I would prefer not to
Here is my list of fav. fiction that forewarned about the dangers of technological utopianism.
"The truth is so hard to discern, it sometimes needs fiction to make it visible".
I like to think that my time reading books, consuming art, sharing and talking about the “possible” (which is essential to any vital human mind) - is a meaningful and worthy activity. It may not be but I’m going with it. Current popular trends towards zero reading of fiction and rabid consumption of just blow ‘em up, superhero style movies to the contrary.
Over my career in education too, I’ve thought and read a lot about technology and its use in education. This too, is part of my meaningful and worthy “activity” of being. It’s how I engage with the world.
Of late, there is a lot of pitter-patter and drum-beating by the savages about AI and technological utopias comin’ soon … Sorry, I’m not buying it. Why? Well, I prefer not to …
That’s an allusion to Melville’s - Bartleyby. He was a “scrivener” - a learned man of letters. It’s a good read these days, given how many prognosticate the end of writing and the advent of machine generated text for our every day, moment to next moment consumption.
Bartleyby just gives up. He won’t participate when he realizes he’s being asked to just continue being a “cog” in a great big text generating machine.
Now, you can read it on many levels, existential, philosophical, religious, political, technological. I’ll let you read and decide. But I thought I’d take this moment to share a few more works in the library of my mind, on this topic.
This list is for my own future reference and return but you might like them too. Please share your own gems in the comments.
Dune. Frank Herbert, 1965. I’ll start with probably the best known work. As a kid, I read science-fiction voraciously. Dune, along with Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land were at the top of my bookshelf. I’ll just sum it up with its premise - “Man may not be replaced.” It’s a call to fight and rage against the machine. A simple Grecian tragedy set in the future - at heart a stern call to beware of tyrants.
The Machine Stops. E.M. Forster. 1910. It’s a world where the machine is everything and human dependency on the machine is total. The machine IS G-D.
All were bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten. Things went from bad to worse unchallenged. They readily adapted themselves to every caprice of the Machine. - The Machine Stops, E.M. Forster.
The Library Of Babel. Jorge Luis Borges. 1945. Borges describes a universe which is but an infinite library of hexagonal rooms. Meaning has been usurped and there is just the hum of randomness in language and the books. It’s a story of ideas and a sharp metaphor for today’s rush to digitize everything into ones and zeros, pixels and code, run through a labyrinth of cables and flashing lights.
The Great Automatic Grammatizator. Roald Dahl. 1954. You got to love Dahl! This story predicted our emerging nonsense, the language pollution on the horizon, belched by LLMs and fired by miles and miles of data centers. The rules of grammar and composition have been discovered so thus - automation of all ideas, all text is possible.
Farenheit 451 The Veldt. The Pedestrian. Ray Bradbury. 1950s. Such an accessible writer, Bradbury warned of our dependency on technology and its harms. He loved libraries but foresaw the erosion of human agency by way of technology. A collosus - read and think. You’ll be better for it.
“Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.” - Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451
P.S. Not fiction but Adam Curtis’ documentaries detailing the growth of “materialism” - the belief in “simplified beings” and man as machines to be commoditized, conformed, controlled, harvested … is a must.
