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Question 2: Technology and Progress
What do you think the author was trying to say about technology and progress? Is it an optimistic or pessimistic take or something else entirely? Was this done well and do you have thoughts on his views in this area as protrayed in the book?
Comments
I think the main message I took from it was the inevitability of change, and the sense that there was going to be an irrevocable loss of individuality. I admired the way that half the time one admired the villagers for taking on the global marketplace, and the other half one lamented it. I guess that that theme (loss of local identity, I mean) is not the most original take on technology, but I thought that it was done well.
I think we have to conclude the author's take is optimistic, though cautious, about technology. Or at least it was when he wrote the book. Things probably looked less scary and more promising back then. In our current global situation, I'm much less optimistic. The college dropouts who never took any civics classes and think they are so smart they are above such things are now driving the change. I don't know why we let them, except I guess because they bribe us with cat pictures and instant friends, which we seem to want.
I would guess that Ryman's other main point is that technological change will affect everyone - not just the class of people driving it. I think the book was effective at calling this out, but perhaps might have been more effective as a warning to readers had the villagers not fared as well in the end. Why did it end on such a positive note if it was a warning? These things seem conflicting.
I did enjoy that tension in the book between loss and gain that Richard identified. Maybe there was no 'purpose' to the book than to tell a compelling story - in which case I'd say it was successful. Perhaps looking for deeper meaninsg is a red herring.
Aside from the fact that the technology in the book was not technological at all, the sweeping changes it brought rings true. The fracturing of the village was painful, but inevitable. It would have been destroyed and not rebuilt in the real world. The positive note it ends on feels like cheating to me. Again Magical thinking. Magical thinking is popular these days. That's how these dropouts driving change are thinking, as well as the MAGA hatted idiots in power here.
By the way Magitechnology is the subject of one of the games I released last month. I approach it differently.
I would argue that there's a very slim band of time, and even then only a few places, where magical thinking wasn't the norm in the world. I think the world did mostly alright with magical thinking. I'm not sure the nuclear age was objectively better.
Well, then you should be happy! Or... is that me doing that 'logic thing' again?
At first I thought the book was a warning about technology and how it can have profound impacts on those you don't maybe consider, but by the end I wasn't entirely sure. The villagers were clearly intelligent and adaptable and were going to figure out a way to move forward in the new setup, and the flashes we got of individuals from the more "advanced" parts of society did not convince me their "advanced" state made them any better as people.
As for @Apocryphal take that magical thinking was mostly the norm and that we did mostly alright - that's interesting! To me, I wonder if we did alright "despite" the magical thinking, and only because we had people who were willing to step back from that and challenge it with some more structured thinking, that we were able to truly do alright. But I could be challenged on that for sure.
Your comments made me wonder if this was "really" a book about the idea of singularity, with Air providing the catalytic effect? The first part of the story and the tech development across most of the world seemed broadly to follow familiar models, but then right at the end there was an expectation of a step-change. This included the idea that the new foetus - although in one sense dead - was going to participate in the Air event along with everyone else. So maybe we're meant to see the final globalisation of Air as a catapult event into something unknown and incomprehensible?
That seems like a reasonable take. I did find the end a bit jarring in that sense. We are following along with a specific group of people as they manage change, but then the true scope of the change is revealed to be rather far beyond even what I initially thought it would be by the end of the book.
I almost wish he would have pulled back a little bit on the scope of the change, rather than go all in with it.
The technology in Air reminds me a very little bit of what was invented in 'The This' by Adam Roberts, though participants had a choice in the matter there.
But it’s also hinted at earlier in the novel, near the beginning. Mae become joined in the head with the old lady, who despite being physically dead still lives in Air (and hence in Mar’s mind). And she is now privy to events both in the past and presumably in the future, as if she has become some kind of quasi-quantum person.
Mae is in the unique position of having been exposed to Air before anyone else and having an idea of what changes it will bring for good or Ill, and so she can prepare her community. Arguably, we will all be similarly unprepared for this kind of event.
Can anyone think of other books that explore the impact of a ‘singularity’? In some works, the singularity is imagined as a point in time where people just ‘disappeared’ or became unrecognizable, perhaps disappeared to a digital world, and the stories told are the stories of those left behind. Vernor Vinge explored this idea in The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. I think the RPG Eclipse Phase also explores this. And the TV series The Leftovers, which equates the Singularity with The Rapture.