Are You Living in a Science Fiction Movie?
One of the reasons I like getting e-mail from AMC readers is because they ask such interesting questions. For example, this one, from Angela:
"When you're writing up your columns about science fiction movies, do you ever consider how much modern life is like living in a science fiction movie?"
Heh. Well, yes and no.
It certainly is true that there are things we have in this world that at one time were science fiction in movies. Take any scifi movie -- for example Woody Allen's Sleeper, in which someone from the '70s wakes up in a (comically) futuristic world and feels out of place. Well, how does Woody Allen feel today about robot pets and genetically engineered produce, both of which are now reality? (Probably pretty good, actually, since he consulted with Isaac Asimov and other science fiction writers about the feasibility of the stuff he put into the film.)
Another example: In any Star Trek film (or TV episode), Kirk's communicator looks like a modern day cell phone to us -- although if you give it any sort of thought at all you realize that generally speaking, it's the cell phone that's more advanced. Yes, Kirk can talk to Scotty with his communicator, but can he watch Star Trek IV on it? Or take pictures, or play Peggle, or receive e-mail? What about Star Trek: The Next Generation, when the communicator's been replaced with a comm badge? Two words for you: Bluetooth speakerphone.
Then of course, there's the flip side: Ask any Briton (and increasingly, any American) how they feel about the closed circuit television cameras in every public space, or the RFID chips in their passports. If they mutter something about 1984 (which had its own movie version in, yes, 1984), you'll note that living science fictionally is not all a technotopia.
So, yes, it all seems pretty science fictional when we put it that way. Of course, we don't think of any of this as scifi, because to us it's really not: Home computers and cell phones and satellite radio are just things we have, not super-mega-awesome technologies from the future. We don't spare any time to think of the virtual miracle of the touchscreen computer that we use as our phone (which has more processing power in it than was used to send the astronauts to the moon); rather, we whine and moan when our phone signal drops, when we can't access our e-mail, or when the picture we just took with the phone is blurry. We get over the miracle of technology pretty quickly.
But there's another way in which our modern world differs from that of a science fiction movie: Technology is not at the heart of our plots -- which is to say, our actual lives -- whereas technology is central to the plot of any number of scifi films, and has been from the genre's very beginning. Indeed, one of the major themes of science fiction (both in movies and in general) has been the morality of technology, and how using it changes us. Start with 1931's Frankenstein and move forward, through films both classic (Robocop, in which a man is changed into a machine) and not-so-classic (The 6th Day, where a man's clone steals his identity); good (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which technology erases memory) and, well, not so good (say, oh, the Matrix sequels).
We don't approach our technology that way -- and by and large, technology doesn't change us that way. With the exception of the folks who spend more time in World of Warcraft than out in the real world, technology is not central to our identity. Take away a hipster's iPhone and he's still a hipster, he just doesn't have an iPhone anymore. He's hipster, circa 1996. Our technology helps shape our life narratives -- I mean, hey, I personally have done very well for myself using this here World Wide Web thingy -- but ultimately we're not who we are because of our technology.
Ask yourself: If all your "science fictional" technology were taken away tomorrow, how much would your identity change? If the answer is "not that much," then you're not really living inside a science fiction movie, regardless of how many gadgets you have.
Your thoughts?
Winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies and the novels Old Man's War and Zoe's Tale. He's also the editor of METAtropolis, an audiobook anthology on Audible.com. His column appears every Thursday.
Hmm. Given that I can only walk with a prosthetic hip that was custom-milled for me in the operating room as the surgeons worked; and that my job involves high-end desktop workstations at an agency that's trying to get us back to the moon... yeah, I think my life is somewhat science-fictional.
In fact, the more I think about it, Luke Skywalker or James Kirk would still be the same persons without technology. Their lives would change, but would their identities? Kirk could still be an explorer, or the captain of some kind of vessel. Skywalker would still be a dreamer with unusual reaction time, spatial awareness, and hidden powers waiting to be awakened. Technology enabled their paths, but didn't create them.
I agree, my cellphone is more like a combination of a Star Trek communicator + a tricorder.
For me, the prevalence of the web + the ubiquity of wireless data access is like living in a Sci-Fi movie... or would have been, when I was a kid.
A couple of examples... this summer, I got frustrated with the directions I had been given to our summer vacation... I had never been there, but something didn't seem right... so I pulled over, whipped out the smartphone, pulled up Google Maps, pinpointed my location, plotted a much better route.
Or... out for date night with my wife... we realize during dinner that we aren't going to make our movie... whip out the phone, look up movie times, we're good to go.
Now granted, both of these situations could be handled with analog tech... I could have actually used a physical map and plotted my route... I could have looked up movie times in advance and written them down as a contingency... but that's not the point.
SciFi makes my life convenient. :)
Isn't the bigger point that all of our identities are shaped by the technology that we use over time? Of course, if you take it all away now, we're still the same person we were before you took it all away but how different would you be if you had never had the technology to begin with? Or lost it 10 years ago? I think that our identity is shaped by the world around us and by our interactions with it. Accordingly, since technology is an integral part of the world around each of us, it has helped shape our identities.
While I'm not sure I would be fundamentally different, my life would, in ways that would change how I think of and approach the world.
For example, my sister and her family who live in Virginia to my Arkansas. A 4 and 2 year old nephew and niece respectively, who I don't get to see in person more than once or maybe twice a year, I talk to on video skype on a regular basis and IM with my sister every day. Same with friends in other states. All these people, I would have a harder time feeling "close" to without modern technology. So our sci-fi world has, in that sense, changed me, allowed me to maintain a global family where I would have required physical proximity before.
The internet in general, allows us to expand our social circles, to find people who share our interests. To keep us geeks in small towns from going crazy.
My cell phone has brought me convenience in so many little ways, from being able to call home from the store when I've forgotten my list to being unafraid to drive at night through the wilds of Kansas because, if my car breaks, I'm not stranded. (Not to mention GPS navigation in my car that allows me to go fearlessly to cities I've never been because I know I can find my way around.)
So while technology hasn't changed "me" in measurable ways, it has definitely changed the life I lead, which makes me feel very much like I'm living in a sci-fi future.
Of course the biggest difference between a cellphone and the Star Trek communicator is range -- the Star Trek ones could talk to a ship in orbit and beyond, without the need for towers every six miles or more
For some reason, ubiquity of computing power seems to have not been forseen by many SF writers pre the age of the home computer. The closest thing to the internet in the 50's is John Brunner's Shockwave Rider, and that was all telephone, all the time.
But when I read a book written only a few years ago, and explorers of a planet didn't set up a GPS-like network of satellites to help with location on-planet, there's something that is still getting overlooked.
Joel, that may have something to do with the possibility that many science fiction writers get their "futures" from science fiction, instead of extrapolating from current time. This is a danger of spending all your time in a book.
I guess I regularly feel like I'm living in a science fiction world. I repeatedly shake my head in wonder when I think back to when I was a kid when none of technologies we take for granted now were readily available. You're right, I don't think my inherent personality would change without all the tech we have today. But it's influence on my life is so profound that I know my life narrative would have taken such a radically different turn without it, almost to a point where I might as well have a different personality. The kind of connectivity I have with the internet, cell phones, etc has made a world of difference in my life. I know my personality is different today because of the people I now have in my life because I met them through technological means.
So, if my computers and cell phones were taken away tomorrow I'd still be the same I am now. But who knows what I'll be like in 10 years thanks to the sci-fi world I live in. I don't think technology makes our personalities but it highly, highly influences us.
Of course, from my point of view I wish I lived in an even more sci fi kind of world. Space elevator. I'm waiting for a space elevator.
I believe technology has shaped who I am today, and without it, I very well might be a fundamentally different person.
Four years ago I started blogging. I realized aspects to my personality through online interactions, which couldn't be duplicated any other way. I was a pretty shy person who wouldn't say Boo to even a gentle sci-fi writer; now no one would call me shy.
The internet also has allowed me to continue my education, unofficially. It teaches me something every day. As a writer--and dedicated loner--I use it to interact with people.
And there is the minor detail of my health. I once was subjected to a leading-edge, sci-fi-esque procedure that saved my life.
Don't a number of first contact/alien invasion movies feature an African-American president? We can't say we weren't warned...
Yeah well, tell it to Stephen Hawking....
Yes, Kirk can talk to Scotty with his communicator, but can he watch Star Trek IV on it? Or take pictures, or play Peggle, or receive e-mail?
Tru dat, but can I modify my cellphone to emit a sonic wave that causes rocks to asplode? Alas, no.
I think the feeling that we're living in science fiction derives from the fact that over the years, science fiction has really brought itself down to Earth, as it were. I'm not saying all science fiction is believable, but if the people making predictions in the 1920s had been proven right, we'd all be living in bubbles on the moon by now.
I think time has allowed science fiction writers to know what is possible within the timeframe they're working, and thus we feel like we're living science fiction by looking at Kirk's communicator or Woody Allen's robot dog.
It's all about managed expectations.
There is also the notion that good SciFi movies have the characters taking their tech for granted and/or cursing it for not working properly (think Han Solo whacking the instrument panel of the Millennium Falcon to get the hyperdrive to work).
To quote Douglas Adams: "Anything that is in the world when you are born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works; anything that is invented between the ages of 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career out of it; anything invented after age 35 is against the natural order of things."
I was born in 1967 and can't remember a time when humans hadn't walked on the moon. Can't remember a time when video and data weren't beamed from continent to continent via satellite relays, and people couldn't casually fly to another continent, and you didn't always know when a hurricane was coming. And I came of age in a decade when everybody I knew expected that they would probably someday be burned alive in a nuclear holocaust.
Nowadays, I make my living maintaining the software infrastructure of an incomprehensibly vast digital library of music, movies, text, and information, which is accessible wirelessly from anywhere, on devices small enough to fit in your pocket. A good friend of mine makes his living deciphering the human genome, and another designs autonomous submersible robots for oceanographic exploration.
Of course we live in a science-fiction world. We just don't notice it because it already was a science-fiction world before we were born. You can get used to anything. But we live in the future.
Well, no. We live in the present. But our present resembles a future that other people imagined before us.
(Well, technically, I'm posting this message from the past. Just look at the timestamp, you don't believe me.)
We still don't have Sleeper's Orgasmatron, so I would still classify it as science fiction. Though I imagine the Japanese are working on it as we speak.
Also, how great is Sleeper? One of the all-time great comedies. It's amazing the same person gave us "Anything Else."
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The ability to play Peggle on cell phones is actually the result of Borg interference with the timeline. The Federation is only created on timelines where communicators can't play Peggle. Same goes for the warp drive. And world peace. Also that quarterly report that was due last Tuesday.