue" maybe so, "Green" was eco-nazi propoganda! Needless to say, KSR's opinion on any subject is questionable, at best, to me.
MikeD
HOW CAN ALL OF YOU FIT INTO THIS FLAT TELEVISION NEWSPAPER? CAN YOU SEE ME?!
DEEMONSSS!!!
People interested in the "Future Shock" concept can check out the documentary ... hosted by ORSON WELLS !!!1!
http://oddculture.com/2007/05/05/future-shock-documentary-video-toffler/
Personally I think people were more "shocked" back in the day because they went through more change in a shorter period of time back then. They'd just watched dudes stomping around on the Moon, on live TV, and there were still people alive who remembered BEFORE there were AIRPLANES or RADIO.
Social change was even MORE abrupt. Some of the examples in the video are still relevant today. The gay marriage segment, off the top of my head. The difference is we've had forty years to get used to it.
Oh dear. I'd love to know which KSR books MikeD read before Blue Mars made him unhappy.
I'd say the he (KSR) has stayed fairly consistent in his message and espoused beliefs.
Although the seemingly complete disconnection of the California 'trilogy' just confused me.
Clue:
The word "Nazi" is not a generic term for people you don't like.
FAIL
So if the blue aliens showed up on our doorstep today . . . I'd think it's another marketing scheme.
Just to quibble. When you step on the airport 'speedwalker' and feel a little tug. That tug is not gravity. It's inertia. ''In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!''
Day Vexx: When do we stop having "meaningful interactions" with those who are older and not heavily invested in the new tech?
When we start believing that they have nothing to teach us.
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