Let's Not Envision A Future Without Google And Facebook, Okay?
The book was published in 2010, and purported to be about the distant future. And yet its opening chapter was based on a premise that wouldn’t have flown in 1995.
The book was about an antiques dealer, sitting at his desk, when a customer came in with some effects from a dead celebrity. The antiques dealer had not heard of said celebrity, and as such told the woman that these items weren’t worth much. As it turns out, the dealer “doesn’t get out much,” and the celebrity was in fact very big news in certain circles, and was later called upon the carpet by his boss.
Note what did not happen in this crazy future-world: not one fucking Google search.
Back when I was editing for StarCityGames, I’d get articles by people I’d never heard of. And even as scattershot as SCG’s editorial focus was back then, I Yahoo-searched every name to make sure they hadn’t won a Pro Tour or something. Sometimes they had, and that saved me much embarrassment.
So what we have is someone presented as a competent employee, who doesn’t think to type a name into a goddamned computer. Which is a social failure on the part of the author, who also references a lot of old-school printouts and books hanging around in a future rife with AIs that can talk and evolve. Won’t e-books and bookmarks have consumed those wholesale by then?
I don’t think that it’s that she’s bad at writing (the book’s quite fun otherwise!), but that she’s so busy envisioning a future where black holes and time travel matter that she’s accidentally skimming over the very changes to society that technology has wrought right now.
As a science fiction author, that vexes me. I think it’s our job to look at how technology changes people, and part of that has to be looking at the society that we’re becoming. Facebook is causing all sorts of havoc in the college field, because you have some sleazy hookup with someone, and wham! Tomorrow, an embarrassing friends’ request. That person’s now connected with you, a part of your life in a way you didn’t necessarily want but would now be a dick to refuse.
Things teenagers say are now amplified in weird ways. Drama spirals out of control so much quicker when it’s all in the public arena, dogpiles of crazy waiting to happen. Dumb photographs you took when you were fifteen now lurks in your Facebook archives, waiting to be revealed by employers at the worst possible moments. And always, always there’s the possibility of your idiocy going viral, where in the blink of an eye your fun weekend project becomes the next Rebecca Black.
As people who are looking at the future, we need to examine that, and extrapolate, and figure out where all of this enmeshing of society goes. Maybe that’s a part of my history, because at the age of 25 I started writing crazy sex stories that opened up my personal life, and twenty years later that’s such a part of my identity I can’t imagine what it would be like to not be a blogger. But the choices I made when I was young, dumb, and full of cum are still influencing my life years later in massive ways I could not have anticipated…
…and that’s the future. This having every word on the record. This me, changing the details of the book so I’m not calling out another author in public, because I don’t want to start a flame war with someone whose book I think is otherwise quite good.
This is the new society we live in, where all information is just a touch away, and I think as authors we need to examine that warp and weft of our fabric more closely. To figure out how our culture will either adjust to this craziness, or to figure out how we’ll start to bend the rules so that it becomes healthier for everyone.
Either’s okay. My first pro-published story, Camera Obscured, is all about a boy trapped in the web of social media. Sauerkraut Station is about a lonely girl who’s too far from the social networks, but note that there’s at least a nod to the expense of sending emails. I’m not saying they’re works of genius, but they’re at least making concessions to the future that’s spinning off of today’s headlines.
I think the singularity is coming, but it’s not what you think. I think it’s going to be a hideous snarl of concentration-shattering advertising and reptile-brain attention grabs and selfishness ego-shouting, and when it comes it’s going to shred us apart because the corporations will have learned how to pander to our worst desires out to three significant digits.
That’s my vision. Yours will be different. But please. Apply a little thought to what’s going on now, and don’t just have the next generation of people be just like us. They will have a lot of similarities. But they’re growing up in science fiction now, so honor that by viewing it through a lens that is flexing and distorting as you read these words.
An Uncommon Sweetness
I was going through a bad patch when an unexpected Amazon package arrived on my doorstep. I opened it up to find a package of Ghirardelli Hot Chocolate packs.
It had been sent by Voiceofanangel, a local friend of mine who’d seen me struggling with depression. And it meant a lot. Because she’s not poor, but she’s not rich, either; the money it took to send those hot chocolate packets cost her a coffee at Starbucks, I’m sure. It was a choice to do so, one where she gave up something to ship that package. And she opted to make me happy out of nowhere.
I save those packets like power-ups. Whenever I’m feeling particularly down, I put the milk in the microwave, and I open one of them like Charlie Bucket slowly peeling the foil off his Wonka bar, and I savor it. That little blast of friendship. A kindness from someone who did not have to. And when I drink that hot chocolate, it is savored and it is sweet.
I can only hope that I’m paying that kindness back. I try to send little blasts of awesome, reminders that my friends are loved, texts out of nowhere and e-cards encouraging them on hard days. Because that, to me, is what knits the universe together – not the grand sweeps of romantic love, but the little acts of friendship that tell people, “You matter.”
You matter. Thanks for reading me today.
In Which Neil Sedaka Is Proven Wrong
I came from a family that taught me that any wound could be healed via good communication. No matter how bad things got, I was told, if you just opened up an earnest dialogue and devoted yourself to listening to each other’s love languages, you could mend every grievance.
So my relationships were long, torturous things. If I thought there was the slightest chance we could still work it out, I’d spend hours, days, month hashing out what that inflection had meant. I never broke up before I had sucked the absolute last bit of enjoyment from a relationship; by the time we were done, we were wrung as sponges.
My recent breakups, however, worry me. They’ve been short, sweet… even curt. “I don’t think this is going to make me happy; I can’t do this.” And it doesn’t mean that the other person is evil, but it does mean that the effort I’d have to put into this relationship to make it functional is beyond what I’m capable of giving now.
So when I break up? I feel cold. Mercenary. As though I hadn’t given it a real effort.
That worries me. But I’m married now, and I owe it to Gini to have largely healthy secondary relationships. If I’m upset all weekend because someone said something that got me all butthurt, then that ruins Gini’s time as well. That’s not fair to her, spending her time rehabilitating ol’ mopey here. So there’s a certain callous calculation that runs through my mind now: if my lover can’t make me happy X% of the time, time to bail. If you keep making me sad, I can’t spend my time trying to narrow down whether it’s my oversensitivity or your undersensitivity… if this doesn’t stop, you gotta go.
Which sucks. There’s a part of me that wants to go, “Oh, let’s spend the next several months revamping our communication so I can be stronger and wiser.” After all, that approach did work with Gini, who by all rights should be my ex-wife now. Sometimes, that focused love and effort pans out.
So what am I now? An uglier man? Less caring? That concerns me. It’s a form of strength, I guess, but it also feels like a big weakness. I feel like someone who threw a human being aside for convenience – give me what I need, irrational as that may be, or I’m not staying. And it feels like I’m missing out on growth opportunities to find my own weaknesses.
It’s also why I don’t publicize my relationships. Gini’s the only one who gets the rhapsodic “I’m in love” entries on Ye Olde Blog… Because if I add someone to my blog’s cast of characters, and make my readers invested in them, then if it doesn’t work out I have to find a good way to drag them off stage.
I’ve seen that happen to others in other blogs. It’s ugly. People take sides, usually with the blogger, making snarky-but-helpful comments about how you’re better off without them, prying to know what exactly caused the breakup, encouraging stung responses from the newly ex-ified as her motivations are dragged out in front of everyone. And because of that, I usually will make mentions for someone’s cleverness (and anyone I date is clever), but not go all happy-dance to announce that I’m with someone. Hell, I’m willing to bet you didn’t know about the previous breakups (which were, largely and thankfully, friendly ones).
That’s caused issues. “Why am I not in your electronic life?” they ask, hinting that I should post about my love for them. Well, I don’t put you in my e-life because you might not be in the real one some day. Awkward, ugly… And true.
I dunno. I’m prone to making dumb-ass, cryptic comments about something that’s annoying me in relationships, which I probably shouldn’t (even if I never make a cryptic comment that’s related to a trouble with only one person). But once that relationship’s done? It’s over. I’ve had my say. From then on, I’ll elucidate only when asked.
Which is worrisome now, because my exes may have a different take. Used to be, I’d give it such a running go that you could say that I was needy, I was angry, I was childish, but you couldn’t say I didn’t care. Now? I don’t even have that.
(And yes, I’m still with my “core” relationships of A and B. Thankfully. Those partings would require an official announcement, as Gini and I have been dating both of them for almost four happy years at this point.)
The Greatest Site In The Whole Universe
In case you missed it on Twotter yesterday, this is the greatest site in the whole universe. I spent the day riveted by it. It’s almost as though it were made for me.
Proof That I Married The Right Woman
For months, my shampoo has been mislocated.
Which is to say that we mostly take baths in La Casa McJuddMetz, and the shampoo is on the upper shelf at shower height. So whenever I want to wash my hair, I have to reach way up to grab it, risking tilting it onto my face.
The conditioner, however, is on the left-hand side at bath level, easily accessible.
This is a little annoyance, but it’s also constant. Every morning, whoops, reaching up for the shampoo again. And yet it’s never quite bad enough to bellow, “GINI! GET IN HERE! YOU’RE FUCKING UP MY BATH MOJO!” Nor is it so annoying that I would remember to pull Gini aside an hour later, calling a bathroom meeting to go, “Look. We need to talk about the shampoo incidents I’ve been having.” But apparently Gini likes it there.
So every morning: damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. It’s like being a bathtub amnesiac, vexed by the same poor product placement every morning. It’s like my memory only works when my hair is wet.
So last night, Gini and I were confessing silly annoyances, and she said, “Oh, WAIT!” Then she ran into the bathroom.
“Can we move the damn shampoo?” she asked. “Where I don’t have to reach up for it every fucking morning?”
“Seriously?” I asked, clasping her hands in joy. “I thought you liked it up there!”
“No!” she said, her face suffused with happiness. “This shit is terrible! Let’s move the shampoo!”
And together, we switched shampoo and conditioner, never feeling closer in our twelve years of marriage, realizing that yes, we’ve made the right choice and it must have been one of those bastard houseguests who fucked up our bathroom mojo.
Then we cuddled. And this morning, my bath was awesome.