Old books and writings prescient of modern tech concerns
December 20, 2022 11:42 AM Subscribe
I'm collecting examples for a project of writing throughout history that has accurately predicted or at least portended some of the issues we deal with today relating to tech: distraction, information overload, social networks, AI and related ethics, robots and their killer or other variants.
I'm canvassing all of history so whether it's Thales, Burton, Forster or Bradbury I'm here for it!
Some examples of what I'm looking for:
Anatomy of Melancholy: An overabundance of information can shut down human reasoning
Walden: Rejection of the immediacy of news and media
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Lone technological advance used to enforce an ideology
Erewhon: Prediction of AI overtaking humanity
The Machine Stops: Basically the genesis for this idea, astonishingly accurate prediction of AI/automated lifestyle
Fahrenheit 451: Shift from long-form/slow media culture to fast, streamlined one
That sort of thing. If you have any quotes that's even better. Also fine with non-fiction or essay type stuff, Ludd and the like.
I do want to include some closer-to-contemporary sources but they're comparably thick on the ground once sci-fi really gets established. This is more about the older works that were particularly prescient or imaginative.
Some examples of what I'm looking for:
Anatomy of Melancholy: An overabundance of information can shut down human reasoning
Walden: Rejection of the immediacy of news and media
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Lone technological advance used to enforce an ideology
Erewhon: Prediction of AI overtaking humanity
The Machine Stops: Basically the genesis for this idea, astonishingly accurate prediction of AI/automated lifestyle
Fahrenheit 451: Shift from long-form/slow media culture to fast, streamlined one
That sort of thing. If you have any quotes that's even better. Also fine with non-fiction or essay type stuff, Ludd and the like.
I do want to include some closer-to-contemporary sources but they're comparably thick on the ground once sci-fi really gets established. This is more about the older works that were particularly prescient or imaginative.
Vonnegut. I was thinking Galapagos, which deals directly with a post apocalyptic society, but then I came across this masters thesis that cites Slaughterhouse-Five and The Sirens of Titan.
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:16 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mygothlaundry at 12:16 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Vannevar Bush’s 1945 essay “As We May Think” is quite late, by your timeline, and he was drawing on various kinds of thinking that were already extant, but he projected that forward to something that squares well with much of how we currently do… a lot of things. Check it out.
posted by cupcakeninja at 12:39 PM on December 20, 2022
posted by cupcakeninja at 12:39 PM on December 20, 2022
distraction, information overload
Foucault gets something out of Seneca about this in "Self-Writing"--search for "'In reading of many books is distraction.' By going constantly from book to book, without ever stopping, without returning to the hive now and then with one’s supply of nectar —hence without taking notes or constituting a treasure store of reading—one is liable to retain nothing, to spread oneself across different thoughts, and to forget oneself." More famously, Plato's Phaedrus was maybe too skeptical about the role writing in general could play in learning and remembering.
AI and related ethics, robots and their killer or other variants
The earliest philosophical work that comes to mind is sort of the inverse--La Mettrie supposing human beings are like machines. Along the same lines, Mary Shelley speculated human beings could be frozen and thawed successfully--taken along with Frankenstein, maybe that's two votes we're not so special. And for 19th C. anxieties about automata, there's Hoffmann and all the stuff in this FPP. Searching in Jess Nevins's Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, 2nd ed., there are also like two dozen hits for "robot" that are probably relevant.
In the 20th C., what comes to mind are silent films about robots and automation that aren't well known that basically all suggested automation / robotics would be unpredictable, undesirable, or perverse. In the 1921 Italian film The Mechanical Man, the mechanical man goes on a rampage and fights another robot. In the 1926 Charley Bowers film He Done His Best, Charley semi-automates a restaurant to deal with a union strike, but it's a struggle and doesn't work out for him. And the misogynistic 1927 cartoon "Koko in 1999" also makes automation look unappealing (among other things, Koko buys a woman from a machine, gets married by a robot officiant, has babies delivered by a robot stork, etc., and no one is happy about it).
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:19 PM on December 20, 2022
Foucault gets something out of Seneca about this in "Self-Writing"--search for "'In reading of many books is distraction.' By going constantly from book to book, without ever stopping, without returning to the hive now and then with one’s supply of nectar —hence without taking notes or constituting a treasure store of reading—one is liable to retain nothing, to spread oneself across different thoughts, and to forget oneself." More famously, Plato's Phaedrus was maybe too skeptical about the role writing in general could play in learning and remembering.
AI and related ethics, robots and their killer or other variants
The earliest philosophical work that comes to mind is sort of the inverse--La Mettrie supposing human beings are like machines. Along the same lines, Mary Shelley speculated human beings could be frozen and thawed successfully--taken along with Frankenstein, maybe that's two votes we're not so special. And for 19th C. anxieties about automata, there's Hoffmann and all the stuff in this FPP. Searching in Jess Nevins's Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, 2nd ed., there are also like two dozen hits for "robot" that are probably relevant.
In the 20th C., what comes to mind are silent films about robots and automation that aren't well known that basically all suggested automation / robotics would be unpredictable, undesirable, or perverse. In the 1921 Italian film The Mechanical Man, the mechanical man goes on a rampage and fights another robot. In the 1926 Charley Bowers film He Done His Best, Charley semi-automates a restaurant to deal with a union strike, but it's a struggle and doesn't work out for him. And the misogynistic 1927 cartoon "Koko in 1999" also makes automation look unappealing (among other things, Koko buys a woman from a machine, gets married by a robot officiant, has babies delivered by a robot stork, etc., and no one is happy about it).
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:19 PM on December 20, 2022
I was very startled at Anna to the Infinite Power's prediction of the internet and specifically Google Maps, and the idea that entities that controlled these maps could track individuals and tailor results to manipulate individual behaviors (the Annas are kept unaware of one another's existence for years because the mapping software tells each Anna that there's a violent protest or other disturbance to be avoided whenever there's a chance two Annas would cross paths, and of course no one ever leaves home without mapping their route). The internet didn't exist when the book was written, and she doesn't imagine cell phones, so the prescience remains really striking to me.
posted by shadygrove at 2:04 PM on December 20, 2022
posted by shadygrove at 2:04 PM on December 20, 2022
Andri Snær Magnasson's Lovestar was written in 2002 and predicts everything the rise of the influencer to the megalomania of an elon-musk type business tycoon. I believe it's required reading in Icelandic high schools and it's fantastic. Translated into dozens of languages as well.
on the nonfiction side, Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death from 1985 is mostly about television, but is so so so relevant to the internet we have now.
posted by wowenthusiast at 2:38 PM on December 20, 2022
on the nonfiction side, Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death from 1985 is mostly about television, but is so so so relevant to the internet we have now.
posted by wowenthusiast at 2:38 PM on December 20, 2022
I see that Vonnegut has already been cited in other categories, but Player Piano directly addresses the perils of technology/automation.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 3:50 PM on December 20, 2022
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 3:50 PM on December 20, 2022
You might want to look into the work of L.M. Sacasas. From the About page of his Substack: "The Convivial Society is a newsletter exploring the relationship between technology and society. It’s grounded in the history and philosophy of technology, with more than a sprinkling of media ecology."
He spoke with Ezra Klein in August of 2001.
posted by sockpup at 4:28 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
He spoke with Ezra Klein in August of 2001.
posted by sockpup at 4:28 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
You might want to look into the work of L.M. Sacasas. From the About page of his Substack: "The Convivial Society is a newsletter exploring the relationship between technology and society. It’s grounded in the history and philosophy of technology, with more than a sprinkling of media ecology."
I came here to recommend Ivan Illich, whose 1973 Tools for Conviviality (and Deschooling Society in other ways) has some really prescient ideas about technology's oppressive or liberatory (i.e. convivial) potential. This newsletter looks great!
posted by jshttnbm at 5:14 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
I came here to recommend Ivan Illich, whose 1973 Tools for Conviviality (and Deschooling Society in other ways) has some really prescient ideas about technology's oppressive or liberatory (i.e. convivial) potential. This newsletter looks great!
posted by jshttnbm at 5:14 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Neuromancer by William Gibson anticipated a ton of the technology-related issues you mention and related stuff, including basically the internet, virtual reality/metaverse, uncontrollable AIs, technological body implants, and a ton of other stuff. Arguably he was not the first to spot any of these issues, but the way he pulled them all together is astounding. He only missed the cell phone!
posted by Mid at 6:12 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Mid at 6:12 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
John Brunner -
The Sheep Look Up (1972) depicts ecological catastrophe in America.
Brunner is credited with coining the term "worm" (in computing) and predicting the emergence of computer viruses[4] in his 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider, in which he used the term to describe software which reproduces itself across a computer network. Brunner's work has also been credited for prefiguring modern developments such as genetic engineering, same-sex marriage, online encyclopedias, the legalization of cannabis, and the development of Viagra.[5]
These four novels Stand on Zanzibar (1968), The Jagged Orbit (1969), The Sheep Look Up (1972) and The Shockwave Rider (1975), have been called the "Club of Rome Quartet", named after the Club of Rome, whose 1972 report The Limits to Growth warned of the dire effects of overpopulation.
Ages since I re-read Brunner, he's been mentioned on MeFi consistently, has been a great favorite of mine.
posted by theora55 at 6:13 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
The Sheep Look Up (1972) depicts ecological catastrophe in America.
Brunner is credited with coining the term "worm" (in computing) and predicting the emergence of computer viruses[4] in his 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider, in which he used the term to describe software which reproduces itself across a computer network. Brunner's work has also been credited for prefiguring modern developments such as genetic engineering, same-sex marriage, online encyclopedias, the legalization of cannabis, and the development of Viagra.[5]
These four novels Stand on Zanzibar (1968), The Jagged Orbit (1969), The Sheep Look Up (1972) and The Shockwave Rider (1975), have been called the "Club of Rome Quartet", named after the Club of Rome, whose 1972 report The Limits to Growth warned of the dire effects of overpopulation.
Ages since I re-read Brunner, he's been mentioned on MeFi consistently, has been a great favorite of mine.
posted by theora55 at 6:13 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. Non-fiction published in 1954 that explores the relationship between humans, society, and technology (well, technique but no sense splitting hairs.) If it weren't for the fact that Ellul didn't have the words for what technology would become you'd think he was a time traveler.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 6:28 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by forbiddencabinet at 6:28 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
The Shockwave Rider is so prescient at times one can almost believe Brunner possessed a time machine.
posted by Mitheral at 7:00 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Mitheral at 7:00 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
heinlein invented "waldos", robotic hand analogs for working with hazardous materials. later called by the same. short story waldo.
stephenson foresaw end-stage capitalism and total web immersion in snow crash.
card wrote of a raging political debate on the net between his characters' locke and demosthenes personas in ender's game, probably before anyone but a few on 'the well' were doing it, and long before the emergence of political blogs in the early aughts.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:25 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
stephenson foresaw end-stage capitalism and total web immersion in snow crash.
card wrote of a raging political debate on the net between his characters' locke and demosthenes personas in ender's game, probably before anyone but a few on 'the well' were doing it, and long before the emergence of political blogs in the early aughts.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:25 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash is what both Second Life and Zuckerbergs Metaverse is based on.
posted by ananci at 9:18 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by ananci at 9:18 PM on December 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
"Today we stand on the threshold of a new industrial revolution – the revolution of automation. This is a revolution bright with the hope of a new prosperity for labor and a new abundance for America – but it is also a revolution which carries the dark menace of industrial dislocation, increasing unemployment, and deepening poverty. [...]- Senator John F. Kennedy, Remarks at the AFL-CIO Convention, Grand Rapids, June 7, 1960.
We have not created new machines so that they can destroy our prosperity and our economic health. Today – as we have done in the past – we must translate our skill and our inventive genius into abundance and strength and a better life for all Americans. [...]
And there is no reason why the advances of the future – like those of the past – should not bring even greater changes, easing the conditions of labor, shortening hours, lightening work and bringing new and cheaper and better products into every American home. "
(See also speech at Canton, Ohio, September 27, 1960.)
posted by Superilla at 10:28 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I appreciate all the responses so far! I'm writing them down.
At the risk of threadsitting (and stifling discovery of interesting works from relatively recently) I do want to emphasize that I'm particularly in search of earlier literature and writings. While foresight about computers and culture in the 1970s is fascinating, the same in the 1870s is remarkable - that's the kind of long-sightedness I'm aiming to highlight (e.g. Butler, Forster) in addition to recent thinkers like Brunner, Gibson, and Stephenson.
Also before anyone says it, I am planning on reading through the Unabomber manifesto, though whether it's right to include it in whatever I end up doing is another matter.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:42 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
At the risk of threadsitting (and stifling discovery of interesting works from relatively recently) I do want to emphasize that I'm particularly in search of earlier literature and writings. While foresight about computers and culture in the 1970s is fascinating, the same in the 1870s is remarkable - that's the kind of long-sightedness I'm aiming to highlight (e.g. Butler, Forster) in addition to recent thinkers like Brunner, Gibson, and Stephenson.
Also before anyone says it, I am planning on reading through the Unabomber manifesto, though whether it's right to include it in whatever I end up doing is another matter.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:42 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
I realize it's too recent, but just for completeness, there is Carl Sagan's book "Demon-Haunted World" (published by Ballantine Books, 1996). "I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy..."
posted by forthright at 11:44 PM on December 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by forthright at 11:44 PM on December 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
FWIW the 19th C. texts Jess Nevins mentions as having automata/proto-robots include ...
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:56 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
- E.T.A. Hoffmann, 1814/1817, "The Automata" and "The Sandman" (the latter being the automaton horror mentioned above--it shares at least three story elements with Machado de Assis's 1870 story "Captain Mendonça" so maybe they're related)
- Jane Loudon, 1827, The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (which evidently has clockwork judges and lawyers)
- Ludwig Tieck, 1835, Die Vogelscheuche (which from context I gather is more like a fairy tale about a scarecrow wearing human skin, likely putting this more squarely in the realm of Golem stories or animated statues like Prosper Merimée's 1837 "The Venus of Ille")
- Herman Melville, 1855, "The Bell-Tower" (often anthologized in collections that might have similar material worth looking at)
- Fitz-James O'Brien, 1859, "The Wondersmith" ("powered by trapped souls"--he cites someone else having a different opinion about whether this counts as SF)
- Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, 1886, The Future Eve (and the related earlier short story, "La Machine à gloire"--known for popularizing the term Andréide or Android)
- William Grove, 1888/1889, A Mexican Mystery and The Wreck of a World (two novels about a rogue and demonically-possessed train engine)
- Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny, 1888-1896, The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (it's unclear this actually has robots or if its introduction is mentioning robots as an example motif from later SF)
- Cyrus Cole, 1890, The Auroraphone (featuring communication with a society of Saturnians who have a rebellious robot laboring class called "dummies"--they look like Saturnians, but they're electrically powered)
- H.G. Wells, 1897, The War of the Worlds (specifically, some sort of handling machines the Martians had)
- Ambrose Bierce, 1899, "Moxon's Master" (a rogue automaton story)
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:56 PM on December 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks for doing that dive, Wobbuffet. It's interesting that some of the entries mention Erewhon but there isn't an entry for it that I saw.
Apparently Balzac's recently translated The Centenarian is along these lines. Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race as well.
I'll have to find the Czech work that introduced robot to the lexicon as well.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:05 AM on December 21, 2022
Apparently Balzac's recently translated The Centenarian is along these lines. Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race as well.
I'll have to find the Czech work that introduced robot to the lexicon as well.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:05 AM on December 21, 2022
Yeah, poking around in that ISFDB link for Melville did turn up that Butler's "Darwin Among the Machines" had been anthologized with it, along with Edgar Allan Poe (1836), "Maelzel's Chess-Player," and Frederick B. Perkins (1877), "The Man-Ufactory" among other things.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:18 AM on December 21, 2022
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:18 AM on December 21, 2022
Huh. Twenty years ago, when I took a course on Finnegans Wake, people were going on about James Joyce like he was the literary father of the internet. Today as I google around, it looks like there are still articles on that topic but it hasn't been developed as much as I would have guessed. Maybe Joyce was just one of the first authors people hit upon because of the multiple overlays of influence and the way characters' thought processes are detailed and developed over the course of the narrative?
posted by BibiRose at 4:59 AM on December 21, 2022
posted by BibiRose at 4:59 AM on December 21, 2022
I didn't see mentioned Rossum's Universal Robots by Karel Capek from 1920 (this may have been the "Czech work" the OP referenced). My college Honors English professor would be ticked off that I forgot one of the assignments I read for his class, don't tell Dr. Kelly.
posted by forthright at 9:59 AM on December 22, 2022
posted by forthright at 9:59 AM on December 22, 2022
I have three examples that portend modern internet relationships between people that have never met, perhaps an interest of mine as an early adopter of same, having met my now husband "on a computer!" back when that was astonishing instead of the only way anybody ever meets anymore.
1) Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer 1879 about a romance between telegraph operators
2) The Naked Sun, 1957, by Isaac Asimov which describes a world where it is so easy to be in each other's virtual presence that being in each other's ACTUAL presence is considered pretty disgusting.
3) Denise Calls Up ok not literature, a movie, and not so long ago, 1995, but still, as life has moved on from the moment in time when I saw this, I've been pretty impressed with how well it recognized that technology was making it easier and easier to be "with" each other and also avoid each other, and that THAT IS SOMETHING WE WANT TO DO.
posted by Jenny'sCricket at 4:07 AM on December 27, 2022
1) Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer 1879 about a romance between telegraph operators
2) The Naked Sun, 1957, by Isaac Asimov which describes a world where it is so easy to be in each other's virtual presence that being in each other's ACTUAL presence is considered pretty disgusting.
3) Denise Calls Up ok not literature, a movie, and not so long ago, 1995, but still, as life has moved on from the moment in time when I saw this, I've been pretty impressed with how well it recognized that technology was making it easier and easier to be "with" each other and also avoid each other, and that THAT IS SOMETHING WE WANT TO DO.
posted by Jenny'sCricket at 4:07 AM on December 27, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by SPrintF at 12:04 PM on December 20, 2022 [4 favorites]