You all know the cliche. The aliens inevitably say “Resistance is futile”. They then go on to illustrate this in some horrifying manner (melting the dog, eating someone’s brain) after which our hero dutifully demonstrates the limits of futility.
Today, more people are telling us that existence is futile. Eoghann over at Solar Flare says there’s no SF Fandom anymore; the folks at TOR are analyzing the implications of feces found floating in cool aid on ‘Hard’ SF and the classics have become historical documents. (While on the email list WHOSE NAME SHALL NOT BE MENTIONED, some people are saying that historical documents are unimportant.)
Oy. Vey.
Eoghan highlights the splintering of fandom. From the FANS ARE SLANS ’30s and ’40s (when FAN meant you shared letters with other fans, communicated through fanzines and letter columns and everyone was intersted in SCIENCE FICTION) to the niche-market, electronically-isolated present, where, apparently, the purpose of fandom is to find individuals who are exactly like you. So you can all agree that some television show featuring SF stereotypes IS, in fact, the MOST brilliant thing to ever have been created and why oh why are they cancelling it and how oh how can we get them to create more direct-to-DVD episodes – so we can watch them and then sit around discussing how it is, in fact, the MOST brilliant thing ever created…
Somehow, fandom has migrated from a small click of nerdy, geeky, opinionated, argumentative, often strange, always creative individuals into a gaggle of gum-popping California girls who all wear the same fashions, all have a poster of the same teen heart throb over their vanities and who spend endless hours text-messaging each other about how like, awesome, like, each other are.
I always thought fandom itself was the niche. The purpose of being was to
A: confirm the fact that you weren’t the only one in the world who was crazed enough to read and enjoy that stuff
B: confirm that, not only weren’t you not crazed but, in fact, you were an extremely enlightened, forward-thinking individual, smarter than the average primate, someone with special insight into the future and an asset to the community. You were a resource, not a drooling village idiot
C. express yourself. If that meant orgies in room 714 – what the heck, you’re an enlightened member of society. Those not interested will be in the lobby or sitting in the hall (along with those not invited). This was FANDOM. Normal societal constraints do not apply. We’re going to a better place called ‘the future’, check your mundane reality at the door
D. to find someone to argue with. Argumentation hones the critical thinking skills, the debate skills, even social skills. Arguing with the wage slave on the bus to work over whether Stranger in a Strange Land really was the best thing ever written in the history of mankind is just. not. satisfying. You can have a knock-down, dragged-out barroom brawl with a kitten, but is it really going to satisfy your ego in the morning? FANS are intelligent, critically thinking animals. You want to try and convince one of them that your favorite author is better than their favorite author? Bare knuckles time, folks. Besides, it is NOT possible to discuss the relative merits of 16 different proposed methods of FTL travel with the average man on the street. Nor is it socially acceptable to invent new religions whilst simultaneously trying to win an elevator race.
Interaction. INTER. It used to be that the only ‘shared’ interest was this nebulous thing called Science Fiction. What that encompassed was up for discussion – lots of discussion. Now we’re expected to focus in on one television show, or one movie, or one anime or one game, find the other people who are equally hypnotized by that same thing and isolate ourselves from everyone and everything else so that we can wallow in the wonderousness of our fetishized fetish.
Seems like the only cross-fertilization that’s still going on is that orgy in room 714. To which no one was invited. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what to call the activities that take place at an unattended orgy.
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I agree with Jo. The singularity is not going to happen and authors concerned about having to explain why they still have real people inhabiting their stories post-singularity should just relax.
Why won’t it happen? Because most of the takes on ’what the singularity means’ are Frankensteinian horror stories, and as we’ve seen time an again, new technologies are never expressed by their extremes; TNT didn’t blow up the world, nor is it being used solely for the benefit of mankind.
Machine intelligence and human augmentation will likewise express themselves in some middle ground. The self-aware Skynet that evolves itself past all human understanding is just as likley to develop the viewpoint that respect for all intelligent species is the proper moral position as it is to develop the idea that we can be used as batteries. Some people will become augmented beyond all recognition, but if they get too uppity, the billions of non-augments scraping out existence in their forgotten slum worlds will pull them down.
But mostly I believe that eventually, the majority of human beings will recognize that just because we can do something doesn’t mean we ought to do something. Oh hey, I can be tied into the net 24/7! Boring. You know what? Today, I’m going for a walk in the woods and I’m not even going to share the experience on YouTube, or Twitter or Flickr or Photobucket. I’m just going to listen to the birds chirp and the brook babble
People only think that they’re ‘multi-tasking’ or making themselves more aware and more tied in with the devices they carry, the filters they set up, the bots, the aggregators. In actuality, they are creating a more LIMITED awareness for themselves. The necessity of having to create filters in order to be able to handle the data overload doesn’t enhance, it restricts your awareness to what you think you need to know right now. The problem is, none of us knows ‘what we need to know’.
Like the new generation of fans that’s only interested in what they’re interested in. They’ll never be exposed to the next great thing because they’re too busy obsessing.
We’ll wake up. Eventually, being a person will be more important than being tied in. Besides – do you really want to electronically ‘experience’ an orgy comprised of nerdy, geeky, opinionated, argumentative, often strange, always creative, individuals?
