Sci-fi reality

Published February 10, 2017
The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

IN recent times, I have started to take science fiction quite seriously. It is only natural that the distant futures depicted in Hollywood movies and popular novels are termed fictional; we cannot know for sure what life will look like hundreds of years from now, nor rely on anything other than our imagination with regards to potential life forms beyond our planet.

Still, those who create fiction often fashion their characters and stories on everyday realities. Some of the more compelling sci-fi out there does foretell a future world based on contemporary developments. Unfortunately, the future that most closely resembles our present is at best disturbing, and at worst a dystopia.

Admittedly, it is hard to be optimistic these days. The newly elected president of the so-called ‘free world’ is announcing flamboyantly that the time-honoured tradition of torture is an entirely legitimate endeavour. Or­­­­ga­­nised violence within societies, especially Muslim-majority ones, shows no signs of abating thanks both to imperialistic powers and self-proclaimed defenders of the faith. Less spectacularly, states and corporations collude to watch over our every step, and so-called ‘development’ is everywhere destroying eco-systems and endangering our planet.


Sci-fi dystopias are a more realistic depiction of the future.


Intriguingly, all of this is closely connected to rapid improvements in technology. Scientific advances have led to new and more efficient ways to incarcerate and torture large numbers of people; to the production, availability and employment of more destructive weapons; to an information super-network, from which soon no one will be able to exclude themselves; and to the domination of nature in unprecedented ways.

Think about the last point briefly. The modern era is associated with the creation of a capitalist world market through maritime trade in which agricultural commodities became the staple of exchange. We developed and refined technology to mobilise water, forests and land to produce a variety of what became known as ‘cash crops’. Yet much of the world’s surface remained unutilised because it was not considered ‘valuable’.

Now all of this is changing, and very rapidly. Entire land masses, bodies of water, and mountains that were all previously not sou­r­ces of ‘value’ are now fair game because technology allows us to drill further and faster to find oil, gas, minerals and so on that can be turned into commodities. There are very few places on earth that remain unexploited.

Whether in the past, or in the present, technology has always been the means through which we have made ‘progress’. But just as in the past, so today the question that begs to be asked is: what is progress? Is it to be taken for granted that technology necessarily creates a better world, if not for all then for the majority of the people who occupy it (including future generations)?

This question is an urgent one because a large number of people who otherwise think critically about all of the disturbing developments I have listed here tend to be enthralled with technology at large, and particularly information and communications technologies that are rapidly transforming social life.

Coming back to sci-fi dystopias: On the one hand images of space inspired by cutting-edge technology do inspire hope because humanity has made remarkable strides to reach where it is today. We started as hunters and gatherers almost completely dependent on nature, and can now imagine unlimited renewable sources of energy, as well as life, beyond the earth.

But the truth about technology is that it continues, for the most part, to be mobilised for the pursuit of power and profit. The internet, as our most recent ‘missing person’ trauma confirms, is very easily mobilised to limit rather than encourage freedoms. To continue just ‘hoping’ in the face of all these realities that technology will play its role to suddenly expand human frontiers — and that means for all of humanity and the eco-system that sustains it — is rather myopic.

In fact, it is pure fiction.

Sci-fi dystopias are, it seems to me, a more realistic depiction of the future. Some of the more outlandish futures in which we have conquered space, are flying around in ships and living on other planets along with other life forms are not to be taken too seriously. But tack on our increasing obsession with networked gadgets, screen-based recreation, and the use of machines to perform our menial la­­­bour with the power vested in states and corporations to monitor our every move, develop artificial intelligence/engineer genetics, and exploit the earth’s resources — this is the making of a sci-fi dystopia of the worst kind.

There is no utility to speculating right now on what comes to pass. What is is our ability to see the warning signs. Technology has certainly been at the heart of humanity’s most prized achievements. But ‘progress’ is always a double-edged sword. Our political choices — if we are not too dumbed down to make informed ones — will determine what life looks like on the other side of progress.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2017

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