The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism • Hacker News Board

Re: The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

#11

Post by someone7x » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:49 PM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #2

Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and William Gibson’s cyberspace.” He called these examples hieroglyphs: clear, inspiring symbols of what a better future might hold. William Gibson writing about a better future? That's not what I saw in his books, but great science fiction doesn't have to portray a better future. In my opinion, great science fiction doesn't have to follow dogma,…

> yet it doesn't even count as science fiction?

To be pedantic, it _did_ win a Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical, but your point stands that it should absolutely qualify as sci-fi.

Re: The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

#12

Post by RandomLensman » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

Not sure where this really leads... The history of humans is sort of a tale of techno-optimism: fire, metals, plumbing, antibiotics, and so forth. Yes, technologies do create detrimental effects, but techno-pessimism or even techno-neutrality would have been a bad survival strategy so far.

Re: The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

#13

Post by long_time_gone » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

ta2022012501 wrote: post #8

heavyarms wrote: post #5

> Remember, Stephenson’s target audience consisted of “scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and entrepreneurs .” Given his choice to court private wealth, it’s no surprise that Project Hieroglyph was doomed from the start. After all, you can’t very well expect to succeed as a hero if you stop to ask the villains for their permission. It's really, really hard to take somebody serious when their political frame of re…

Yeah, I feel like there’s this absurd amount of commentary floating on the Internet that basically boils down to “the authors aren’t concerned with what really matters, which is to bring the socialist utopia to life”. Any kind of societal, economic, human and environmental ill is caused by capitalism, so anything that tries to solve actual problems instead of eliminating or weakening capitalism isn’t doing enough

> Any kind of societal, economic, human and environmental ill is caused by capitalism, so anything that tries to solve actual problems instead of eliminating or weakening capitalism isn’t doing enough

My entire life (40 years) has been feeding me the exact opposite propaganda. In the world I've lived in, capitalism is the answer to all of our ills. Things are only broken (like healthcare or education in the US) because they aren't capitalist enough. It's not really a surprise when the winners of capitalism own the news.

I'm personally glad to see another angle. I thought that was one of the things we liked about the internet.

Re: The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

#14

Post by ckozlowski » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #4

> Before “offering solutions,” sci-fi must actually grapple with the material realities of our present These scare quotes are misleading, since the author appears to have just made them up. The only person who used this phrase is him, when he does an imitation of something Neal Stephenson might say. In fact, the point of Project Hieroglyph wasn't to offer solutions, it was to inspire the next generation to come up wi…

I agree. It also suffers from calling out sci-fi as some homogenous group that owes something to everyone else, and that's a premise I think is incorrect.

The writer focuses a lot on Stephenson, and this whole article I think could be simplified by saying "I don't like Neal Stephenson's work because it's too optimistic." Great.

But instead it casts it's premise way too wide, and ends up sounding ridiculous.

Re: The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

#15

Post by at_a_remove » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

kaycebasques wrote: post #3

ilamont wrote: post #2

Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and William Gibson’s cyberspace.” He called these examples hieroglyphs: clear, inspiring symbols of what a better future might hold. William Gibson writing about a better future? That's not what I saw in his books, but great science fiction doesn't have to portray a better future. In my opinion, great science fiction doesn't have to follow dogma,…

> William Gibson writing about a better future? That's not what I saw in his books Neuromancer definitely wasn't optimistic, but the description of the software agents (can't remember the terms Gibson used) were so cool that I would interpret it as a kind of inspiration (the cousin of optimism). I'm talking about how the main character would be making his way through cyberspace and he would see the other programs, pe…

It is more than bizarre, it is a little scary.

Looking through the various dystopian fics, films, whatever, they all started as someone's utopia. Somebody out there thought this was a great idea. And like most great ideas you will have disagreement, which must be dealt with, because it's a great idea. Can't have the nay-saying. And the transformation to dystopia begins.

Just as an example from the article, a lot of the policy and planning around the pandemic assumed almost total compliance. This is not a reasonable assumption.

Re: The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

#16

Post by varelse » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

Sci-fi authors get to do whatever sci-fi authors wants to do. If the author of this hit piece has a problem with that then maybe the author should be writing science fiction that exemplifies what is apparently now required of it according to his new rules.

Or maybe he should just go back to reading some Nevil Shute or some Walter M Miller if he thinks science fiction is so optimistic across the board.

Re: The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

#17

Post by pbourke » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

kaycebasques wrote: post #3

ilamont wrote: post #2

Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and William Gibson’s cyberspace.” He called these examples hieroglyphs: clear, inspiring symbols of what a better future might hold. William Gibson writing about a better future? That's not what I saw in his books, but great science fiction doesn't have to portray a better future. In my opinion, great science fiction doesn't have to follow dogma,…

> William Gibson writing about a better future? That's not what I saw in his books Neuromancer definitely wasn't optimistic, but the description of the software agents (can't remember the terms Gibson used) were so cool that I would interpret it as a kind of inspiration (the cousin of optimism). I'm talking about how the main character would be making his way through cyberspace and he would see the other programs, pe…

“High technology within broken human systems” is how I’d describe much “cyberpunk” writing. Reading tons of it as a younger person has made the present feel eerily familiar.

The most unrealistic part of most science fiction for me are not the warp drives and teleporters, but the human civilization that has found its way to post-scarcity.

Re: The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

#18

Post by hbarka » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

heavyarms wrote: post #5

> Remember, Stephenson’s target audience consisted of “scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and entrepreneurs .” Given his choice to court private wealth, it’s no surprise that Project Hieroglyph was doomed from the start. After all, you can’t very well expect to succeed as a hero if you stop to ask the villains for their permission. It's really, really hard to take somebody serious when their political frame of re…

What are the prevailing political systems in science fiction literature?

Re: The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

#19

Post by jaegerpicker » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

Not to be offensive but this article made me feel dumber just reading it. THE MARTIAN isn't enough to inspire people to pursue science? Why? Because it uses clever ideas to "work the problem"? I'm not sure about his background but that is pretty much the only way to solve problems in the real world. Servers down you "work the problem", a researcher who doesn't understand why data looks like it does - "work the problem", trapped on Mars - "work the problem". Then he talks about reality and how Sci-Fi doesn't match up with reality!?

Including political realities is absolutely important when designing technology to solve large scale problems. Acting like SciFi (Andy Weir, Star Trek, and Neil Stephenson are all good examples) doesn't address that is a shitty shallow analysis. The Martian, is mostly an adventure story but Project Hail Mary deals with the political reality heavily and TNG talked about political reality and social issues and in fact the best episodes revolved around that. As someone that is an engineer, a life long SciFi fan, and am studying to change careers as a scientist (Biology/Data Science) this article reads seems pretty terrible as analysis/criticism of Sci-Fi like someone that has never actually built anything.

Re: The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism

#20

Post by cstross » Tue, Jan 25, 2022, 5:07 PM UTC

SF author here: I was invited to participate in Project Hieroglyph and declined to do so, because the explicit remit was essentially to write panglossian techno-optimism rather than downbeat realist-mode depictions of our more likely futures.

Attacking a propaganda exercise for being propaganda seems, well, a trifle spurious ...!

(Also: essay falls into the classic pitfall of assuming that a genre of fiction has to be didactic and educational. Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell might have declared that to be their intentions, but both of them were propagandists for their own peculiar ideological shibboleths, and they don't speak for the field as a whole. Oh, and Campbell died 50 years ago.)