How well do we write about the future?

Subject: How well do we write about the future?
From: The Shambles
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 12:53 PM

When we write about the future how well do we do it?

In a recent thread, there was a reference to 'remember George Orwell's 1984'. I know I am getting old as many of the significant dates, from literature and song, that were set in the future, are now in the past. 1984 has been and gone and now (pause for a bit of Richard Strauss), 2001 will soon be upon us.

Maybe with the exception of 1984, these dates seemed to their writers and certainly to me, as being a long way away in some far distant future. Do the works lose the main part of their appeal and some of their significance when these dates are past?

I have always liked a song by Robin Williamson, of Incredible String Band fame, called 'Way Back In The 1960s', which was written in 1967ish. It was taking a nostalgic view, looking back at the 1960s, from an unspecified date in the future and making comparisons to present conditions. On first listening, it would not be apparent that the song was written in the 1960s.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: khandu
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 01:04 PM

One of the worst songs of the future, in my opinion, is "In the year 2525". I never did see why that song was so popular. The chord progression was taken from the past, having been used countless times in much better songs. khandu

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: GUEST,Luther
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 01:55 PM

well, taking Orwell as an example, pretty well. "1984" was written in 1948, Orwell simply reversed the last two digits and came up with 1984. If you read it as a literal prediction of "what's going to happen in the year 1984", you're missing the point, entirely.

As prediction it fails on this extremely significant point -- physical terror as the dominant method of control in the totalitarian state. But Orwell and Stalin were contemporaries, and Orwell had good reason to fear and despise the bolsheviks (anyone who doesn't get this, read "Homage To Catalonia".)

But doublethink, newspeak, the propaganda state and the complete and impenetrable intellectual surrender of the political class -- he was dead on, there.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: khandu
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 02:00 PM

After pondering this, I thought of John, who did a great job of writing about the future in the Book of Revelations! khandu

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 02:03 PM

Tell me, Khandu, what you get out of that book. That is like my least-favorite book of the Bible, after maybe Daniel and Ezekiel. Maybe I'm just not into that future stuff. Books like 1984 and other disutopias leave me cold too.

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 02:58 PM

Thread Creep!!

When I was 27 years old and newly free, I said that I might marry again when I was 54 to ensure a companion in my old age. Well, I'm now almost 65 and I'm not old yet! If I were to say that now, I'd probably say I'd get married again when I was 80- but when the time comes, I'll probably not feel old enough yet.

Ebbie

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Bert
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 03:32 PM

In 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress', Heinlein has the hero using a slide rule. I guess he underestimated human gullibility to advertising and didn't foresee the accuracy worshipping cult that was spawned by the introduction of the calculator.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 03:36 PM

I wouldn't say that physical terror is "the dominant method of control" in 1984. It's there in reserve, tobe used when the other methods fail, and that is still true enough when you get down to it. And it's not even physical really - the ultimate horror of the book is that it ends up with Winston Smith loving Big Brother. If it had ended up with him screaming defiance as he died, that would have been an upbeat ending.

The dominant method of control in 1984 is control of information, and the use of mass media to seduce people into accepting and embracing their own oppression, and the oppression of others.

It feels different, because we've got a superficial kind of affluence, and Big Brother's face is fragmented into a mass of corporate logoes. But essentially, Orwell has proved frighteningly close to the age we are moving into as the 20th century winds down.

Here's a song I wrote in that kind of mood.

Well you may talk about the future,
try to get me enthused
but the dreams I'm having lately seem to leave me bemused -
like, I've been there, and I've seen there,
and I've been disabused.
Nothing straightens out your notions like Millennium Flu.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 03:39 PM

Accuracy worship, hell. Using a calculator is easier than using a slide rule.

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Bert
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 03:42 PM

Easier yes, but a LOT SLOWER. A slide rule takes a little skill to use and there are things that you can do with a slide rule that are impossible with a calculator.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 03:44 PM

Unfortunately they're all things your average guy-in-the-street has no need for. And if you want to work out sales tax, accuracy is pretty darned important.

Asimov had Hari Selden using a calculator in Foundation. Guess he read the future better than Heinlein.

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Bert
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 03:51 PM

And you see these guys taking hours doing engineering calculations accurate to twelve figures and then using a safety factor of eight. A slide rule would do the job in minutes. Ah well! there's no call for skill nowadays. Such is life in the information age.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 03:54 PM

No, it's just that there's no call for OBSOLETE skills. Never is, really.

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 03:58 PM

"there's no call for OBSOLETE skills" - so what are we all doing playing this old music on ancient instruments?

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: mousethief
Date: 10 Oct 00 - 03:59 PM

Obviously playing old music on ancient instruments is not an obsolete skill. Thank goodness!

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: GUEST,Luther
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 01:59 PM

McGrath, well, yes -- but physical terror is a presence in the world of 1984 in a way that no white middle class American experiences. Winston achieves transcendent love of Big Brother only after long imprisonment, starvation, torture -- there's really no corollary to this in the modern US.

So there is quite a substantive difference between the Stalinist model Orwell drew on and the current US "democracy" -- neither torture, nor even the implicit threat of torture, have proven necessary to achieve near total control. Nor has overt censorship -- information is, of course, strictly controlled by omission from mainstream sources, but we're free to pick up a copy of Z magazine, attend a Chomsky lecture, or vote for Ralph Nader, without fear of imprisonment and torture.

enh, why should I care -- I have my nine bean rows, and a hive for the honey bee. That may be the ultimate question -- is there something essential in human consciousness that demands social justice. Orwell seemed to think so, in 1984 he has the party go to considerable effort to beat it out of Winston.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Bert
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 02:01 PM

How many of us in America are not allowed to have 'a hive for the honey bee'?

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: GUEST,Luther
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 02:09 PM

well, Bert, it looks like quite a few Colombians are about to be deprived of theirs.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: DougR
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 02:52 PM

Ebbie: you might want to check out the condom thread, just in case.

dougR

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 06:16 PM

Right, DougR- and I'm sure they're greatly improved over the innertube days. *BG*

Ebbie

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Naemanson
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 06:29 PM

GUEST,Luther wrote "Winston achieves transcendent love of Big Brother only after long imprisonment, starvation, torture -- there's really no corollary to this in the modern US."

What do you call TV?

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Oct 00 - 08:25 PM

"white middle class American" - but most people aren't white middle class Americans.

"White middle class Americans" are the equivalent of Orwell's Inner Party. If they don't step radically out of line, like Winstoin Smith, they'll get by. And if they do, well the brainwashing techniques might be a bit different. But they are pretty effective.

"long imprisonment, starvation, torture -- there's really no corollary to this in the modern US" - is that really true?

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Grab
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 10:02 AM

Depends on whether you think of these books as (a)predictions of the future (eg. Arthur C. Clarke), (b) extrapolations of current trends in society for use as a parable or satire on modern life (eg. Snow Crash, 1984), or (c) pure entertainment for the masses (most of it).

Pure prediction almost always loses. Heinlein did a good piece about futurology in which he took the example of the car. Some S/F writers realised that cars would be the way of the future. Some even thought about the necessary infrastructure. But none of them came up with the revolution in human relations that "parking" made possible, or drive-through service. On a side-note, some had man visiting the Moon and Mars in space-ships, but still using horses or steam-power when they got there!

In a similar example, Moore predicted 30 years back that processor power would double every 18 months. Some people agreed with him, and S/F writers went to town on all-powerful computers. But no-one came up with the revolution of a computer on every desk until Bill Gates.

The problem is that you may be able to extrapolate technical data into the future, assuming constant advances in technology. The problem comes when you try to work out what effect it could have on society, bcos we're just not geared up to deal with sociological changes on the scale in which they happen. Had any Victorian known that young ppl would be using their personal transport as a means of attracting the opposite sex (and as a location for sex), they'd have called it the fall of civilisation, or more likely they just wouldn't have believed it was possible. The best novel recently for that is Snow Crash, which posits a country of "Burbclaves" (suburban enclaves), each with their own police and laws, so one Burbclave is for white racists, another is for black businessmen, etc - this isn't too far off the truth already.

Grab.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: GUEST,Fibula Mattock
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 10:23 AM

Interestingly, "We" by the Russian writer Evgeny Zamiatin was the basis for Orwell's 1984, so that particular type of dystopian vision goes back earlier than 1948. I think Zamiatin had an influence on Huxley as well, but Huxley's dystopia was far less frightening (to me anyway).

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: GUEST,Fibula Mattock
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 10:32 AM

By the way, don't forget Arthur C. Clarke, the master of predictions. He invented satellites in his writings. And was big into Artificial Intelligence, etc. The man's a genius. I may be mistaken, but I think he had a vision of something along the lines of the Internet too...

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Midchuck
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 10:54 AM

Speaking from the viewpoint of an avid science fiction reader for nearly 50 years, the trouble seems to be that no one who predicts is sufficiently realistic about the economic aspects.

Most science fiction I read many years ago had numerous manned space stations, lunar, martian, and asteroid belt colonies by now. And they didn't presume any technology that doesn't actually exist, at least in theory. They just didn't realize that no one would build the spaceships because there was no short-term profit in it.

On the other hand, more has happened with computers than the old writers predicted. It was assumed that computing power would increase, but computers were seen as getting bigger, and continuing to be owned by governments, large corporations, or universities, and requiring teams of specialists to run them. Desktops came about because there was a lot of short-term profit to be made in selling them - and they led to the internet as a medium open to the ordinary citizen.

Also, most science fiction in earlier decades assumed World War III would take place sooner or later, and result in either Pax Americana, or the destruction of everything. Nobody except Ayn Rand suggested that the Soviet Union would simply collapse because State socialism just doesn't work in the long term.

Peter.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: The Shambles
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 04:54 PM

I am not an avid rader of too much science fiction but I have never read any predictions of the mobile phone and the implications of human beings never being out of contact?

Plenty of short term profit there....

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 05:32 PM

One of Asimov's "robot" novels had a world populated very sparsley, in which people seldom met face-to-face, and did their major communication by a sort of interactive TV...much like the internet has developed. Hadn't thought of that for years. A lot of the story hinged on the social/emotional ramifications of the isolation. Maybe I oughta re-read it...*wry smile*

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 07:29 PM

People don't think of E.M.Forster as a science fiction writer - but try The Machine Stops

That link gives you the whole text online. Which is just the kind of thing you'd get in the work in question.

Frighteningly prescient.We're well on the way there now, God help us.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: The Shambles
Date: 09 Nov 00 - 02:24 PM

Way Back in the 1960s
by Robin Williamson

I was a young man back in the 1960s.
Yes, you made your own amusements then,
For going to the pictures;
Well, the travel was hard, and I mean
We still used the wheel.
But you could sit down at your table
And eat a real food meal.

But hey, you young people, well I just do not know,
And I can't even understand you
When you try to talk slow.

There was one fellow singing in those days,
And he was quite good, and I mean to say that
His name was Bob Dylan, and I used to do gigs too
Before I made my first million.
That was way, way back before,
Before wild World War Three,
When England went missing,
And we moved to Paraguayee.

But hey, you young people, I just do not know,
And I can't even understand you
When you try to talk slow.

Well, I got a secret, and don't give us away.
I got some real food tins for my 91st birthday,
And your grandmother bought them
Way down in the new antique food store,
And for beans and for bacon, I will open up my door.

But hey, you young people, well I just do not know,
And I can't even understand you
When you try to talk slow.

Well, I was a young man back in the 1960s.

Subject: RE: How well do we write about the future?
From: Greyeyes
Date: 09 Nov 00 - 03:46 PM

I hadn't read this thread previously, but some really interesting stuff. One point that hasn't been made is that when I was still a student it was always assumed that although Orwell turned around the digits for "1984", he genuinely believed that the type of totalitarian state he was describing could come about in the UK. It was also generally assumed that one of the reasons it didn't was because of the warnings that people like him had posted.

Diverging somewhat, has anyone come across Tad Williams "Otherland" series? It bears out what has been said about technological advances being geared to short term profit. The power wordwide in his futuristic vision has shifted to the wealthy businessmen, heads of multi-national conglomerates, to a frightening extent. But it isn't hard to see how that could happen/is happening already.