More on Malaise

When I proposed a few weeks ago that we were, collectively, enduring a post-millennial malaise, I knew that I was likely not the first person to sense that or to write about it. But what I did not realize was that Alex Steffen, co-founder of WorldChanging.org, had posted -- three years earlier, almost to the day -- a strikingly similar article on the topic, titled "Science Fiction, Futurism and the Failure of the Will to Imagine."

Actually, most of Alex's piece was drafted in 2002, but not published until he saw this article in Popular Science that made him think, 'Hey, I already said that!'

Here's a little of Alex's original lament:

...a growing number of science fiction writers and critics contend that works which tackle the future with true originality are becoming something of an endangered species.

"There's still plenty of space opera out there, with heroes running around in galactic Disneylands," says author Bruce Sterling, "but almost no one is addressing the nature of the 21st Century, or putting together, like, genuinely novel visions of life in the year 2050."

In the 80's, Sterling notes, it gave young SF writers such as himself "a hormonal rush" to see their wildest predictions begin to come true a decade later; in the 90's, that lag had run to a couple years; now, he says, between the time a SF writer can predict something and his publisher can get it on the shelves, reality will have caught up. "Genuinely novel ideas about the future have a short shelf-life these days."

...Sterling sees a larger problem, a sort of "cultural anemia" in our society. Americans' confidence in the future has been rocked by events like the 9-11 bombings and the Dotcom collapse. We no longer have any "new, exciting destination myth," Sterling says. "Space certainly isn't it. Our space program has become a hollow symbol, something like one of those giant Stalinist statues of the worker and the peasant, full of rust and crumbling brick."

A simpler explanation, though, seems to make the most sense: the world is an increasingly complicated place, changing more and more rapidly, and finding ways to tell stories which make sense of the nature and direction of those changes is becoming more and more difficult. The accelerating pace of change is making the present harder to predict.

And here are some further thoughts that Alex added in 2004:

I now believe that the failure of futurists and writers of speculative fiction to "see around the corner" is a failure of the will, a symptom of too much closed-loop thinking. For while folks who think about the future pride themselves on being out there, the kind of out there that gets you kudos as a SF writer or corporate futurist has become utterly predictable. There are few shockingly new visions, I think, not because it's impossible to envision the future, but because an increasingly narrow band of visions resonate with these communities.

So, we've all been thinking the same thing, in 2002, in 2004, and today (in 2007), and the situation doesn't seem to be getting much better. Harrumph!

I should mention, by the way, that following the re-publishing of my "Post-Millennial Malaise" article by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), I received notes from a couple of science fiction authors who quarreled with my complaint about the dearth of big ideas in current SF, and referred me to their favorite recent novels (including some they themselves had written).

Okay, so not everyone agrees about the malaise.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[Brian Wang]

> No exciting destination myth

I disagree that there is no exciting destination myth and I also disagree that there are no exciting destination roadmaps.

The problem is that because achieving the destinations in feasible way in reality involves decomposing problems into pieces and working out the roadmap for the pieces. A workable solution may not be a believable solution because of the breadth of background information that needs to be understood to comprehend the feasibility.

Many of the best solutions involve converging technology and new social engineering and new business models. This requires a fair amount of Renaissance man breadth of knowledge Fortunately, google and wikipedia are available to assist any person willing to put in the work to fill in the gaps in knowledge.

I think many of the "destinations" are not original and do not need to be original, but the actual achievable technology roadmaps that are becoming possible are new. The details for making it happen are original. The specifics of how we can make a desired goal happen need to be grounded in greater imagination.

A clear example is space. The problem was not the destination. The problem was how we were organized to try and achieve it and the technological, societal and business choices. The problem was how we chose crappy chemical rocket technology. It is like choosing to break through out of a castle prison wall with chemical rocket nerf balls instead of a workable project orion nuclear rocket siege engine. The having Sterling saying are nerf ball dreams are crumbling Stalinist statues. I would say the problem was not the dream, the problem was an idiotic and deadend plan. the problem was only partially the implementers (many were heroic but later it became a mostly pointless political pork machine)

Progress is being made with new commercial ventures. (Spacex, Bigelow etc...) More national competitors (China, India etc...).

Key technological capabilities are coming into fruition that will change the feasibility of space vehicles and planes. Cheap carbon nanotubes that can be formed into full strength material (superthread etc...)

Old, workable and superior technology is being reworked to workaround arbitrary and exagerrated fears (nuclear propulsion) so that the technology can be used.

We are also collectively backing into an environmentally sustainable future. Certain exaggerated fears of climate change are motivating people who do not examine technology or problems in detail into making the correct choices for energy sources. Climate change bills with laws that make carbon fuel sources more expensive will encourage a faster shift to clean and safe nuclear and renewable power.

Also, the cyberpunk vision was only a correct in a very limited way. Yes, we have the widespread internet and improvements in technology but the low life society has been greatly avoided.

One utterly stupid destination was the flying car. Perfectly feasible for the basic tech, but problems being safety and environmental sustainability. We need to perfect the safety of robotic driving and flying and the environmental sustainabilty of flight before we try to go there.

Visions need to be checked with feasible physics, orders of magnitude, chemistry, business, socialogy and with what has already happened, is happening and the scale of current society. This is key for distopian projections. Our society is on the hundreds floor now. There are 99 floors where we could get of the down elevator. A straight ride down to the sub-basement needs more support for why we did not get off on another floor and find another elevator up. Otherwise it is a distopian fantasy not science fiction.

[Tom Craver]

Regarding 'destinations' here's my one question "Space Destination for the next 20 years" Poll:

Assuming they all cost $30 billion over 20 years, and you can only have one, would you rather have:

1. Two 3-man missions to Mars - spending two weeks each time looking for life, studying the planet, bringing home samples, etc.

2. A Lunar base staffed with 3 people doing similar exploration and research - but operating continuously for 10 years.

3. 1000 robots remote controlled from Earth, exploring and building "space infrastructure" (e.g. O2 and fuel production plants) on the moon.

4. ???

[Mike Treder, CRN]

Tom, what I'd rather have is a time machine so we could go back to the 1970's and keep the Apollo program going, with the aim of building that Lunar base -- by now, it could already have been operating continuously for 25 or 30 years, giving us a big head start on reaching out to Mars, the asteroids, and beyond.

[Nato Welch]

"I received notes from a couple of science fiction authors who quarreled with my complaint about the dearth of big ideas in current SF, and referred me to their favorite recent novels."

/drums fingers

so, are there links forthcoming, or were you just teasing us? ;p

[Tom Craver]

Mike -

If you have the means to fix NASA, you don't have to go back in time - because NASA is heading into another dead-end - and it's nominally the moonbase you wanted them to have built by now.

NASA is still following the Apollo model - set a big demonstration goal, and fill in all the sub-projects needed to achieve that goal. The problem is, those goals are ends in themselves - they don't provide much real value beyond the end of the project. So we let Skylab crash, and keep building ISS even though we can't figure out what good it goes us.

We have to ask what it is we really want, and then set THAT as the goal.

I believe we want to colonize space. Not just build bases, where people go to work for a while and come home - but building colonies where people go to build new lives.

Once we get up the nerve to set that as our open-ended goal, we'll start thinking in economic terms. How do we use the first colonists to cut the cost of sending more?
Can we use in-situ resources to make the colony less dependent? Etc.

However, my expectation is that NASA lacks the nerve. The only way we MIGHT get there, is to establish an independent colonization project. If NASA were doing it, we could aim at colonizing Mars - but even a manned moon project is far too expensive for a private organization. So it will have to start off as an un-manned project, and try to get costs down enough to start sending people.

Luckily the moon is fairly close. We can build and send small robots to the moon along with tools and supplies to set up a robotic moonbase, under remote control from Earth. Not too easily, due to the time lag - but it'll be possible. Explore and learn to build infrastructure to cut the cost of getting into space.

If it takes a private effort 35 years to get to the point of sending colonists, at least we won't get to that point and look around asking "Huh! What shall we do next?" It'll be obvious - put the colonists to work so we can send more!

[Mike Treder, CRN]

Tom, I agree with pretty much everything you say. We could and should have been well on our way to solar system colonization by now, and the obvious first step in that is (and was) to build and maintain a thriving presence on the Moon. I'd imagine that some combination of humans with robots would be best.

[Mike Treder, CRN]

Nato -

Besides David Brin, who gave feedback here and here, I also heard from Damien Broderick, who urged me to read Robert Wilson's Spin (which is on my bedside table waiting), and his own Godplayers/K-Machines dyad. I've got some reading to do!

[Brian Wang]

I was away for a while.
Just wanted to say that I agree with Tom on Space. Colonization and extracting energy and resourcse should be the goal for space.