Saturday, August 20, 2016

The Utopium Conceit

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3 comments:

  1. jimf3:31 PM

    > One of the many annoying argumentative tics in futurological
    > discourse is the one I tend to think of as The Utopium Conceit,
    > in which. . . A Single Thing -- some phenomenon, material,
    > technique, imagined device -- is applied in turn to Everything,
    > and invested with a profitable and prophetic force
    > That! Will! Change! Everything!

    Funny you should mentioned that. I just read the transcript of
    a 1945 broadcast by Olaf Stapledon (in _An Olaf Stapledon Reader_,
    edited by Robert Crossley). This came just after the first
    atomic bombs were dropped but **before** the "intelligence
    explosion"-based "Singularity" talk of the past half century,
    but it sounds awfully familiar.

    ----------
    Social Implications of Atomic Power

    . . .

    Is atomic power to be used so as to bring final disaster, or to
    create a new **kind** of world-society. . .? . . .

    [I]f the present dangerous corner is turned, and the threatened
    atomic war avoided, . . . [w]e shall be plunged into a Second
    Industrial Revolution. All our familiar methods of transport and
    production will. . . be abandoned in favor of methods
    based on atomic power. This will cause immense social changes. . .

    As power increases, the possibilities alike of evil and good
    are increased. . . [Therefore, e]very child must be afforded
    the chance to develop into a splendid man or woman. . .
    [T]here must be the best possible food, medical service, education,
    and general living conditions; and. . . for all there must
    be suitable work and plenty of leisure. . .

    [W]e might use atomic power to abolish work altogether, but. . .
    [m]en need work as much as leisure, . . . the
    right sort of work, and not too much of it. . .
    [S]ince our aim must be to turn all workers into aristocrats,
    jobs must be planned for the needs of aristocrats. All work
    unsuited to aristocrats must be done by the universal slave,
    atomic power. . . Atomic power. . . will
    gradually abolish all soul-destroying labour, and create a vast
    number of new skills and crafts. . .

    Atomic power, by greatly reducing normal work hours, should greatly
    increase leisure and the ability to use it.

    It should also have an immense effect on education. . . [T]he
    appalling danger of the wrong use of atomic power may force us at
    last to ensure that all men shall be educated to distinguish
    between true and false social values. . . [W]hen power is
    almost limitless, we shall at last be able to allow to every
    individual the chance of a leisurely and liberal education. . .
    Atomic power makes it possible to do away with all serious frustration,
    and, therefore, to abolish the kind of environment which disposes
    the masses to such perverse faiths as Fascism. . .

    [D]omestic work will be transformed by labour-saving devices.
    Transport by atomic ships, atomic cars, atomic planes, will vastly
    increase communications. . . Cities will be rebuilt to ampler
    and. . . nobler plans. Mountains, when inconvenient, will
    be removed, coastlines changed to suit man's needs, deserts irrigated,
    the arctic and antarctic lands warmed for habitation. . .

    [W]ith atomic power, scientific research will leap forward.
    [D]isease will be abolished, maturity prolonged, maternity
    relieved of its excessive burden. Interplanetary travel will become
    possible. . . [W]e may breed special types of human
    beings to live in the extremely alien conditions of Mars, Venus, and
    perhaps Jupiter. . .

    What would be the use. . . of these wild ventures? . . .
    The only right answer is a religious answer. . .

    [T]he true function of atomic power is. . . [use] as a means
    for the. . . development of man's spiritual capacity. . .
    sensitivity, intelligence, love and
    creative action. . . the greatest possible diversity of individuals,
    of groups, of peoples, and perhaps of worlds. . .
    ====


    Wow. That turned out to be a bit of a bust. But. . .
    Wait a moment. . . wait a moment. . . Retargeting. . .
    Artificial Intelligence! [Nanotechnology!].

    Whew! That was close.

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  2. jimf3:47 PM

    The next essay in the same book (_An Olaf Stapledon Reader_)
    also contains some familiar rhetoric. Hey -- it may even
    turn out to be true, one way or another.

    -------------
    Mankind at the Crossroads (1947)

    . . .

    I like to think of the career of our species by means of the
    image of a river. The obscure source from which the river
    sprang, the biological mutations from which _homo sapiens_
    originated, lies perhaps as much as half a million years
    away in the past. From that point it wanders slowly over a
    vast plain. Change in human affairs is incredibly slow.
    Tribes rise and fall. Crude techniques are discovered, forgotten,
    and discovered again, only to be lost once more. Conditions
    in men's childhood are generally much as they will be in his
    old age. For hundreds of thousands of years the river wanders
    sluggishly hither and thither.

    But some mere six thousand years ago the river of human life
    reaches a somewhat steeper place. The waters hurry forward
    as rapids. Owing to improvements in the methods of production,
    there is time and energy to spare for new kinds of activity.
    No doubt the majority still spend their years in crippling
    toil. Indeed their servitude becomes even more oppressive.
    But civilization has begun. For the few, at least,
    there is more comfort; for very few, the new ease and leisure
    opens up the possibility of the life of the mind.

    The hurrying river still accelerates, with the ever-increasing
    improvement in the means of production. The world of a man's
    old age becomes appreciably different from the world of his
    youth. At last, only two or three centuries ago, comes
    modern science. The advent of science, seen in the perspective
    of man's whole career, is sudden, almost instantaneous, and
    catastrophic. The river of human history is in the very act
    of plunging over a precipice as a cataract. Change is
    immensely accelerated. Today, the world of a man's maturity
    is bewilderingly different in kind from the world of his youth.
    We live in that moment of history when the turbulent waters
    slip over the cliff's edge for perpendicular descent, no
    man knows wither. . .
    ====

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  3. Dale Carrico7:47 PM

    Reminds me of Richard Rorty's riposte to Alasdair MacIntyre's dismissive summary of liberal society as one in which everybody is reduced to being a manager, a therapist, or a rich aesthete... that this would in fact be utopia so long as everybody gets to be a rich aesthete if and when they want to be. No techno-transcendentalism required, just progressive democratic reform and pragmatic problem-solving.

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