- Schwitzgebel 1970. Behavior instrumentation and social technology
- Taylor 1972. Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Context
- Kagarlitski 1973. Bernard SHaw and Science Fiction
Schwitzgebel, Robert L. 1970. Behavior instrumentation and social technology. American Psychologist 25(6): 491-499. DOI: 10.1037/h0029447 [APA PsycNet]
Psychologis seldom ask such questions seriously - not because a possible Orson Welles' "War-of-the-worlds" answer is so unpredictable or insignificant, but because, as behavioral scientists, we have greater professional regard for rigorous irrelevancy than relevant vagary. The historical origins of this preference (e.g., philosophical operationalism, prestige of physical science models, etc.) are neither obscure nor without merit. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 491)
Profound.
It is a rather common assumption, indeed complaint, that technical innovations force alterations in the established social order of a culture. For example, the style of government, as well as the physical configuration of towns, was substantially altered when systems for transporting water were mechanized so that people no longer visit the communal well. Today, transportation devices and mass media are recognized as major influences in our social life. In this "indirect" way, the engineer and the technician are revolutinaries: they rearrange materials in a manner that necessarily elicits changes in social structure. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 491)
Enam ei käida kaevul.
Yet the simple procedure of setting our clocks forward by one hour keeps the discriminative stimulus intact - that is, the alarm still rings at "7:30 A.M." - but the behavior is effectively changed. It might be worth considering whether we could bring other cooperative or gregarious behavior under stimulus control of the clock (we do so now on New Year's Eve!) which might be activated in times of crisis. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 492)
I have to admit, I don't think I've met the term "gregarious behavior" before.
Selected sapling might be based on variables, such as exchange or withdrawal of diplomats, which have already been established as political indicators (cf. Feierabend & Feierabend 1966; Tanter 1966) and processed by an on-line computer. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 493)
Is your computer on the line?
The pioneering work of Francis Galton and of Alexander Graham Bell might serve as models for smaller initial efforts on an individual basis. Galton's tireless ingenuity and empiricism led him, among many other things, to become interested in designing apparatus that would physically measure a person's emotion or attitude. He took as an illustration the "inclination of one person toward another" and suggested that this might be quantified for two people sitting next to each other at a dinner table by attaching strain gauges to the legs of the chairs and then measuring shifts in weight (Galton 1884). The telephone was a direct outgrowth of Bell's work as a speech therapist and his interest in reducing the social isolation of handicapped persons. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 494)
The same guy who quantified something or other by walking around town and judging if women in that part of town are hot or not?
Recently a number of devices have been designed by psychologists to correct functional deficits or to otherwise alter individual behavior. The "Mowrer sheet" (Mowrer & Mowrer 1938) for the treatment of enuresis is probably the most widely known device of this type. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 494)
The very same Mowrer.
The "compassionate revolution" designates a general systems theory problem-solving approach in which personal diversity will be positively valued. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 494)
Sounds a bit like the diersity of personalities in Stapledon's imagination of the future.
The nineteenth-century amateur sociologist, Charles Fourier, inspired by experiments in telegraphy, fantasied that in the course of time, man would become equipped with a prehensile tail and sensory receptors capable of communicating with inhabitants of this and other planets. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 494)
Fourier sure has a habit of turning up in unexpected places.
His [Fourier's] rather incredible prophecy was, however, hardly more speculative than that of the physicist J. D. Bernal (1929), who predicted that limitations of the human body could be overcome by mechanical attachments to such an extent that eventually our only remaining organic part would be the brain. This fantasy is elaborated in Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, where "giant brains" living in beehive-shaped cells, sustained by pumps and chemical plants, could be consciously wherever they wished by detachable sense organs. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 495)
Cool hint.
- Bernal, J. D. 1929. The world, the flesh and the devil. [No publisher]. [Cited in A. C. Clarke (Ed.), 1958. Profiles of the future. New York: Harper & Row.] [Marxists Internet Archives]
(Schwitzgebel 1970: 495)
Oh, good, we'll become compassionate it 4 years.
Of course he uses words and theoretical constructs, but these are not his product any more than nonverbal tools such as a pencil and paper define the product of the verbal scholar. In this respect, the psychoanalyst, novelist, or lawyer have modes of dealing with human behavior clearly distinguishable from those of the physician, architect, or jailer. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 496)
Weird.
The most frequently voiced fears regarding technology include potentially excessive or malicious control of individual behavior, a threat of uniformity, and (if nothing worse) just plain boredom. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 496)
Phraseology. Stapledon had a phrase negating this threat in the Eighteenth Men.
On the basis of a fairly thorough survey by our laboratory engineer (Bird 1969), it was estimated that a computer-based radio system capable of locating individuals in a city approximately 24 × 24 kilometers would require two hundred and twenty-five 100-watt base station transceivers at 5-kilometer [|] intervals at a total system cost of about $9 million, including 10,000 personally attached transponder units at $500 each. Systems of this magnitude are barely feasible and could hardly be installed without public knowledge. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 496-497)
And now we buy the transponders ourselves and are happy to carry them around with us at all times.
A practical metatechnology must concern itself with relatively nonaversive means of regulating "spontaneous" innovations and of encouraging others. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 497)
A practical what?
Our inventiveness should be able to capture, in tangible form, something of ancient dream and myth. By making our physical environment and our physical selves increasingly responsive to human intention, the distinction between matter and fantasy will gradually diminish. Thus, if we can meet our short-term social crises, the human odyssey will inevitably move toward new dimensions of being. In this, it seems to me, psychologists should find a certain measure of challenge and excitement. (Schwitzgebel 1970: 498)
Beautiful.
Taylor, Angus M. 1972. Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Context. Journal of Popular Culture 5(4): 858-866. DOI: 10.1111/j.0022-3840.1972.0504_858.x [Wiley Online Library]
Science fiction's particular orientation tends toward the sociological. As long ago as 1906 H. G. Wells said, "I think, in fact, that the creation of Utopias - and their exhaustive criticism - is the proper and distinctive method of sociology." Wells denied the possibility of an exact science of sociology. Sociology, he said, "must be neither art simply, nor science in the narrow meaning of the word at all, but knowledge rendered imaginatively, and with an element of personality; that is to say, in the highest sense of the term, literature." (Taylor 1972: 858)
Not bad, though probably doesn't really hold: science fiction should ideally be about... science.
Contrary to the widely-held notion that science fiction is a peculiarly twentieth-century phenomenon, this type of literature was widespread in the nineteenth, both in Europe and North America. Says H. Bruce Franklin: "There was no major nineteenth-century American writer of fiction, and indeed few in the second rank, who did not write some science fiction or at least one utopian romance." (Taylor 1972: 859)
Neat.
It was H. G. Wells, writing at the turn of the century, who at last articulated this dilemma in clear terms. Wells saw progress for mankind as possible but far from certain. His first novel, The Time Machine (1895), and also The War of the Worlds (1898) atacked complacent Victorian notions of inevitable progress. Wells saw man's chances of progressing with the help of his intellect limited by the fact of a universe blind to ethical considerations. Science divorced from humanity was likely to lead only to disaster. The utopian fiction that followed from his pen was in line with his sociological prescription for planning a better world, and not born of any false sense of optimism. Says Jack Williamson, "[...] Wells preached progress not out of confident hope, but out of cold desperation." (Taylor 1972: 860)
O woe is me, there is no God to judge my actions and tally my tithes.
The fears of American intellectuals and writers, on the other hand, have reflected a somewhat different experience. "They have been haunted, in other words, by the possibility of totalitarian societies whose social origins are likely to be rooted in a monstrous efflorescence of capitalism. The root has not lain in the party or amongst the ideologues, but in the corporation - a domestic phenomenon. The whole tone, also, of the American anti-utopian novels had lacked the peculiar bitterness born of proximity that has infected its twin." [Madisson, Michael 1965. The Case Against Tomorrow. p 220] (Taylor 1972: 861)
Spot on.
The failure of much of science fiction to postulate fundamental change in man's nature, rather than simply in his environment, has been raised, among others, by Robert Bloch, and such criticism is part of the continuing debate over the nature of the field. C. S. Lewis defined one sub-species of science fiction as "Eschatological" - speculation on the ultimate destiny of humanity - citing such examples as Wells' The Time Machine, Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, and Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. (Taylor 1972: 861)
Perfect! That is exactly what Stapledon's book is - eschatological science fiction.
After 1918, politics, art, and life generally, reflected disillusionment with the old ways. Between 1900 and 1927 quantum physics and relativity laid the basis for a new interpretation of the universe. They pointed the way toward a more unified concept of the structure of the universe in which matter, energy, space, and time may come to be seen as different manifestations of a single universal field. (Taylor 1972: 862)
Spinoza's substance?
Science fiction, to this way of thinking, assumes a special relevance in today's world. According to Gerald Heard: "In its aim it is bound, by its extrapolation of science and its use of dramatic plot, to view man and his machines and his environment as a threefold whole, the machine being the hyphen. It also views man's psyche, man's physique and the entire life process as also a threefold interacting unit. Science fiction is the prophetic (or to use a more exact special term) the apocalyptic literature of our particular and culminating epoch of crisis." (Taylor 1972: 863)
Man — machine — environment.
Kagarlitski, Julius; Freling, Roger 1973. Bernard SHaw and Science Fiction: Why Raise the Question? The Shaw Review 16(2): 59-66. [JSTOR]
The topic "Bernard Shaw and Science Fiction" conceals a certain timeless contradiction. The theme is about science fiction. Bernard Shaw, however, repeatedly declared himself to be an enemy of science. It is scarcely necessary to cite his utterances on the subject; they are collected in abundance in the basic work of Archibald Henderson (a professor of mathematics, I want to remind you: Bernard Shaw possessed just such a talent for creating paradoxes around himself!). (Kagalitski; Freling 1973: 59)
Uh-oh.
Contemporaneously with Capek (R. U. R. was published and translated into English in the same year that Back to Methuselah appeared), Shaw turned to the Frankenstein theme - the man-made individual who rebelled against his creator - long before Olaf Stapledon in Last and First Men speaks of the amazing form of future art: the creation of living creatures with laboratory-designed characteristics and appearance. (Kagalitski; Freling 1973: 61)
Vital Art.
Shaw in this respect is not entirely original. This becomes clear as one turns to the work of Swift, a writer profoundly respected by him and perfectly familiar to him. Shaw enters into polemics with the third book of Gulliver's Travels (Swift's Struldburgs are a burden to humanity, Shaw's old people its most valuable segment) and at the same time is influenced by it as he formulates for himself his attitude toward science and science fiction. An interest in science and a familiarity with it were characteristic traits of Swift (just as they were of another of Shaw's favorites, Voltaire). (Kagalitski; Freling 1973: 62)
Interesting. I should really get into Swift.
In fact, science fiction is often defined as the mythology of the twentieth century. And there is reason for this. Science fiction, as the Irkutsk scholar Tatyana Chernyshova demonstrated in her recently published work, depends upon the imperfection of human knowledge; it freely "completes" a picture and in this sense fulfills the traditional role of mythology. Since nature is inexhaustible, our knowledge about it will never be absolutely complete, and science fiction, theoretically speaking, will forever preserve its role as "the new mythology." This, however, touches only one side of the [|] question. A function not conventionally mythological but rather, on the contrary, anti-mythological continues to exist for science fiction. (Kagalitski; Freling 1973: 64-65)
Hooks up nicely with Stapledon's preface, in which he sets up his venture as an experiment in myth-making.
Joseph Aramsky was a Russian madman who claimed to have travelled with aliens. (Kagalitski; Freling 1973: 65, fn 6)
Isn't "Russian madman" a bit redundant?
Shaw's principal objection to Darwin's theory is that it subjects man to impersonal, statistical laws, operates apart from his will, and thereby deprives him of responsibility and a sense of conscious purpose. Neo-Lamarckism, on the other hand, is accepted and advocated by him as a doctrine recognizing man as the master of his own fate. (Kagalitski; Freling 1973: 66)
Loss of (collective wil-)power?
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