Tomorrow Happens (16 page)

A while back, we spoke about the inevitable spread of cameras and databases? As George Orwell would surely point out, elites (government, corporate, criminal and so on . . .) will get these new powers of sight, no matter what the rules say. So we might as well have them too.

The metaphor of Oceania's telescreen is central here. In Orwell's world, those at the top of a rigid pyramidal hierarchy controlled the flow of information with fierce totality. Only propaganda filtered downward, while every iota or datum about the lives of prols flowed upward. Accountability went in just one direction.

Despite repeated efforts by our own hierarchs to justify one-way information flows, the true record of the last generation has been an indisputable and overwhelming dispersal of knowledge and the power to see. People are becoming addicted to knowing. Take the events that surrounded the tragedies of September 11, 2001. Most of the video we saw was taken by private citizens, a potentially crucial element in future emergencies. Private cell phones spread word quicker than official media. So did email and instant messaging when the telephone system got swamped. Swarms of volunteers descended on the disaster sites, as local officials quickly dropped their everyday concerns about liability or professional status in order to use all willing hands. The sole effective action to thwart terrorist plans was taken by individuals aboard United Flight 93, armed with intelligence and communication tools—and a mandate—outside official channels.

Is this a true and unstoppable trend? Has it been, in part driven by the inoculative effects of cautionary fiction such as
Nineteen-Eighty Four
? I can't even begin to prove the hypothesis.

Is this a different way to look at the effects and importance of literature? You bet it is. Scholars aren't used to considering the pragmatic fruits of fictional gedankenexperimentation, but perhaps it's time they started.

Recall our earlier analogy with the old villages that our ancestors lived in, till just a few decades ago. They, too, knew intimate details about almost everyone they met on a given day. Back then, you recognized maybe a thousand people. But we won't be limited by the capacity of organic vision and memory. Our enhanced eyes will scan ten billion fellow villagers. Our enhanced memories will know their reputations, and they will know ours.

This is obviously cause for mixed feelings and deep misgivings. Will it be the egalitarian "good village" of Andy Hardy movies . . . safe, egalitarian and warmly tolerant of eccentricity? Or the bad village of Frank Capra's Potterstown, a place steeped in hierarchies, feuds and petty bigotries, where the mighty and the narrowminded suppress all deviance from dismal normality?

Or even the vast, stifling, all-knowing "village" of Orwell's Oceania?

We'd better start arguing about this now—how to make the scary parts less scary, and the good parts better—because the village is coming back, like it or not.

The key to our success—both personal and as a society—will be agility in dealing with whatever the future hurls our way.

This is not the path prophesied in
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, which envisioned a brittle and bitter society—one that exploited every opportunity to stoke hatred and division among the ruled. One in which the common man is little better than a harried sheep, ignorant, disempowered and unable to imagine another way. So far, we seem aimed at avoiding that particular failure mode. (At least those who read science fiction cannot be accused of lacking imagination.)

Do we owe this fact, in part, to anti-Cassandras like George Orwell whose warnings, once they were heeded, thus never came true?

Is fear of dystopian nightmare a greater motivator and effectuator of change than any Utopian promise? Indeed, our tendency seems always to criticize whatever injustices remain unsolved, rather than ever pause to rejoice in what's been accomplished. That alone shows how deeply the lesson has been learned.

The worry that Orwell and others ignited in us still burns. It drives us on, far more effectively than any vague glowing promise of a better world.

We daren't let up. Not ever, because we've been shown the alternatives.

The world that George Orwell presented was—and remains—just too scary. It is one of the great services performed for us by science fiction, at its best.

¹
Orwell's books are often cited as warnings against science and technology . . . a terrible misinterpretation. While Oceania's tyrants gladly use certain technological tools to reinforce their grip on power, their order stifles every human ingredient needed for science and free enquiry. Beyond tools of suppression and surveillance, technology is stagnant, productivity declining. Innovation is subversive. It is a society that eats its seed corn and beats plowshares into useless statues. Yet, many critics persuade themselves that the Oceania elite, while evil, is somehow clever at the same time.

A similar fixation can be seen in popular interpretations of Mary Shelley's masterwork,
Frankenstein
, which is widely perceived as a polemic against science and the arrogation of God's powers. Yet, Shelley herself does not seem to hold that view. The "creature" begins in innocence and a state of tentative hopefulness. It is Victor Frankenstein's
subsequent
behavior that earns the reader's contempt. Frankenstein's vicious rejection and cruelty toward his own creation is the fault that brings pain to his world and unleashes his great punishment. Rather than rejecting science, the novel's moral appears to be "don't be a lousy dad." (Which is interesting, given Mary Shelley's personal background.)

The central lesson of both tales is that technology can be abused when it is monopolized by a narrow, secretive and self-deceiving elite, absent any accountability or outside criticism. Almost any modern scientist would call this obvious. And after growing up with such stories, many non-scientists find it apparent, as well. The warning is heard.
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²
The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy
? (Perseus), 1998.
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3
Criticism is the best antidote to error. Yet most humans, especially the mighty, try to avoid it. Leaders of past cultures crushed free speech and public access to information, a trend Orwell showed being enhanced by technology in a future when elites control all the cameras. In part thanks to Orwell's warning, ours may be the first civilization to systematically avoid this cycle, whose roots lie in human nature. We have learned that few people are mature enough to hold themselves accountable, but in an open society, adversaries eagerly pounce on each other's errors. To preserve our freedom, we must not try to limit the cameras—they are coming anyway and no law will ever prevent the elites from seeing. Instead, we must make sure all citizens share the boon—and burden—of sight. This is already the world we live in. One where the people look hard at the mighty, and look harder the mightier they are.

Orwell's dark future can't come true if confident citizens have a habit of protecting themselves by seeing and knowing.
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The following tale takes some guts . .
.

The aliens seemed especially concerned over matters of
genealogy
.

"It is the only way we can be sure with whom we are dealing," said the spokes-being for the Galactic Federation. Terran-Esperanto words emerged through a translator device affixed to the creature's speaking-vent, between purple, compound eyes. "Citizen species of the Federation will have nothing to do with you humans. Not until you can be properly introduced."

"But
you're
speakin' to us, right now!" Jane Fingal protested. "You're makin' bugger-all sense, mate."

Jane was our astronomer aboard the
Straits of Magellan
. She had first spotted the wake of the N'Gorm ship as it raced by, far swifter than any Earth vessel, and it had been Jane's idea to pulse our engines, giving off weak gravity waves to attract their attention. For several days she had labored to help solve the language problem, until a meeting could be arranged between our puny ETS survey probe and the mighty N'Gorm craft.

Still, I was surprised when Kwenzi Mobutu, the Zairean anthropologist, did not object to Jane's presence in the docking bubble, along with our official contact team. Kwenzi seldom missed a chance to play up tension between Earth's two greatest powers—Royal Africa and the Australian Imperium—even during this historic first encounter with a majestic alien civilization.

The alien slurped mucousy sounds into its mouthpiece, and out came more computer-generated words.

"You misunderstand. I am merely a convenience, a construct-en-tity, fashioned to be as much like you as possible, thereby to facilitate your evaluation. I have no name, and will return to the vats when this is done."

Fashioned to be like us
? I must have stared. (Everyone else did.) The being in front of us was bipedal and had two arms. On top were objects and organs we had tentatively named ears and a mouth. Beyond that, he (She? It?) seemed about as alien as could be.

"Yipes!" Jane commented. "I'd hate to meet your
boss
in a dark alley, if you're the handsomest bloke they could come up with."

I saw Mobutu, the African aristocrat, smile. That's when I realized why he had not vetoed Jane's presence, but relished it.
He knows this meeting is being recorded for posterity. If she makes a fool of herself here, at the most solemn meeting of races, it could win points against Australians back home
.

"As I have tried to explain," the alien reiterated. "You will not meet my 'boss' or any other citizen entity. Not until we are satisfied that your lineage is worthy."

While our Israeli and Tahitian xenobiologists conferred over this surprising development, our Patagonian captain stared out through the docking bubble at the Federation ship whose great flanks arched away, gleaming, in all directions. Clearly, he yearned to bring these advanced technologies home to the famed shipyards of Tierra del Fuego.

"Perhaps I can be helpful in this matter," Kwenzi Mobutu offered confidently. "I have some small expertise. When it comes to tracking one's family tree, I doubt any other human aboard can match my own genealogy."

His smile was a gleaming white contrast against gorgeously-perfect black skin, the sort of rich complexion that trendy people from pole to pole had been using chemicals to emulate, when we left home.

"Even before the golden placards of Abijian were discovered, my family line could be traced back to the great medieval households of Ghana. But since the recovery of those sacred records, it has been absolutely verified that my lineage goes all the way to the black pharaohs of the IXth Dynasty—an unbroken chain of four thousand years."

Mobutu's satisfaction faded when the alien replied with a dismissive wave.

"That interval is far too brief. Nor are we interested in the time-thread of mere individuals. Larger groups concern us."

Jane Fingal chuckled, and Mobutu whirled on her angrily.

"Your attitude suits a mongrel nation whose ancestors were criminal transportees, and whose 'emperor' is chosen at a
rugby match
!"

"Hey. Our king'd whip yours any day, even half-drunk and with 'is arse in a sling."

"Colleagues!" I hastened to interrupt. "These are serious matters. A little decorum, if you please?"

The two shared another moment's hot enmity, until Nechemia Meyers spoke up.

"Perhaps they refer to
cultural
continuity. If we can demonstrate that one of our social traditions has a long history, stretching back—"

"—five thousand years?" inserted Mohandas Nayyal, our linguist from Delhi Commune. "Of course the Hindi tradition, as carried by the Vedas, goes back easily that far."

"
Actually
," Meyers continued, a bit miffed. "I was thinking more along the lines of
six
thousand—"

He cut short as the alien let out a warbling sigh, waving both "hands."

"Once again, you misconstrue. The genealogy we seek
is
genetic, but a few thousand of your years is wholly inadequate."

Jane muttered, "Bugger! It's like dickering with a Pattie over the price of a bleeding iceberg . . . no offense, Skipper."

The captain returned a soft smile. Patagonians are an easy-going lot, till you get down to business.

"Well then," Mobutu resumed, nodding happily. "I think we can satisfy our alien friends, and win Federation membership, on a purely
biochemical
basis. For many years now, the Great Temple in Abijian has gathered DNA samples from every sub-race on Earth, correlating and sorting to trace out our genetic relationships. Naturally, African bloodlines were found to be the least mutated from the central line of inheritance—"

Jane groaned again, but this time Kwenzi ignored her.

"—stretching back to our fundamental common ancestor, that beautiful, dark ancestress of all human beings, the one variously called Eva, or M'tum, who dwelled on the eastern fringes of what is now the Zairean Kingdom, over
three million years ago
!"

So impressive was Mobutu's dramatic delivery that even the least sanguine of our crew felt stirred, fascinated and somewhat awed. But then the N'Gorm servant-entity vented another of its frustrated sighs.

"I perceive that I am failing in my mission to communicate with lesser beings. Please allow me to try once again.

"We in the Federation are constantly being plagued by young, upstart species, rising out of planetary nurseries and immediately yammering for attention, claiming rights of citizenship in our ancient culture. At times, it has been suggested that we should routinely sterilize such places—filthy little worlds—or at least eliminate noisy, adolescent infestations by targeting their early stages with radio-seeking drones. But the
Kutathi
, who serve as judges and law-givers in the Federation, have ruled this impermissible. There are few crimes worse than meddling in the natural progress of a nursery world. All we can do is snub the newcomers, and restrict them to their home systems until they have matured enough for decent company."