Moodboard: The Worm
Category: scratchpad
Obligate Dramatic Irony
The thing about sci-fi is that there’s stuff we can’t write anymore, and not in the culture wars sense.
In the 50s, before we reached a local maximum on robotics, we had stories about smart houses and ambulatory robot assistants.
In the 60s and 70s when we had no clue what the conditions were like on other planets, we had stories about sirens on Titan and planets that were ripe for human colonization because the atmosphere on them are by default earth-like.
In the 80s and 90s, when we had no fucking idea what this internet thing would be capable of, we had stories about metaverses and uber-powerful hackers.
Of course we can still write stuff about, like, civilizations on Jupiter or whatever, but when we do, we must do so through a filter/layer/film of something that we can call “obligate dramatic irony”. We now know for certain that the other planets in our solar system are devoid of intelligent humanoid life, so it gets that much harder to suspend your disbelief (a thing that takes work), and so the threshold for how cool a premise needs to be to use the scenario gets elevated. 1
Sci-fi pushes at the frontiers of current science for inspiration, and I think this is rad! This lessens the work needed to suspend your disbelief, increases the wonder and delight because of a thrumming background sense of plausibility, and it’s not like our current understandings of science is not conducive to a wealth of new and fucking awesome premises in SF 2.
The flip-side is just that previous frontiers are now largely blocked, and unblocked only through a self-consciously retro aesthetic (or something more clever), if writing, and a layer of obligate dramatic irony, if reading.
Anyways, this is probably something that’s already been talked about by McLuhan or DFW or the assholes who talk about hauntology/disenchantment or whatever. Please email me the key phrase to google if you know.
Ways a phone is like a dæmon
With apologies to Philip Pullman.
- It’s an extension of me – my phone and I are part of the same entity that make up my thoughts/perspectives/habits
- Despite the fact that it’s part of me, I can still “talk” to it (i.e. get new insights and perspectives from it through interacting with it)- it’s a part of my soul, but separate enough for that
- Everyone has one that is close by them at all times, and our structures are now built to accommodate them (charging ports at malls! QR code menus at restaurants!)
- If mine is more than 6 ft away from me I get separation anxiety
- If I am to be permanently separated from a smartphone I will probably end up catatonic with depression for life (this one is maybe a joek)
- I can talk to another person in person, and I can use my phone to communicate to their phone, but using another person’s phone seems viscerally wrong/taboo – I would never pick up a random phone and start playing around with it at a party. Strange phones emit a strong Do Not Touch field. I would even hesitate to move a strange phone from a couch to a table to sit on the couch.
- It feels slightly less wrong when it’s a close friend or lover, but it still feels like an invasion of privacy (touching another person’s daemon is reserved for basically only immediate family and lovers, and even so, very rarely)
- One wrong interaction with someone else’s phone can destroy your relationship with them entirely
- I did the most intimate thing I could do with my girlfriend recently – we exchanged phone PINs, and all our login info for all of our accounts. We now own a piece of each other’s souls.
Thoughts brought to you by the fact that a close friend of mine borrowed my phone to call their grandma 2 weeks ago since their phone died; I felt many unexpectedly strong emotions about this.
