An assumption
of The R’lyeh Tribune is that horror,
dark fantasy and science fiction serve a critical purpose: they document the collective nightmares of
our society at a given point in time.
Speculative fiction is entertaining insofar as it is therapeutic, literally bringing to the light
of examination anxieties about change and perceived threats to the social order,
or—when these perennial horrors are temporarily less intense—good old death.
In the
late 1960s and 1970s concerns about environmental degradation were reflected in
a slew of horror entertainments about Nature taking vengeance on mankind. Armies
of exaggerated flora and fauna would besiege a terrified handful of survivors—worms,
ants, bees, frogs, snakes, birds, rats—at one point, even rabbits*—reenacting at least one of the ten Biblical plagues. A decade or two earlier, the fear of nuclear annihilation
and communist subversion animated stories and movies about extraterrestrial
invasion and atomic mutation.
In the
1920s and 1930s, the timeframe of H.P. Lovecraft and his colleagues, people
were frightened of economic disaster and subsequent loss of social standing, an
impending war in Europe, and perhaps most of all, of the rapid assimilation of
immigrants from foreign countries and the internal migration of African
Americans from the south into the northern cities. Lovecraft is notorious for his preoccupation
with racial and ethnic difference in such stories as The Horror at Red Hook (1927) and the Call of Cthulhu (1928), which exemplify fear and distrust of nonwhite peoples. For Lovecraft and others in his generation, miscegenation was the ultimate horror. Lovecraft’s younger contemporary, Robert E.
Howard, perseverated on unresolved racial injustice in stories like Black Canaan (1936) and The Shadow of the Beast (published after
the author’s death)—barely a generation after the Civil War.
It may
be premature for a comprehensive diagnosis of our current fears, repressed or otherwise. The popularity of zombies in horror
entertainment—and to a lesser extent, vampirism and lycanthropy—suggests an
obsession with disease and contagion, but there are other emerging anxieties. Surely one of them is concern over the impact
of spectacular new communication technologies, which have already influenced
how we interact daily with one another. More ominously, hand held devices of
various kinds are changing how we respond to more traditional forms of
communication, to language, to literature, to books.
Technophobia—provoked
by the rapid dissemination of ever evolving personal communication devices—is the
underlying theme of a first novel by Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange (2014).
Like all good science fiction, this book is a novel of ideas, of big questions. Graedon extrapolates current worries about
on-line privacy, computer hacking, malware, viruses, and the apparent degradation
of language competence into the not-so-distant future, perhaps only a decade or
two from now. As a prophetess she foresees
disaster, in fact the possibility of more than one, in her disturbing
and disquieting book.
To
apply Kirk Schneider’s horror classification scheme, (see Horror
Theory: Schneider’s Hyperconstriction and ...), Graedon has created a “hyperconstrictive”
story. What is in view here is the confinement,
reduction and obliteration of the individual human being, of what it means to
be human.
What if
people lost the ability to remember or concentrate because of their addictive
over-reliance on communication devices? What
if evil and ambitious capitalists contrived to own not only all the means of
production, but also all the means of communication—that is, the very words we use to express ourselves? Is it possible to control people’s
thoughts and behavior by controlling the language they speak? What if a
devastating computer virus could cross over the ever thinning membrane that
separates the human nervous system from the technology it employs?
In The Word Exchange, the evil Synchronic Corporation
has perfected its immensely popular handheld device, called the Meme. The device was named after a term coined by Richard
Dawkins back in the 1970s: a meme describes
an idea or behavior passed on from one person to another in society, typically
through imitation, a kind of glorified ‘Monkey see, monkey do’. In the novel, the Meme is a super smart phone that anticipates all its user’s needs, including his or
her need for hard-to-remember words. But
it also appears to have negative side effects on cognitive functioning with
prolonged use.
As part
of its marketing strategy for rolling out the newest version of its product,
Synchronic, Inc. surreptitiously acquires the publishers of various
dictionaries, in a plot to monopolize both the standardization and creation of
word definitions. Only a band of heroic lexicographers, members of the secretive
Diachronic Society, stand in the way.
Complicating matters is the emergence of a terrible computer virus, able
to disrupt communications media as well as individual minds, a “word flu” with
world-wide impact. (As a speech-language
pathologist, I found the notion of a contagious
aphasia—a disruption of the ability to comprehend and use language as a result
of neurological trauma—both intriguing and troubling.)
The Word Exchange is told in epistolary form,
comprised of the journal entries, letters, an op-ed piece, and the press
releases of the principle characters a year or so after the disastrous events
take place. The op-ed piece and the
press release—essentially a list of precautionary measures—can be read as a
prescription for steps our society can take now
to avoid calamity.
Throughout
the book are clever allusions to classic literature that speak to the
importance of language, such as Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, (1871), Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and others. Even Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel gets some
attention. The author displays a
conspicuous enthusiasm for the written word, and the “great conversations”
across time, place and generations that written language makes possible.
Graedon’s
book was the topic of discussion last night at among members of our local fantasy
and science fiction reading group. With
the exception of 2 members of our party, we were all boomers, with an average
age somewhere in the mid-fifties—of an age now to distrust anyone under the age of 30. (Of course, decades
ago this perspective was exactly the opposite.) It was relatively easy for us to see, in the
younger generation’s enmeshment in social media and smart technology, evidence
supporting the author’s dire predictions.
Are young people becoming more addled, distractible, forgetful, and less
competent with language as a result their use of communications technology? Or is this simply inter-generational carping
about new-fangled ways of doing things?
One of
our younger members, a 35 year old man, ably defended social media as a method
for creating and building social connectedness, for strengthening communities of
people no longer bound to a specific locality.
But an older woman asked, “What about the person sitting right across
the table from you? Isn’t that person
part of your community? How does your
device affect that connection?” For my part, I would enjoy not having to edit out the at-signs, ampersands and emoticons
my younger colleagues insist on putting in their formal reports and business correspondence.
********************
*Night of the Lepus (1972)
Social media, especially on smart devices, isn't reducing peoples' social connectivity, it's redistributing it. Technology has a flattening effect, and what it does is allow one to maintain comparatively rich and in-depth social contact with a large number of people farther away. The person sitting across from you in the bus is physically closer, but those folks in your contact list in Minnesota are socially closer, and in an equal crisis you'll probably care about them first.
ReplyDeleteSee also the concept of the "monkeysphere" (link: http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html), which dovetails into a discussion of the correlation between brain size and social group size. The theorized limit for humans is estimated to be around 150.
Given that aspect, the technology that allows one to maintain meaningful contact with people farther away has a side-effect: That 150-seat social limit may get filled up faster by people who aren't present. Unless a sufficiently compelling reason crops up, that stranger you just met probably isn't going to become friend #151.
Thanks Territan for your helpful remarks. This is an interesting perspective on the issue, and the notion of the "monkeysphere" is intriguing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point that social media is redistributing social connectivity, which clearly can have a positive impact. (Better elections? Quicker emergency response? World peace?)
But I wonder, while people attend to their Minnesota contacts, are they losing touch with their more local connections--friends, family, co-workers?
Thanks for visiting!