It always flabbergasts me when someone looks at the violence and poverty and horror that exists in the worlds portrayed in books like Snow Crash and Ready Player One, and then says to themselves: "Yes that! I want that! Clearly the big corporations in those stories have created a paradise worth living in, and the goal of turning people into mind controlled puppets or indentured servants is a good one."
Also, I disagree with the statement that a book where the plot doesn't start until 350 pages in is good. I read Cryptonomicon, and from that point swore off ever reading anything big and heavy enough to use as a murder weapon. Stephenson, like the tech billionaires, has gotten to a point where he doesn't listen to constructive criticism from editors. His first four books, when an editor or agent could tell him to cut out all the fat, were his best work. Especially Zodiac (which would make for a much better movie than Snow Crash by the way) where corporations are portrayed as greedy, short sighted, stupid, and entirely responsible for environmental destruction.
I'll bet the tech optimists, and Stephenson himself these days, carefully ignore that part of his bibliography.
This is one thing I liked about "The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O." Stephenson wrote it with Nicole Galland, and it seems like that pairing helped reign in some of his writerly excesses.
It's over 750 pages long, and weighs half a kilo! I know massive books that meander around, or spend dozens of pages at a time on side quests, are popular, but it's not for me. Maybe DODO sticks to a compelling plot and character arc all the way through, but I haven't the patience to try.
The parallels to KSR's Ministry for the Future are compelling.
KSR assumes that some combination of democratic politics and eco-terrorism in the form of blowing up passenger airplanes will allow the world to coordinate on mitigating climate change while empowering indigenous forms of governance and technology. I think they also mostly get rid of the patriarchy? In other words, a story that lets the reader imagine that the climate crisis can only be solved by simultaneously overturning the existing, imperfect social order.
The problem with the book is that in real democratic governance and eco-terrorism scenarios, you never have everything go according to plan. Is Ministry for the Future going to lead some ex-Williamsburger to launch his own rogue sleeper cell to assassinate anyone consuming too much carbon? Probably not. But… yeah, it might.
Jokes aside, I liked both books a lot, but it's not clear to me which one is more reckless.
Techno-optimism seems like the best way to get people to save ourselves. Americans need to believe in self-efficacy. Leaving the field of techno-optimism to the fascist SV types merely means no democratic technological counterforce to whatever they're building next.
What I like about KSR's book is that he takes seriously what it would look like to actually implement big social transformations. (Also, I think his book is full of examples where everything doesn't go according to plan!)
Ministry for the Future is ultimately one of the most optimistic books I've read.
But it's also a book that I find harder and harder to believe post-pandemic. I'm just not convinced that a climate event that kills millions in India would serve as a wake-up call for the Global North. I'm not even sure if a climate event that kills millions in Europe or the U.S. would serve as that wake-up call.
So Stephenson's premise is simpler to accept. KSR asks us to imagine the end (or at least the dramatic reformation) of capitalism. Stephenson just asks to imagine the engineers, climate scientists, and computer modelers have all the details worked out.
It always flabbergasts me when someone looks at the violence and poverty and horror that exists in the worlds portrayed in books like Snow Crash and Ready Player One, and then says to themselves: "Yes that! I want that! Clearly the big corporations in those stories have created a paradise worth living in, and the goal of turning people into mind controlled puppets or indentured servants is a good one."
Also, I disagree with the statement that a book where the plot doesn't start until 350 pages in is good. I read Cryptonomicon, and from that point swore off ever reading anything big and heavy enough to use as a murder weapon. Stephenson, like the tech billionaires, has gotten to a point where he doesn't listen to constructive criticism from editors. His first four books, when an editor or agent could tell him to cut out all the fat, were his best work. Especially Zodiac (which would make for a much better movie than Snow Crash by the way) where corporations are portrayed as greedy, short sighted, stupid, and entirely responsible for environmental destruction.
I'll bet the tech optimists, and Stephenson himself these days, carefully ignore that part of his bibliography.
This is one thing I liked about "The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O." Stephenson wrote it with Nicole Galland, and it seems like that pairing helped reign in some of his writerly excesses.
It's over 750 pages long, and weighs half a kilo! I know massive books that meander around, or spend dozens of pages at a time on side quests, are popular, but it's not for me. Maybe DODO sticks to a compelling plot and character arc all the way through, but I haven't the patience to try.
This makes me think of Peter Isherwell character in "Don't Look Up"... Perfect tech optimism criticism.
And also the ending is gold in that movie.
Unfortunately, we simply can't model this. We will have to try it out. Not at scale. Stephenson's heroes just dive in at scale.
It's widely thought that 2023's bananagobsmack is a termination shock, we may already have run the first experiment.
The parallels to KSR's Ministry for the Future are compelling.
KSR assumes that some combination of democratic politics and eco-terrorism in the form of blowing up passenger airplanes will allow the world to coordinate on mitigating climate change while empowering indigenous forms of governance and technology. I think they also mostly get rid of the patriarchy? In other words, a story that lets the reader imagine that the climate crisis can only be solved by simultaneously overturning the existing, imperfect social order.
The problem with the book is that in real democratic governance and eco-terrorism scenarios, you never have everything go according to plan. Is Ministry for the Future going to lead some ex-Williamsburger to launch his own rogue sleeper cell to assassinate anyone consuming too much carbon? Probably not. But… yeah, it might.
Jokes aside, I liked both books a lot, but it's not clear to me which one is more reckless.
Techno-optimism seems like the best way to get people to save ourselves. Americans need to believe in self-efficacy. Leaving the field of techno-optimism to the fascist SV types merely means no democratic technological counterforce to whatever they're building next.
Agreed, it's a really interesting comparison.
What I like about KSR's book is that he takes seriously what it would look like to actually implement big social transformations. (Also, I think his book is full of examples where everything doesn't go according to plan!)
Ministry for the Future is ultimately one of the most optimistic books I've read.
But it's also a book that I find harder and harder to believe post-pandemic. I'm just not convinced that a climate event that kills millions in India would serve as a wake-up call for the Global North. I'm not even sure if a climate event that kills millions in Europe or the U.S. would serve as that wake-up call.
So Stephenson's premise is simpler to accept. KSR asks us to imagine the end (or at least the dramatic reformation) of capitalism. Stephenson just asks to imagine the engineers, climate scientists, and computer modelers have all the details worked out.
Yeah I think this is the right take. Tragic that the book is too optimistic!
But climate change is so important and so near that we should be open to anything...even techno-solutionism