Tag Archives: technology

Future Technology vs. Pandemics

Let’s take a break from the unpleasant coronavirus news of the present, and travel to the future. Specifically, let’s see how our descendants might prevent or deal with pandemic viral outbreaks.

Futuristic Caduceus

Speculation about the future is always error-prone. Many technologies I’ll mention won’t pan out, or will introduce unforeseen problems. Also, these probably won’t eliminate the existence of viruses; new ones will mutate to get around our best efforts to defeat them. Still, those concerns never stop a SciFi writer from imagining! With that in mind, let’s time-travel.

Getting Infected

People used to pick up viruses mostly from the animal world. Now, in the future, there is less opportunity for doing that. Synthetic foods have lessened the need for humans to consume wildlife. High crop yield technologies mean we need less farmland, so we no longer destroy habitats, thus keeping wildlife in their own areas.

Other technologies have rendered humans immune to most viruses. These technologies include artificial immune systems, implanting favorable animal genes within humans, and designer babies.

Infecting Others

If someone does pick up a virus in this future time, advanced filters in building ventilation systems lessen the spread. Workplaces and transit systems contain sensors that detect whether occupants are running a fever, and alert them. Bathrooms include automated hand washing machines. Facemasks use fabrics that prohibit the flow of pathogens or bacteria in either direction. Some have opted for nasal and throat implants to do the same thing.  

Alerting the World

Upon discovery of a novel virus, doctors in this future world have new ways to notify other experts. Chatbots share the information instantly. Universal translators ensure precise understanding.

Sensing Infections

Various technologies have enabled people to know at once if they’re infected, long before they feel symptoms. These include home-use scanners, (inspired by Star Trek medical tricorders) wearable and implantable sensors, digital tattoos, genetic diagnosis, and nano-med-robots.

Developing Cures

Today, in our future world, supercomputers work on vaccines immediately after notification of a novel virus. They employ advanced modeling to test the effects of drugs virtually, and in many cases can skip time-consuming animal and human trials. Resulting vaccines are then personalized, tuned to individual body chemistries.

Getting Treatment

People no longer go to a doctor’s office or hospital. Medical care is virtual now, with human doctors remaining remote. Drones deliver food and medical supplies. Robots provide in-home care, including cleaning, examining, and operating. 3-D printers manufacture pain medication in the home, meds that are tailored to the subject and provide instant relief. Recovery makes use of gaming therapy, with virtual reality helping to relax the patient’s mind.

On the near horizon is the long-sought ‘autodoc,’ a staple of 20th Century science fiction—an enclosure you climb into that cures all ills.

Tracking the Spread

Artificially intelligent algorithms conduct contact tracing analysis to map the spread of the virus, notifying people they’ve come in contact with a virus carrier. Through the use of augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality, experts can track and forecast outbreaks as hotspots emerge. These same technologies permit rapid identification of the most at-risk individuals.

Isolating the Infected

As in previous ages, governments still vary in the degree of freedom allowed to individuals. Some are more coercive in enforcing quarantines than others. But artificial intelligence at least allows informed decisions based on contact tracing and mathematical modeling. Moreover, citizens have access to real-time fact-checking to distinguish truth from propaganda or bias.

Back to the Present

Unfortunately, that ends our trip to the future and we’re back in 2020 now. I know, it’s disorienting and humbling. Still, imagine a time traveler from fifty or a hundred years ago visiting our time and being equally amazed at the medical wonders we now take for granted.

For many of the ideas I mentioned above, I’m indebted to tekkibytes.com, medicalfuturist.com, futureforall.org, triotree.com, techperspective.net, fastcompany.com, defenseone.com, treehugger.com, and forbes.com.

For further trips to the future, check back frequently with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 5, 2020Permalink

The Life-Cycle of Technology

On occasion, I blog about the ways society reacts to new technology. Today I’ll consider the life-cycle of a technology.

Graphing a technology’s life-cycle isn’t new. You can see this graph on Wikipedia. It’s the standard view of the profitability of a new technology over its life, including the four phases: Research and Development, Ascent, Maturity, and Decline.

I’ve built on the standard technology life-cycle curve by adding several points of interest to it. These don’t occur with every technology, and don’t always appear in the same order. But they are common enough that I’ve seen them frequently. These points of interest fascinate me, and I explore them in my fiction.

C1A. Clumsy First Attempts. Often the first prototypes of a technology are crude, fragile, ugly things that only a laboratory scientist could love. In no way do they resemble a marketable product. On occasion, these breadboard prototypes do not work at all.

IH&O. Initial Hype and Overpromise. When dreamy-eyed advocates of the new technology get hold of a gullible press, news articles will appear about the technology, touting the marvelous future that awaits us all when the technology revolutionizes our lives. Sure.

CEU. Careful Early Use. Particularly when a new technology involves some danger or personal risk, the researchers proceed in a deliberate, methodical manner in testing it. They take safety precautions. They go step-by-step, fully aware of the hazards. This is good, but it contrasts with the CU point occurring later.

GA. Gaining Adherents. Some technologists call these people ‘early adopters.’ They can hardly wait for the technology to hit the market. They’ll stand in line to be the first to buy.

RbT. Reaction by Traditionalists. People accustomed to older technology will be quick to point out any defects in the new one, even if there are far more advantages than disadvantages. They are resistant to change, but won’t admit it. Instead, they will seek out the slightest reason to criticize as a way of rationalizing their resistance. They start with “It’ll never work,” then after it does, they’ll say, “It’ll never catch on.”

PD. Path Dependence. I’ve blogged about this phenomenon before. Developers of new technology will imitate the appearance and terminology of existing technologies. This tendency will be abandoned later at the DfC point, but it often characterizes and constrains new technology, while at the same time making it easier to relate to.

CU. Complacent Use. After a long period of successful testing, researchers will reach a comfort level with the new technology. They will abandon the care and precautions they employed at the earlier CEU point. This complacence can result in a bad outcome, a failure. If this occurs, they will refine the technology to correct flaws before marketing it to users, who will also grow complacent and not treat risky technology with respect.

DfC. Departure from Constraints. At some point, developers and imitators free themselves from the Path Dependence tendency. They start to explore the realm of possibilities of the new technology, no longer bound by past precedent.

NPT. Nostalgia for Previous Technology. This is similar to RbT, but slightly different. We expect traditionalists to object to new technology, but at this point, even some regular users—advocates of the new tech—begin to pine for the previous technology. They miss it, recalling its advantages and forgetting its quirks.

Q?$?. Quality Up, Price Down. At this point, the technology comes into its own. Original developers, as well as imitators/competitors, improve the technology and the means of producing it. Price drops and product quality improves. It’s a period of rapid growth and acceptance, a boom time.

NPL. Nearing Physical Limit. Late in the Ascent phase, producers or users begin to sense that things can’t go on. The technology is bumping up against some limitation, or has begun to cause an unanticipated problem, or is fast consuming some scarce resource. Producers try some tweaks to counter the problem, to hone the technology so as to mitigate the impending limit.

RPL. Reached Physical Limit. At the peak of the Maturity phase, when the technology is providing the most profit to producers, it can go no further. It cannot be improved sufficiently to overcome whatever limitation constrains it.

NR. Negative Reaction. Users start rejecting the technology, blaming it for the problems it caused. Engineers and researchers cast around for possible replacement technologies. Market demand and profits both plummet.

CNT. Competition with New Technology. In this period of chaos, the technology struggles against an emerging rival. The technology is fated to either die entirely or steady out at some low level, continuing to be used by die-hards who prefer it to its replacement.

There you have it, your newly-labeled technology life-cycle curve, provided by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 1, 2020Permalink

How Things Change

Change is all around us. It’s amazing to watch, and it tends to follow a single, characteristic pattern. Even though the pattern repeats, it often surprises us.

That pattern goes by various names, including the Change Curve, the ‘S’ Curve, the Sigmoid Curve, and the Logistic Curve. I’ll call it the ‘S’ Curve, mainly because my name is Steve Southard, and I’m fond of that letter.

Consider a thing, or entity. As we’ll see, it can be almost anything. It begins in a period of uncertainty, and may not show much potential at first. Then it establishes itself, finds a comfortable and promising track, and pursues that. It enjoys a period of sustained and impressive growth, making minor tweaks, but generally continuing on its established path. Finally, it reaches some limit, some constraint it had not previously encountered. That constraint proves its undoing, and it enters a period of maturity, decline, and termination.

During that maturity portion, other things/entities/systems compete for supremacy. This is a period of uncertainty and chaos. It’s unknown which competitor will survive, but eventually a single winner emerges and becomes the successor, which experiences its own period of sustained growth, and its own eventual maturity.

As you read my description of the curve in the previous two paragraphs, I’m guessing you thought of at least one example of this. The ‘S’ curve resonated with you in some way and you knew it was true.

A quick search on the Internet showed examples related to language, to socio-technological change, to human height, to animal populations, to career choices and motivation, to stock prices, to business, and to project management. There were also discussions of the curve as a general model of change here, here, and here.

The ‘S’ Curve is everywhere!

Sometimes we can perceive this curve in an erroneous way. If its time-span is long enough, say, a significant fraction of a human lifetime, people observing the entity during its growth phase often assume that phase will continue forever. Why not? It’s been that way a long time. Why shouldn’t it continue upward like an exponential curve? However, few things do.

Consider automobile engines. At the beginning of the 1900s, it wasn’t clear which type of engine (steam, electric battery, or gasoline) was superior. The internal combustion gasoline engine won and became the standard for many decades. An observer in the 1960s could well assume cars would have gasoline engines forever. Now pollution has become a problem and that engine has reached its efficiency limits, so other technologies are beginning to compete.

Consider manned space exploration, as I did in last week’s blog post. During the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, NASA made steady progress. Observers in the late 1960s could have concluded there would be many follow-on programs in the 1980s, 1990s, and later, taking astronauts to Mars, the asteroids, the outer planets, and eventually, the stars. Instead, manned space exploration encountered constraints such as cost and waning public enthusiasm, so it has remained stalled to this day.

The technologies in my fictional stories all follow that ‘S’ Curve model. Usually my tales take place during the periods of disruption and chaos.

In fact, the story-writing process itself follows the ‘S’ Curve, with little progress during the idea creation stage, then rapid progress as I churn out the first draft, then a slow period of final editing and subsequent drafts before I consider it finished and suitable for submission.

As you experience change in your life, don’t assume things will remain the same. Know that all things reach their limits and end. When things seem chaotic, seek out the winning successor. Despite all this change, you can always count on—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

July 28, 2019Permalink

Technology in Fiction

Most of my fiction involves characters struggling with new technology. These days, learning how to contend with technology is a relevant and fascinating problem for all of us, and I enjoy exploring it.

I wondered if I was roaming the full realm of that topic, so I decided to map it. There are several ways to do this, but I chose to create one axis showing technology development stages, and another describing the spectrum of character responses to technology. Then I figured I’d plot my published stories on that map, and color-code the roles my characters played.

If I’d done my job well, I thought, the map would show a good dispersal of scattered points. That is, I’d have written stories covering all the areas, leaving no bare spots.

Without further preamble, here’s the map:

To make it, I chose the stages of technological development posited by the technology forecaster Joseph P. Martino. These are:

1.   Scientific findings: The innovator has a basic scientific understanding of some phenomenon.

2.   Laboratory feasibility: The innovator identified a technical solution to a specific problem and created a laboratory model.

3.   Operating prototype: The innovator built a device intended for a particular operational environment.

4.   Operational use or commercial introduction: The innovation is technologically successful and economically feasible.

5.   Widespread adoption: The innovation proves superior to predecessor technologies and begins to replace them.

6.   Diffusion to other areas: Users adopt the innovation for purposes other than those originally intended.

7.   Social and economic impact: The innovation changed the behavior of society or has somehow involved a substantial portion of the economy.

I then came up with typical responses to technology along a positive-to-negative spectrum: Over-Enthusiastic, Confident, Content, Cautious, Complacent, Dismissive, Fearful, and Malicious.

I grouped my characters into four roles: Discoverer, Innovator, User, and Critic. Some of my stories involve people discovering lost technologies or tech developed by departed aliens, so I had to include that role. The other roles should be obvious.

The resulting map shows many of my published stories, indicated by two-letter abbreviations of their titles. Where a single story occupied two areas, I connected them with a line.

Details of the map aren’t important, but you can tell a couple of things at a glance. First, I’m nowhere close to covering the whole map. I’ve concentrated on the Operating Prototype and Widespread Adoption stages more than the others.

Second, innovators view technologies positively and critics negatively (duh), while users tend to view technology negatively in the early stages and more positively in the later ones.

As far as map coverage goes, I wonder if the Operating Prototype and Widespread Adoption stages provide more opportunity for dramatic stories than the other stages.

Has anybody studied technology in fiction using a similar method? I can imagine a map with hundreds of colored points on it, representing an analysis of hundreds of science fiction stories. It would be fun to see how my stories stack up against those of other authors.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to write. As more of my stories get published, perhaps you’ll see future versions of this map, updated by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 7, 2019Permalink

Technoethics and the Curious Ape

In the movie Jurassic Park, the character Ian Malcolm says, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Today, I’m focusing on another technology topic, namely ethics in technology, or Technoethics.

Wikipedia article “Ape”

Our species is innately curious and inventive. We possess large brains and opposable thumbs, but lack claws, shells, great speed, camouflaged skin and other attributes employed by animals to attack prey or to avoid becoming prey. These circumstances make us natural toolmakers.

From the beginning, we found we could use our tools for good or evil. The same stick, spear, bow and arrow, or rifle we used to kill a rabbit for dinner could also kill a fellow human. The different outcome is not inherent in the tool, but in the heart of the person employing it.

For each new technology in our history, there was at least one inventor. This person took an idea, created a design, and often used available materials to assemble the new item. Were these inventors responsible for, in Malcolm’s words, stopping to think if they should?

With some technologies, like the plow, the printing press, the light bulb, and the automobile, it’s certain their creators intended only positive, beneficial outcomes. The inventor of the automobile could not have foreseen people using cars as weapons, or that one day there’d be so many cars they’d pollute the atmosphere.

With other technologies such as the spear, the warship, the canon, and the nuclear bomb, the inventor’s intent was to kill other people. Why? The usual rationale is twofold: (1) My side needs this technology so our wartime enemy does not kill us, or (2) If I do not invent this technology first, my enemy will, and will use it against my side. Given such reasoning, an inventor of a weapon can claim it would be immoral not to develop the technology.

I’m sure there are unsung examples of would-be inventors refusing, on ethical grounds, to develop a new technology because they feared the consequences. The only example I can think of, though, is Leonardo da Vinci. Although he had no qualms about designing giant crossbows and battle tanks, he drew the line at submarines. Though at first excited about giving a submarine design to the Venetians for use against the Turks, da Vinci reconsidered and destroyed his own plans, after imagining how horrible war could become.

That example aside, the history of humanity gives me no reason to suspect future inventors will hesitate to develop even the most potent and powerful technologies. It’s our curious ape nature; if we can, we will. Only afterward will we ask if we should have.

As a writer of technological fiction, I’ve explored technoethics in many of my stories:

  • In “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai,” a Chinese submarine inventor intends his craft as a tool of exploration, but an army officer envisions military uses.
  • In “The Steam Elephant,” a British inventor sees his creation as a mobile home for safari hunters, but then imagines the British Army employing it on the battlefield. Only the narrator character fears what war will become when both sides have such weapons.
  • In “Leonardo’s Lion,” da Vinci actually builds his inventions, but hides them away and gives clues to the King of France about where to find them. The King never sees the clues, but decades later a ten-year-old boy does, and must decide whether the world is ready for these amazing devices.
  • In “The Six Hundred Dollar Man,” a doctor imagines how steam-powered prosthetic limbs would have saved crippled Civil War soldiers, but fails to foresee how super-strength and super-speed could turn a good person bad.
  • In “Ripper’s Ring,” a troubled Londoner in 1888 comes across the Ring of Gyges that Plato wrote about, an invisibility ring. Possession of that ring changes him into history’s most famous mass murderer.
  • In “After the Martians,” the survivors of an alien attack in 1901 take the Martian technology (tripods, heat rays, flying machines) and fight World War I.

As we smart apes start playing with bigger and more deadly sticks, maybe one day we will stop and think if we should before we think about whether we can. Hoping that day comes soon, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 10, 2019Permalink

Biomimetic Technology

How is Velcro like a burr plant? How is the Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe like a termite mound? How is a tire tread like a tree frog?

These are all examples of engineers solving problems by looking to nature, a process known as biomimetics. After all, animals and plants have evolved over millions of years, and have developed solutions to many problems. Why shouldn’t we learn from them?

Burdock Plant, the inspiration for Velcro

After a hunting trip, Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral observed burrs from the burdock plant sticking to his pant legs. He wondered how the plants did that, and from his investigation came ‘hook and loop fasteners’ or Velcro. 

Eastgate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe with cross-section of chimney


Architect Mick Pearce sought a way to cost-effectively cool and heat a building in Zimbabwe, with its widely varying daily temperature cycles. He examined the flues and vents within termite mounds, and used the termites’ passive technique to save 90% of the cooling costs in his design for the Eastgate Centre.

Tree Frog Toe Pad inspiring tire tread

Automotive designers wanted tires that adhered to wet roads. They noted how tree frogs stick to smooth wet leaves, and even to wet glass because their toe pads squeeze water away through fine grooves. Tire treads have a similar design, channeling rainwater away for better adhesion to the road surface.

Characters in several of my stories use biomimicry, too.

In “The Steam Elephant,” (The Gallery of Curiosities, Issue #3) my sequel to Jules Verne’s two-part novel, The Steam House, the engineer known as Banks constructed a mechanical elephant around a traction steam engine. Verne likely chose an elephant to allow room for the boiler, and as a form that did not require railroad tracks.

My story, “A Clouded Affair,” in the anthology Avast, Ye Airships! includes a working, steam-powered ornithopter. These aircraft imitate birds by flapping their wings. Although useful in bird-sized machines, they never proved as practical as fixed or rotating wings in full scale. Even so, prior to the invention of the airplane, some designers tried to mimic birds in this way.

Along similar lines, my story “Instability” in the anthology Dark Luminous Wings is about a monk trying to fly by imitating flying creatures. Based on legend, my tale has Brother Eilmer of Malmesbury Abbey constructing a pair of wings similar to those of jackdaws. He soon finds this impossible to build in practice, so chooses to model his wings on those of bats instead.

Are you trying to solve a problem? If so, perhaps nature has already solved it for you. Look to plants and animals for inspiration. After all, biomimetics worked for—

                                                Poseidon’s Scribe

February 3, 2019Permalink

Retreading Worn Trails: Path Dependence in Technology

A few weeks ago, I mentioned I’d be discussing technology topics in this blog from time to time, along with the accustomed advice for beginning writers. Today I’ll delve into path dependence in technology.

I’ve long found it fascinating how people deal with new technology. Occasionally, developers of a new invention will copy the appearance of an older one. They don’t do this to ease adaptation for the user, but rather to reduce the risk of failure. By starting with something proven, with available parts, and making only a few changes, innovators increase the chance of their invention’s success.

This is the technological aspect of the larger term ‘path dependence,’ since historical precedence frames the inventor’s decisions. Only later does the new invention diverge in form from its predecessor.

You won’t find path dependence in all new technologies, but it’s most often present in evolutionary, versus revolutionary, developments.

Robert Fulton’s Nautilus of 1800
  • As a former submariner, one of my favorite examples of path dependence is the shape of submarines. Early submarines intended for long transits, like Fulton’s Nautilus and the military subs of World Wars I and II, resembled surface ships. They had ‘U’ or ‘V’ shaped cross sections, not ‘O’ shaped. Only later did submarine designs deviate from the standard surface ship configuration.
Benz Patent-Motorwagen from 1885
  • The automobile is another example. The first automobiles resembled the horse-drawn carriages that preceded them. Subsequent automobile designs departed from this model.
  • E-mail is another example of path dependence. The term itself refers back to the postal mail that came before electronic mail. In the early days of e-mail, people also formatted their messages as they had with traditional letters.

I’ll also cite three examples from my own stories. These are all fictional inventions, but are path dependent in the sense that their appearance sprang from predecessor technologies.

  • When I came across a claim that someone had invented a prototype submarine in China circa 200 BC, I decided to write a story about that. Accounts of this feat from 22 centuries ago were vague, so that freed me to create my own version. In “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai,” my protagonist inventor, Ning, patterns his submarine after the horse-drawn wagons of the period. I assumed my inventor would make minor alterations to a vehicle type with which he was familiar.
  • In writing my story “The Wind-Sphere Ship,” I toyed with the notion that Heron (sometimes written as Hero) of Alexandria might have found a practical use for the toy steam engine he built in the First Century AD, that of propelling a ship. Of course, he wouldn’t have envisioned a propeller-driven ship with an 18th Century style steam engine. My story features an oar-driven galley, with eighteen of Heron’s spinning metal spheres driving the oars.
  • In “A Tale More True,” my protagonist constructs a gigantic coil spring intended to launch him to the Moon from Germany in 1769. Count Federmann knows nothing of aerodynamics (let alone the effect of acceleration on the human body), so his capsule is merely a small metal house, square in shape, with a pitched roof. Again, this innovator chooses a shape with which he’s familiar.

Do you know of other examples of path dependence in new technology, whether real or fictional? If so, leave a comment for—

                                                Poseidon’s Scribe

January 6, 2019Permalink

What the Tech?

Today I’ll introduce a new feature to my blog. I’ll be exploring the way people deal with new technology. It’s a theme in most of my stories, and I’ll be discussing it in some depth in this and future posts. I’ll still offer guidance to beginning fiction writers, but I’ll also pursue this technology topic on occasion.

I’m not concerned so much with any particular technology itself, but rather the relationship between humans and new technology. This relationship can bring about a number of problems, including:

  • Technical failures during development and testing
  • Development of a technology without considering its harmful or immoral effects
  • Unanticipated problems brought about by use of the technology
  • Lack of acceptance of, or opposition to, the technology by others
  • The technology’s failure to live up to its hype
  • The possibility that the technology may change the user in some way
  • Eventual complacence brought about by success of the technology leading to new failure modes

In many of my stories, I show characters struggling with new technology and encountering several of these problems. Here are some of the most recently published ones.

In “The Unparalleled Attempt to Rescue One Hans Pfaall” in the Quoth the Raven anthology, there are two new technologies. One is the hot air balloon, in which my characters voyage to the Moon in 1835. The other is a mysterious machine they find on the Moon, a device that maintains both the satellite’s atmosphere and the life-link between paired individuals on the Earth and Moon. The balloon causes no problems, but one character’s ignorance and rashness causes disaster when he operates the Moon machine.

In “Target Practice” in the Re-Launch anthology, the technologies are a future underwater prison and one-man submarines. They use the mini-subs in a cruel training exercise that always results in the death of an inmate. The challenge for my protagonist is to exploit weaknesses in the technology and possibly survive the training exercise.

In “The Steam Elephant” in The Gallery of Curiosities, Issue #3, the technology is a mechanical, steam-powered elephant. In 1879, the British owners and occupants of the elephant are confident they will prevail in a war with primitive Zulu ‘savages.’ Perhaps their confidence is misplaced.

In “Instability” in the Dark Luminous Wings anthology, my medieval monk protagonist invents a pair of bat-like wings to achieve human flight. Other monks in the abbey are convinced he’s insane, and his first flight is not problem-free.

In “The Cats of Nerio-3” in the In A Cat’s Eye anthology, I mention several technologies, but the most important is an artificially intelligent computer. The AI believes itself far superior to its human companion, but perhaps it shouldn’t count humans out so soon.

In “After the Martians,” aliens leave their technologies behind after a failed invasion of Earth, and people use them to fight World War I. The Martian tripods and heat rays change the very nature of the war.

In “Ancient Spin” in the Hides the Dark Tower anthology, the technology is a giant stone tower, designed and built in Biblical times. After the tower’s collapse, its inventor considers how to avoid the blame.

In “Ripper’s Ring,” the technology is an ancient ring that can render its wearer invisible. Not only does this change the ring’s finder in negative ways, it complicates the detective’s search for him.

In “A Clouded Affair” in the Avast, Ye Airships! anthology, the two competing technologies are a 19th Century steam-powered ornithopter and a 20th Century diesel engine biplane. Which one wins the battle?

You’ll see this topic considered in detail and related to more of my stories in future posts by—

                                                Poseidon’s Scribe

December 23, 2018Permalink

Happy Bicentennial, Frankenstein

Two hundred years ago, author Mary Shelley wrote a remarkable novel— Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus—which endures in popularity and bears an increasingly meaningful warning for us today.

Title page from the original 1818 edition

(Yes, I know I’m a few months late. Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones published the novel on January 1, 1818. Amazing that a publisher was working on New Years Day!)

Today, we know Shelley’s novel mainly from its numerous movie incarnations and from the term “Frankenstein monster” itself, which has become shorthand for creating something with unintended negative consequences. I’ll be commenting on the original story, though, not its later derivative works.

Boris Karloff depiction of the monster, from the 1931 movie

In my own stories, I explore the relationships between people and new technology. That is a key aspect of Frankenstein. In fact, that novel is one of the first ever to consider that theme.

Inventors typically create new technology to improve human life, to meet a need. However, the introduction of new technology can also bring about undesirable changes, including fear, active opposition, unforeseen faults in the tech (bugs), and inventor’s regret.

Not only does Shelley show us all of these aspects in Frankenstein, she turns the table on the whole technology impact concept; her sentient technology reacts to its own existence in a world of people.

To us, her novel seems well ahead of its time. Two hundred years ago, the Industrial Revolution had just begun. Electricity was a new and exciting phenomenon, not yet harnessed for effective use. Scientists were discovering elements and chemicals at a rapid pace.

Up to that time, fiction authors had written of golems and homunculi, humanoids created from magic. No stories yet existed of creating human-like life through science.

Perhaps, to readers of Frankenstein in 1818, then witnessing an explosion of scientific discovery, it might have seemed as if the animation of dead human tissue might well be next week’s news. Two centuries later, we have a better idea of how difficult the feat is. We can manipulate DNA to some extent. We’ve achieved remarkable results in extending human lifespans. We can revive the recently dead through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and other techniques.

Mary W. Shelley

Still, we can’t do what Dr. Frankenstein did…yet. Nonetheless, when I said Shelley’s novel contains a particularly relevant warning for us today, I was referring to science’s quest to create artificially intelligent, sentient, self-aware “life.” This achievement may be decades, or only years, away. The ability for humans to create thinking, human-like life by means other than reproduction will be a breakthrough of far greater impact than any previous scientific development in human history.

We now find ourselves in the role of Dr. Frankenstein before he created the monster. We can consider the ethics of our actions in advance. We can ask if we’re insane even to pursue the enterprise. We can examine and plan for as many possible consequences as we can imagine.

Mary Shelley gave us a novel full of these consequences to consider. From twenty decades in the past, her visage warns us to be careful. She’s cautioning us with a worst-case scenario. If we fail to prepare for these consequences, we’ll have only ourselves to blame.

Thank you, Mary, for your wise counsel. On Frankenstein’s bicentennial, we’re still recklessly curious beings who discover how to do things before thinking whether we should, and before taking appropriate precautions. Maybe things will turn out fine, and much credit will go to you, for your prescient advance notice. Conveying my belated gratitude back through two centuries to you, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 19, 2018Permalink

Near Misses in Technology

For six years I’ve used this blog to aid beginning writers, but starting today I’ll occasionally take on other topics. Technology is fascinating to me, and today’s topic is those near misses in history when someone developed a technology before the world was ready.

What do I mean by ‘near misses?’ I’m talking about when an inventor came up with a new idea but it didn’t catch on, either because no one saw the possible applications or because there was no current need.

When you compare the date of the invention to the much later date when the idea finally took off, it’s intriguing to imagine how history might have been different, and how much further ahead we’d be today.

You’ll get a better idea of what I mean as we go through several examples.

Computers

The Antikythera Mechanism was likely the first computer, used for calculating the positions of celestial bodies. Invented in Greece in the 2nd Century BC, it contained over 30 intricate gears, and may have been a one-off. It is interesting to speculate how history might have been different if they’d envisioned other uses for this technology, such as mathematical calculations. Imagine Charles Babbage’s geared computer being invented two millennia earlier!

I was fascinated by the Antikythera Mechanism and the mystery surrounding its discovery in a shipwreck, so I wrote my story, “Wheels of Heaven,” with my version of those events.

Lasers

It’s puzzling to me that inventors came up with radios (1896) before lasers (1960). After all, radio involves invisible electromagnetic waves, but lasers are visible light. Sure, the mathematics behind lasers (stimulated emissions) wasn’t around until Einstein, but with people monkeying around with mirrors and prisms, it’s strange that no one happened upon the laser phenomenon ahead of its mathematical underpinning.

Charles Fabry and Alfred Perot came close in1899 when they developed their Fabry-Perot etalon, or interferometer. Again, imagine how history might have been different if lasers had appeared sixty years earlier, before radio.

My story “Within Victorian Mists” is a steampunk romance featuring the development of lasers and holograms in the 19th Century.

Manned Rocketry

The first manned rocket flight may have been that of German test pilot Lothar Sieber on March 1, 1945. It was unsuccessful and resulted in Sieber’s death. The first successful manned flight was that of Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union on April 12, 1961.

But did Sieber and Gagarin have a predecessor, beating them by three centuries?

There is an account of a manned rocked flight in 1633, the trip made successfully in Istanbul by Lagâri Hasan Çelebi. It’s fun to imagine if the sultan of that time had recognized the possibilities. My story “To Be First” is an alternate history tale showing where the Ottoman Empire might have gotten to by the year 1933 if they’d capitalized on Çelebi’s achievement.

Submarines

The earliest attempts at underwater travel come to us in legends and myths. Highly dubious accounts tell of Alexander the Great making a descent in a diving bell apparatus in 332 BC. There are vague references to the invention of a submarine in China around 200 BC. True submarine development really got its start in the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s.

Still, think about how much more we’d know today about the oceans if the ancient accounts were true and people of the time had make the most of them. My story “Alexander’s Odyssey” is a re-telling of the Alexander the Great episode, and “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai” is my version of the ancient Chinese submarine.

Steam Engines

In 1712, Thomas Newcomen developed the first commercially successful steam engine. Later, James Watt and Richard Trevithick improved on Newcomen’s design.

However, these inventions were preceded by Hero (or Heron) of Alexandria in the 1st Century AD. He developed a small steam engine called an aeolipile, though he considered it an amusing toy.

What if Heron had visualized the practical possibilities of this engine? Since the steam engine ushered in the Industrial Revolution, could humanity have skipped ahead 1700 years technologically? My story, “The Wind-Sphere Ship,” imagines a practical use for Heron’s engine along with a reason it didn’t catch on.

Other Near Misses?

You get the idea. I am intrigued by the number of times inventors hit on an idea, but society failed to recognize it and take advantage of it, so it had to wait until much later. Are there other examples you can think of? Leave a comment for me. Your thoughts might well be featured in a post by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 4, 2017Permalink