Science fiction is often described, and even defined, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. "If this goes on, this is what will happen." A prediction is made. Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large doses of a purified and concentrated food additive to mice, in order to predict what may happen to people who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to be cancer. So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life. ... Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic. (first page of Intro)
I think Vinge did a credible job of extrapolation in Rainbows End (by the way, I love that Robert contemplates the lack of apostrophe in this name of the retirement community [152] and I assume this is the referent of the last chapter title, "The Missing Apostrophe"). The technology Vinge created seemed relatively feasible but not too obvious, given today's trends of digitality and innovation. But because of Le Guin's warning, and because I know all books need conflict, I was expecting some sort of global "network failure" -- some major meltdown in this brave new world of wearables and analysts-by-the-million. I was actually kind of surprised that the meltdown wasn't bigger than it turned out to be; in my more charitable moments, I might attribute that to the character development that enabled Vinge's novel to not hinge entirely on the tension created by the futuristic technology.
But back to Le Guin's quote: Is there any way to imagine the future of our digital world without the vision ending in metaphorical (and literal) cancer? From Anne's brief introduction on Thursday, it sounds like each book we read this semester will fall in different places on the pessimism-optimism continuum. I think Vinge is actually fairly optimistic: He doesn't seem to attribute the bad things that happen to digitality, but rather to the people (mostly Vaz and Mr. Rabbit) who misuse it for their own gain. ("Guns don't kill people; people kill people"?) I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe technology PR? Perhaps many people are afraid of the constant march of technology because whenever an author tries to extrapolate it out into the future, it feels scary and generally doesn't end well.
Regarding the place of writing in this world, I was intrigued by the concept of sming. When I described it to my husband, he said, "Sounds almost like telepathy." Pretty close, although of course it isn't mind-reading and it still requires some kind of physical movement, however slight. Luke read a book in graduate school called The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word, which definitely seems to be the trend of most digitality (as evidenced by the presentations for Ms. Chumlig's class, with visual special effects that made Robert's stripped-down poetry recitation a boring anomaly). But the sming, like today's text-messaging but without the abbreviations, seems to have kept writing (in some form, at least) alive and well. Do the lines between orality and writing blur when it takes a few blinks or shoulder twitches to send a message? What are the implications of a message suddenly parading across one's field of vision? Ironically, this written "dialogue" presented a challenge for Vinge, who had to figure out how to represent it on the page. The result is workable, though it's clunky and doesn't at all represent the natural ease with which the actual sming took place. The more I think about it, the more I realize that writing-as-communication has been eclipsing oral communication for some time now: Like most people I know (esp. those in my generation and younger), I almost always opt for email over a phone call. So is writing safe and sound? Depends on how you define "writing."
By the way, stupid question: Am I supposed to know who Mr. Rabbit is? I kept expecting the big "reveal," and never got it. At different points throughout the book, I was convinced that he was just about every major and minor character, but now I think he really is the unknown chimera that he was for all the characters. If so, that's actually kind of cool. Scarier, too. But maybe I missed something? I'm not sure why the "carrot greens" were such a big deal at the end, so I guess I did miss something. Good thing this isn't a lit. class.
9 comments:
Marla, you raise an interesting point that I somehow overlooked when I was writing my response to the novel. My whole issue with Vinge's world revolves around the fact that information is overwhelmingly accessible; such accessibility, in my opinion, could be quite dangerous. However, you comment that Vinge presents his world in a way that makes the users appear dangerous, rather than the technology itself.
In Dave Clark's EN 855 class, Rhetoric of Technology and Management, we read some of Andrew Feenberg's writings on the various theories of technology. First, there's instrumental theory, which (in a nutshell) argues that technologies are only "tools" meant to serve the needs of users. If you subscribe to that theory, Vinge's world seems right on par. The wearables and sming and all these technologies are simply there to serve the needs of the characters (whether their needs are illegal or not). This theory upholds the "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument.
Then there's substantive theory, which basically argues that technologies essentially create a new cultural system that changes the social world. In such a world, "technology is not simply a means," Feenberg writes, "but has become an environment and a way of life" (pg. 8). This theory could also directly apply to Vinge's world.
I can't decide which argument is more convincing. Are users controlling the machines, or are the machines controlling the users?
I could probably keep going with this debate - after all, they're theories, which means there is no right answer. I just found the connection between Feenberg and Vinge interesting and applicable!
I was thinking about the sming also and physical movement from/by/with a sming. (sminging?) Is is truly silent in that there is no physical movement associated with it? Is the transmission of an electric signal through a neural pathway (which is the visual that I associated with a sming) silent? Also, I thought that Vinge was saying that sming was perhaps the only place that could not be intercepted by someone else (spying) and was therefore safe and secure, despite being clunky. I agreed that his visual representation of it was clunky, but I thought that was apt because he described it as a clunky process and therefore relatively unused, except when the user wanted utmost security and no risk of spying.
Oh, and by the way, I also was seriously disappointed that Rabbit's true identity was never revealed. It's the main reason I wanted to finish the book!
I was so impressed with myself that near pg 150 I finally figured out that "sming" was silent messaging in text abbreviated writing. Then it was on to "ping"... But something in your post really caught my attention. It seemed the more technology advanced, the more writing and reading people did. It was they physical action that changed - which one might argue has implications for what "writing" really is and returns us to the question of tangibility and its traits that we English majors fall in love with.
Attempting to answer your question.
It's a typical problem in science fiction and fantasy. The writers of these genres assume your a fan and so when they introduce something that is a staple within the genre they don't want to insult or bore you with an explanation.
Though Vinge never actually says that Rabbit is an artificial intelligence it seems safe to assume this is the case. However I think that it is a failure on his part to not make this clear to those who are not familiar to the genre.
There is only one part of the book where this is suggested, and I don't think Rabbit is handled with particular grace especially at the end of the novel.
A bit more insight into Rabbit's nature, status, and origin could have been useful. Yet we are left to assume that Rabbit is a an artificial intelligence that developed in a digital-organic fashion. Meaning that he somehow grew out of the internet. I'm willing to be challenged on this if somebody wishes to disagree, but I've read a fair amount of this stuff, and this was the only thing I could come up with.
Marla,
"So is writing safe and sound?" Creepy!
In thinking about Rainbows End and the idea that perhaps a simple technology (writing--although, maybe not so simple after our first class!) can be figuratively raped is scary. Me and my optimistic nature want for writing to be simple and carefree and interacting with others to be engaging and rhetorical (and here I am blogging a response to you... somehow I find this ironic? detrimental to my diploma? hmmm...)
In thinking about how Robert initially begins to respond to people--just taking it all in, doing 'normal' things such as searching for a job, my idea of writing as 'safe and sound' first began to be frustrated. I realized that Robert was not fighting back to those new and complicated technologies which were being spoken and happening around him. And, then, the epiphany hit--we do not fight the technologies that are happening around us, but welcome them with open arms and encourage our techies to create innovative, faster, and more creative technologies. Instead of pushing for intentional interaction, we encourage technology which will allow us to be in two places at once. And that, is scary! Especailly when thinking about writing... We can already read without going to a library or a bookstore. And, with cell phones, we can write email... just how safe is our writing? Is it protected from eyes which it is not ready for yet? Is it safer than when my 12-year old diary was hid under my bed so that my sisters couldn't read it? Could the scariness produce better texts? Hmm... Fight back and refuse technology? Embrace it with welcome arms? Not, sure, but I have to go answer a text message that just came in on my phone. I will get back to this ;)
On the question of Rabbit, know that the Wikipedia entry on Rainbows End also understands the character possibly to be non-human -- and who better than Wikipedia writers to comment on digitally-inflected SF?
Marla and Sara, the questions you raise about technology and how we conceive of digital technology -- its powers -- need to come up in class discussion, because they are a background against which our discussions of writing will take place. If you read the Wikipedia entry, and follow some of the links to read about Vinge's take on "The Singularity," there is a potentially very dark understanding of technology in the novel.
When I re-read the novel, I realized I had forgotten that the overarching frame of the book is Vaz's desire to develop "YGBM" "mind control" to forestall small groups or even individuals using the power of "mass death technology" to destroy the human world. (And to think that I am teaching Watchmen in my other class, where the driving tension of *that* book is the power of one individual to make the utilitarian/technological decision to kill millions in order to save the human world.)
So while Vinge is exploring how reading and writing change (among other forms of communication) with advances in technology, it is against a background of increasing technological extension in our lives as well as technological scale both individual and mass. (Which brings us back to Sara's comments about Feenberg's characterization of attitudes we can take toward our technologies.)
Oh I am looking forward to class discussion....
Darko Suvin's defintion: Science fiction is "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment."
I like Le Guin's; Suvin's is interesting, too. Anyway, there are as many definitions for "sciecne fiction" as there are books labeled "science fiction", ao I guess that's not my point. :-)
I do find myself interested by your question of the possibility of hope, which, in the way you framed it, aligns itself with the possibility of utopia. Another question might be: is the critical dystopia (thanks, Tom Moylan) the replacement of utopia? Personally, I think (hope!?! v.) hope (n.) is possible, as Le Guin's own "Dispossessed" gave me with hope, in an Anarchic way.
Perhaps, I find this to be the case, due to its seeming refutation of a binary system of logic. I must admit, though, my initial and immediate reaction to some of the spectres of technology you raise is... careful pause, at least, and fear and rejection, in the most extreme. I fear being a Luddite, so I think it through before opening my sming connection.
Thanks, everyone, for great comments! You've got me thinking!
Trevor, I had forgotten about the AI hypothesis in the novel. That makes a lot of sense, given not only Rabbit's technological superiority but his ability to "be" in numerous places at once and to control simultaneous events.
This really changes how I look at technology in the novel -- in terms of the instrumental vs. substantive theories that Sara mentioned. Wow - clearly "technology" is controlling the people and the events, rather than the other way around.
The wikipedia stuff was helpful, too. Thanks, Anne!
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