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BEYOND_REASON

                                    March  18, 2009

A virtue of science fiction:
it can be a tool to address
the fundamental issues.

A vice of science fiction:
even when it addresses
fundamental issues, it
continually veers toward
extreme cases.

  The cautionary tale tends                   If we had abstract
  towards the simplified,                     principles that were
  the exaggerated.                            worth anything, then we
                                              could reason from
                                              extreme cases to settle
       Just to take an example:               issues logically.
       there's a Fritz Leiber
       story based on the                     But because we have no such
       invention of an automated              principles, because the best we
       reminder gadget that                   have are approximations, guesses,
       whispers into your ear so              rules-of-thumb, extreme cases are
       that you don't forget                  often useless, and frequently
       appointments and so on.                just misleading.

          These gadgets quickly become             "Hard cases
          more elaborate, they're                   make bad laws."
          supplied with sensors in the
          form of "eyes", they become
          more intelligent.

          Everyone is walking around
          with these *things* on their
          shoulders that start out as
          assistants, but quickly
          become masters.

             On the one hand: this story
             could be taken as prescient.
             It was written long before
             watch alarms, let alone PDAs.

                And yet, it's difficult to recognize
                something like an actual "smart phone"
                in Fritz Leiber's humps strapped on
                people's shoulders, with goggling eyes
                and whispered instructions.

                      But it's far from being a stupid story: in
                      its "satiric" exaggeration you can
                      recognize real phenomena... new technologies
                      often seem liberating at first, but after a
                      while they may seem like a subtle trap, an
                      unwanted dependency.





                                   Were I giving a talk
                                   on this subject, I might
                                   try this schtick:

                                         "A science fiction story might
                                         describe some new technology
                                         that's so addictive that
                                         people lose touch with
                                         reality, and go go stumbling
                                         around in a fantasy world."

                                           *slide from the ST:NG
                                            episode, "The Game"*


                                         "But do things like that
                                         ever really happen?"

                                            *image of a grinning
                                            cellphone zombie*



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