Yeah. I really like the framing of "techno-feudalism," I think it's pretty accurate. One of my colleagues pointed out a while back to humanity does continue to invent new ways to better us all; it's just that they all inevitably get hijacked and turned into systems for wealth extraction by an elite. This is our challenge, maybe: not simply to fix this particular instance of it, but to figure out why it happens and design new institutions or ways of life that prevent it, so that the civilization that comes after ours does not fall into the same trap.
You asked for thoughts about 2100 and I gave you Tom Paine. Perhaps a comment on slow progress so far, but there are a few steps thought up since:
- Super easy one, we keep talking about improving first-past-the-post, and there are many better voting systems, some already tried out. We could also reward democratic participation more.
- Heinlein's first novel that was never published in his life, was about his proposal for Universal Basic Income, and all your Utopian SF societies start with this, certainly Star Trek. We already have it if you're over 65, and could just reduce the year you get it as society's wealth rises.
It's very weird to be 65 in a society that had pensions when I was born - and also, had barely one car per family, on average, 1200sf houses, only a few people flew....and as all that private spending went up sharply, we heard about *increasing* the retirement age because there "wasn't enough money".
I jump to UBI because, as you say, no matter how much more wealth is created by science, there's no limit to how much will be taken, and everybody left with crumbs. We can't have any other social progress in that environment; just richer and richer feudalists.
UBI and "money out of politics" would both be preconditions to progress, but regulating social structures is so fraught. I want more people into politics and money out, but almost entirely by a change in attitude and education. Currently, we tend to believe that rich people belong in politics, because they can already organize and lead, the way imperial Britain just automatically gave officer commissions to feudal lords right through WW1. We have to educate, educate, educate, specifically against that belief.
It's bizarre to see feudal mental structures being used to approach Elon Musk and Donald Trump, continuing to discuss their "strategies" when there are none.
Nov 11, 2023·edited Nov 12, 2023Liked by Karl Schroeder
I just want the end of feudalism. It doesn't seem like much to ask, since most nations claim to honour democracy and freedom. And yet, in most nations it remains true that things that poll well with the bottom 70% of the population, but poorly with the top 20%, don't come to pass.
It was huge progress away from feudalism in the USA when Black people got the vote back sixty years ago - but, honestly, it feels like the job is only half over. Things popular with the bottom 70% don't get enacted if the top 10% are against.
"The Future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed" - those future societies are about, they're places with nearly-complete democracy and very little domination by the richest.
(Meant to add: I know I repeated myself on that stat...but shouldn't we all be repeating it a lot?)
Industrial civilization is full of bottlenecks; we've seen all kinds of problems in recent years with supply chain issues turning just-in-time inventory management into train wrecks. Something postindustrial would emphasize resilience, with every region having enough spare capacity to help their neighbors during disasters.
I'm writing a new novel about the future of the Arctic. It's a fascinating playground for imagining the kind of thing you're talking about, because the North's culture is already based on a different kind of self-reliance and community-reliance than we have in the South.
I think we should have zero, maybe even negative growth on-planet, and extropian proliferation off-planet. The two aims aren't even mutually exclusive, they can be synergistic.
There's just an 'escape velocity' to meet - first the physical one and then the industrial one. I prefer the terms "ecopoiesis" over "terraforming" and "settlement" over "colonization" - because those are both terms for starting something NEW instead of trodding over what was there.
Coincidentally, keeping our soil on earth alive and turning the dead sintered clay regolith of Mars or exoplanets - will both require similar comprehension of soil ecology. Closed-cycle agriculture needed for long interstellar voyages will almost certainly be used terrestrial first. Industrial miniaturization through greatly improved energy, recycling, and highly-versatile yet simple manufacturing techniques... will benefit both the earth, and space settlement.
Or I can quote Carl Sagan.
"It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses, a species returned to circumstances more like those for which it was originally evolved, more confident, farseeing, capable, and prudent—the sorts of beings we would want to represent us in a Universe that, for all we know, is filled with species much older, much
Solarpunk's a great movement. Tobias Buckell and I helped birth it with a short story we wrote together, "Mitigation," (published in Fast Forward #2 in 2008). I was too entangled in my Virga series to really follow through on that at the time. Solarpunk's a step in the right direction, but it may not actually be radical enough; to be really effective, any truly new vision has to absorb all the others, not just be another "-punk" subgenre. This substack is an attempt to imagine what such a complete revamp of SF might look like. (Never say that I lacked ambition.)
Nobody as far as I can tell. You'd need to view science fiction as a cultural project. --But you've inspired me to take another look at an old piece of mine that might bear updating. Something I wrote 20 years ago about SF's cultural position in between science and art, called "Traitor to Both Sides."
Yeah. I really like the framing of "techno-feudalism," I think it's pretty accurate. One of my colleagues pointed out a while back to humanity does continue to invent new ways to better us all; it's just that they all inevitably get hijacked and turned into systems for wealth extraction by an elite. This is our challenge, maybe: not simply to fix this particular instance of it, but to figure out why it happens and design new institutions or ways of life that prevent it, so that the civilization that comes after ours does not fall into the same trap.
You asked for thoughts about 2100 and I gave you Tom Paine. Perhaps a comment on slow progress so far, but there are a few steps thought up since:
- Super easy one, we keep talking about improving first-past-the-post, and there are many better voting systems, some already tried out. We could also reward democratic participation more.
- Heinlein's first novel that was never published in his life, was about his proposal for Universal Basic Income, and all your Utopian SF societies start with this, certainly Star Trek. We already have it if you're over 65, and could just reduce the year you get it as society's wealth rises.
It's very weird to be 65 in a society that had pensions when I was born - and also, had barely one car per family, on average, 1200sf houses, only a few people flew....and as all that private spending went up sharply, we heard about *increasing* the retirement age because there "wasn't enough money".
I jump to UBI because, as you say, no matter how much more wealth is created by science, there's no limit to how much will be taken, and everybody left with crumbs. We can't have any other social progress in that environment; just richer and richer feudalists.
UBI and "money out of politics" would both be preconditions to progress, but regulating social structures is so fraught. I want more people into politics and money out, but almost entirely by a change in attitude and education. Currently, we tend to believe that rich people belong in politics, because they can already organize and lead, the way imperial Britain just automatically gave officer commissions to feudal lords right through WW1. We have to educate, educate, educate, specifically against that belief.
It's bizarre to see feudal mental structures being used to approach Elon Musk and Donald Trump, continuing to discuss their "strategies" when there are none.
I just want the end of feudalism. It doesn't seem like much to ask, since most nations claim to honour democracy and freedom. And yet, in most nations it remains true that things that poll well with the bottom 70% of the population, but poorly with the top 20%, don't come to pass.
It was huge progress away from feudalism in the USA when Black people got the vote back sixty years ago - but, honestly, it feels like the job is only half over. Things popular with the bottom 70% don't get enacted if the top 10% are against.
"The Future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed" - those future societies are about, they're places with nearly-complete democracy and very little domination by the richest.
(Meant to add: I know I repeated myself on that stat...but shouldn't we all be repeating it a lot?)
Industrial civilization is full of bottlenecks; we've seen all kinds of problems in recent years with supply chain issues turning just-in-time inventory management into train wrecks. Something postindustrial would emphasize resilience, with every region having enough spare capacity to help their neighbors during disasters.
I'm writing a new novel about the future of the Arctic. It's a fascinating playground for imagining the kind of thing you're talking about, because the North's culture is already based on a different kind of self-reliance and community-reliance than we have in the South.
I think we should have zero, maybe even negative growth on-planet, and extropian proliferation off-planet. The two aims aren't even mutually exclusive, they can be synergistic.
There's just an 'escape velocity' to meet - first the physical one and then the industrial one. I prefer the terms "ecopoiesis" over "terraforming" and "settlement" over "colonization" - because those are both terms for starting something NEW instead of trodding over what was there.
Coincidentally, keeping our soil on earth alive and turning the dead sintered clay regolith of Mars or exoplanets - will both require similar comprehension of soil ecology. Closed-cycle agriculture needed for long interstellar voyages will almost certainly be used terrestrial first. Industrial miniaturization through greatly improved energy, recycling, and highly-versatile yet simple manufacturing techniques... will benefit both the earth, and space settlement.
Or I can quote Carl Sagan.
"It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses, a species returned to circumstances more like those for which it was originally evolved, more confident, farseeing, capable, and prudent—the sorts of beings we would want to represent us in a Universe that, for all we know, is filled with species much older, much
more powerful, and very different."
Good post.
Do you see solarpunk offering a different positive future?
Solarpunk's a great movement. Tobias Buckell and I helped birth it with a short story we wrote together, "Mitigation," (published in Fast Forward #2 in 2008). I was too entangled in my Virga series to really follow through on that at the time. Solarpunk's a step in the right direction, but it may not actually be radical enough; to be really effective, any truly new vision has to absorb all the others, not just be another "-punk" subgenre. This substack is an attempt to imagine what such a complete revamp of SF might look like. (Never say that I lacked ambition.)
Absorbing all the others... that's a tall order. Who's doing this now, maybe Stan Robinson?
Nobody as far as I can tell. You'd need to view science fiction as a cultural project. --But you've inspired me to take another look at an old piece of mine that might bear updating. Something I wrote 20 years ago about SF's cultural position in between science and art, called "Traitor to Both Sides."
Do let us know how that goes.
I find a lot of today's sf is very... contemporary-oriented. There isn't a lot of engagement with sf history.
Perhaps we need a radical break, something like the energies of the British and American New Waves.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/our-greatest-political-novelist
Glad to see the New Yorker agreeing with me.
It is interesting to see anti-sf lit types deciding to welcome Stan now.
I hope if it ever does happen, something better than now crawls out of the rubble.
Right. So let's design that "something" now.