I started playing around with narratives and narrative theory recently. After talking to a couple of my geek 2.0 friends, I found out that some of them are afraid of a very dystopian future. The future, where computers will dominate the human race, just like in The Matrix.

Credit: flyingdutchee

To support their claims, my friends list examples from sci-fi literature and their connection to scientific development. It’s quite difficult to establish the connection from an academical standpoint, but we’ll stick with anecdotal evidence for now. In case anyone is interested to turn this topic into a full study, feel free to do so. I will only encourage it.

Here is the outline from the story to unrealistic expectations.

• Perceive the narrative
• Changes happen in the real life
• Uncertainty leads the mind back to the narrative
• Assert its conclusion however bizarre
• Unrealistic expectations and fear of technology

That doesn’t make much sense now, does it? Let’s put it into a narrative for better understanding. We will start from the premise that sci-fi literature influences technology and scientific development.

Perception

The readers perceive the narrative in the sci-fi literature. It seems believable, consistent and follows a logic of good reasons. In plain English: My friend John is sitting in his armchair, reading a book about computers dominating the humanity. Everything flows smoothly in the story, which makes it easy to be remembered.

Uncertainty

Then changes happen in the real life. The scientists create a supercomputer with a processing capacity exceeding the one of a human brain. What used to be only a part of the sci-fi narrative is now reality. That sparks John’s interest in the potential of this invention. “Maybe the sci-fi predictions are becoming reality.” He then recalls the narrative in the novel, and quickly asserts its conclusion.

Explanation

Some humans panic like there were no tomorrow. Why? John doesn’t know what happens next, but knows that these changes were described in the sci-fi narrative. By applying the logic of good reasons he assumes that narrative = reality. However irrational it may be, he may believe that the computers will subdue humanity.

All this happens on the level of heuristics, not logic. Even though we are thinking that we are thinking, we are actually taking shortcuts. What shortcuts do you make?

Tagged as: case study, heuristics, memory, narrative, paradigm, perception, reality, shortcut, Skepticism

• Johnak January 24, 2009 at 10:20 pm

  

  I must say I don’t much agree with you. For one I know many geeks and I don’t remember any of them panicking about what will happen in the future. I’m not saying there aren’t any but I’ve known literaly “hundreds” geeks and if two are like that, it is a lot. For what I known, people with less imagination or the “normal” people in general are more likely to be afraid of things like supercomputer or something like that. Geeks acknowledge it will happen but they make no big deal out of it. I’ve seen tons of jokes being told about the Large Hadron Collider for example while lots of other people were screaming it will destroy the planet. The LHC jokes make partialy fun of them. Geeks generally (and I mean generally, of course there are lots of exceptions) don’t take this too seriously. That doesn’t mean they don’t believe it, just that they don’t make an issue out of it. For example me? I tend to think it is probable that we will all die in a nuclear war sometime in the futere? Do I make an issue out of it. Nah. I grow up on a Fallout computer game. I’ll duck and cover approach or I will hide in the fridge Also with LHC. Can there be a more cool death than to be sucked up by the black hole? I would like to get to space on the other hand and I hope that space exploration will move on in my lifetime and it will be possible for me to go up there but I’m not holding my breath.

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• Honza January 24, 2009 at 10:32 pm

  

  OK, good point on several levels.

  1) Geeks are outliers on the normal distribution bell curve.
  2) I should have explained the targeting better – I meant that ordinary people are often scared as well as the geeks.
  3) Geeks are not scared. They take it with a light sense of humor. Thank you for the clarification.

  Oh, and being sucked into a black hole IS a super cool death. I think that the states that still insist on capital punishment should institute this type of execution (of course on a micro level…)

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• Johnak January 25, 2009 at 1:29 am

  

  But I’m afraid micro black hole would either not have enought energy and nothing would happed (it would dissapear right after its creation) or it would have some energy and sucked up entire planet I’ll have to look it up. But it would be good as a capital punishment on a grand scale.

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