Neal Stephenson Takes Blame For Innovation Failure

itwbennett writes "Neal Stephenson is shouldering some of the blame for discouraging budding scientists and engineers, saying in a interview that perhaps the dark turn science fiction has taken is 'discouraging budding scientists and engineers.' For his part, Stephenson has vowed to be more optimistic. From the article: 'Speaking before a packed lecture theater at MIT yesterday, Neal Stephenson worried that the gloomy outlook prevalent in modern science fiction may be undermining the genre's ability to inspire engineers and scientists. Describing himself as a "pessimist trying to turn himself into an optimist," and acknowledging that some of his own work has contributed to the dystopian trend, he added "if every depiction of the future is grim...then it doesn't create much of an incentive to building the future."'"

Comments

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflated sense of self-worth alert

Re:Really?

[ATMAvatar]

If you were to ascribe blame to any particular group for the perceived slowing of innovation, the best target would be the lawyers. A dystopian future story pales in comparison to a stampeding herd of patent lawyers when it comes to stifling scientific and technological progress.

You can't even daydream about something new without getting sued for infringing multiple patents anymore.

Lawyers

[Nerdfest]

He can try to claim credit, but I'm fairly sure lawyers are far more directly responsible, probably with MBA's being a close second.

WTF dude

[Osgeld]

"the gloomy outlook prevalent in modern science fiction may be undermining the genre's ability to inspire engineers and scientists."

or maybe its the fact you can get a business degree out of a box of crackerjacks and make more money with much less work sitting on your ass as a manager.

Re:WTF dude

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's the problem right there: management is vastly overrated as a profession; it's interesting that moving into management is always perceived as a step up. I've seen plenty of managers expressing shock and horror at finding that some of their underlings make more than they do, and it seems that they've quickly moved to address that issue; it doesn't happen all that often anymore. Management is important and all that, but it does seem that somehow we got stuck in a loop with inflated egos pushing up inflated salaries and vice versa.

Another problem is that a lot of companies seem to have problems coming up with good career paths for scientists and engineers. Especially career paths that don't end up in management. The other day, a fellow contractor working for my client asked me to provide input for his yearly appraisal. One section of the form was titled "future potential", where I was asked my opinion on what level the person would be able to attain in 5 years time, and what level he'd be at the top of his career. The choices were jobs like "programme manager", "department manager", "division manager"... the only option that didn't have the word manager in it was "CEO". And this is supposed to be a career path for an IT architect working for a tech firm?

In general, techies are poorly understood, poorly managed, underpaid and not well respected. And all of these go hand in hand. Small wonder that young people are choosing other career options.

I went into academia to help the world help itself

[Anonymous Coward]

...I left academia when I discovered that the world doesn't want to help itself, but to destroy itself with a new global religion called "the free market", being neither free nor much of a market.

Me Thinks Thou Dost Overrate One's Self

[l0ungeb0y]

Seriously -- Snow Crash was alright and had it's place but Neal Stephenson is far from the technological catalyst he thinks he is.
And frankly Neal should get stuffed for failing to recognize the darkness and dire warnings embedded in many of H.G. Well's stories that still have relevance today. If H.G. Wells can't stall progress and innovation -- who the hell is Neal to say he's even partly to blame?

What I am convinced of is that I will never bother to read a single other book by Neal Stephenson -- I couldn't make it half way through Cryptonomicon before it got too boring and painfully long winded to read and Reamde, while at least starting out at a faster clip quickly devolved into a complete pile of contrived claptrap complete with Russian Mobsters who feel the need to explain themselves, a British Intelligence Agent who bangs everything she can and a Jihadi Terrorist who could double as a CNN Anchor.

Perhaps we should tattoo "Massive Ego" to Neal's forehead.

Someone needs to smack his head.

[khasim]

He's focused too much on America.
From TFA:

In fact, said Stephenson, we already have much of the fundamental technology we need to fulfill such science fiction ambitions as large scale solar power production, or routine space flight.

Let's see what happens when China gets a man (or woman) on the moon.

We've accomplished all the easy, flashy stuff.

Now comes the not-as-easy-as-before-but-still-possible stuff. Like the first man (or woman) on Mars. Even if it is a one way trip for now.

We're not focused on it because it takes the resources of at least one nation to do so. And we've already set the bar (man on the moon). But there are other nations.

But

[sayfawa]

I only became a scientist so that I could be the one in control of a futuristic dystopia. Mind controls, genome engineered slaves, soylent, high-tech games to the death. I was really excited!

But maybe that's just me.

Re:But

[ColdWetDog]

Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, welcome to Slashdot!

Not necessiarly

[Sycraft-fu]

While I certainly wouldn't say one person bears a large load of responsibility, don't knock the idea in general. Star Trek had some very real influence on geeks. They saw a Utopia in it that they'd like to see happened, and some worked towards it. The cell phone really did get inspiration from Star Trek communicators. There was an interview with one of the guys at Motorola who worked on it saying something along the lines of how he saw the communicator not as an impossible sci-fi gadget, but as a challenge to make.

Media can influence culture, and sci-fi can for sure influence geeks. That doesn't mean that authors should necessarily take it on as some kind of personal responsibility, but there's something to be said for Utopian fiction and it does seem to be in somewhat short supply these days.

Re:Not necessiarly

[WaywardGeek]

Neal's books totally rock. He's one of the most influential sci-fi writers out there. There's exactly one book I read with my Dad, Cryptonomicon, and it was so cool that I build a hardware random number generator, and he wrote some software for one-time-pad encryption, and we had fun sending each other stupid e-mails that no one would ever be interested in decrypting, but they couldn't if they tried. Actually I sometimes wonder if our super-secure little unknown communication channel caused some poor NSA dweeb to have to listen to our phones for a year or two. If so... sorry!

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

I recently ran into someone I hadn't seen for years, who used to be heavily into cyberpunk back in those days. I asked him how that was going, and he doesn't read or cosplay any of that any more. I asked why, and he said, "It's not fun any more, it's coming true."

Re:Not necessiarly

[Anonymous Coward]

Apology accepted.

Re:Not necessiarly

[ozmanjusri]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

Earlier than that.

Try Philip K Dick or Harlan Ellison for size.

Re:Not necessiarly

[shutdown -p now]

It seems more to me that themes in fiction tend to pick up the overall "attitude" of the society with respect to progress (and other things), rather than the other way around. There's probably some amplification effect from that, like your example with the engineer, but if you look at the timelines, progressive utopian fiction was generally following up on series of scientific breakthroughs - e.g. Star Trek was riding the wave of new tech with roots in WW2 that got appropriated for peaceful purposes. Before it, think of Jules Verne - sure, he did predict a lot of things to come, but his books were based more on the progress that he observed in his time.

For another example, in the country of my birth - the USSR - science fiction (even of the "unofficial", underground kind) was largely optimistic. It had its share of social dystopias early on (like "We"), but after 60s or so, when the horrors of revolution and NKVD became history, no-one could come up with a credible "bad" scenario: the future was universally seen as a time of better things to come due to rapid scientific progress. After the country crashed, Russian sci-fi reacted by turning all doom and gloom: not even sci-fi dystopias, but alt history of all things became the most prolific genre...

With that in mind, the current trend of dystopian sci-fi likely just reflects the overall "meh" attitude towards the prospects of our scientific development. I do wonder what the zombie stories are all about, though...

Re:Not necessiarly

[fearofcarpet]

While I certainly wouldn't say one person bears a large load of responsibility, don't knock the idea in general. Star Trek had some very real influence on geeks. They saw a Utopia in it that they'd like to see happened, and some worked towards it.

I'm a research scientist and I was heavily influenced by Star Trek as a kid. That utopian world in which technology is a positive force for humanity and where rational thought and curiosity replace ignorance-based fear and militarism was a island of serenity in a small town full of bible-thumping, anti-intellectual fundamentalists. I consumed a lot of science fiction and fantasy, but Star Trek made a particular impression on me. When I was finally exposed to real-world science, I fell in love with Chemistry in my first year of college with cheerful optimism that I might help move the real world slightly closer to that fictional world. I even lobbied hard to name my son Jean Luc.

I do, however, disagree with TFA; when I was in college we didn't have the Internet to tell us about every cute Nature or Science article, so we were left with our imagination and what we could photocopy in the science library. If anything, I think the danger for potential scientists now is that their opinions about what science is are being shaped too much by under-qualified "science journalists" writing pseudo-fiction about real research. It replaces the unbridled imagination and curiosity of young minds--which fiction reinforces--with an erroneous understanding of what modern science actually is. Worse, it emphasizes the unsubstantiated claims about potential future applications that have become a necessary part of the scientific literature (i.e., the chest thumping that under-funding research necessitates) which leads to disappointment when young people are exposed to actual research. This phenomenon culminates in a perception that science fiction--dystopian or otherwise--is even more realistic and fact-based than ever. I think what science fiction needs is more imagination.

Re:Not necessiarly

[sg_oneill]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

I recently ran into someone I hadn't seen for years, who used to be heavily into cyberpunk back in those days. I asked him how that was going, and he doesn't read or cosplay any of that any more. I asked why, and he said, "It's not fun any more, it's coming true."

It reminds me of the old Judge Dredd comics (well I guess they still make em, I havent really read em for a decade). In the back there would always be a letters to the editor where fans would write in to say what they liked and didnt like in the various 2000AD strips. Regularly however you'd get kids writing in and drooling about how awesome Dredd is and how cool living in megacity 1 would be. The editors would absolutely flip it at them, because the kids where missing that whilst Dredd had redeeming qualitys he was still an authoritarian fascist and megacity 1 was a terrible distopia that no sane person would actually WANT to live in.

What scares me, is that is the diminishment of of the intellectual and structural independence of the judiciary (seriously america, you need to get rid of voting for your judges, it sounds like a good idea on paper, but its brought you the phenomena of conservative and liberal judges that would be mystifying anywhere else. remember if election funding can corrupt politicians it can corrupt judges too). This , combined with the growth of the surveilance state, and all the various technologies of discipline , we're actually turning , slowly, into that very distopia 2000AD warned us about.

Its quite scary, but worst of all, some people actually want it.

I think however, SCI-FI authors *should* write about distopias, because its one of the few ways we can really play out the various scenarios in our head and take control over whether technology is indeed going to be a liberating force, or instead our shiny new ball and chains.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Fluffeh]

Between the cold war and the religious mania of the early 80s, "If Jesus doesn't get you, Oppenheimer will" was the phrase of the day.

I find that a grim outlook actually makes me dig my heels in much more so. Five years ago, I wasn't too engrossed with privacy, politics or anything like that. These days, I seem to be going out of my way to make noise and generate resolve amoung the population. I think there is an element of Ying/Yang to it, the harder certain people will push to empower themselves or the folks that pay them, the more people will stand their ground.

"Let me say at the risk of seeming ridiculous that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love." - Che.

Pretty funny timing...

[trawg]

...given programming legend Michael Abrash (now currently at Valve Software) just announced that he's currently researching wearable computing more or less as a direct result of Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash!

His post on the Valve blog is really interesting and worth reading.

Guess I'm Reading it Wrong

[paleo2002]

I've always gotten the impression that the dark and dystopian futures prevalent in cyberpunk and related genres are the result of corruption and abuse of the power and potential of technology. They are a warning against what technology can become if not applied responsibly. Most tech-heavy sci-fi ends up being a warning against potential results of some new science and technology.

Snow Crash . . . is basically reality now . . . Diamond Age is a better example. It portrayed two opposing views of nano tech implementation: centralized vs. decentralized production. Either way it demonstrated the potential of nanotechnology. And, hey, now we have people building 3D printers in garages and using them to make toys for their kids rather than enslave the underclass.

Re:He's missed the mark so far

[ColdWetDog]

Gadget wise we're doing better.

Real income for the majority of Americans and Europeans, the structure of society, the fundamentals of the economy, our infrastructure - not so much.

Not to mention the upcoming specter of resource wars and our ever increasing tendencies towards a police state.

We've changed our view of the apocalypse from nuclear Armageddon to the "Hunger Games" but it's still not a very rosy future.

Pessimist

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> a "pessimist trying to turn himself into an optimist,"

Yeah right, like that's gonna happen.

SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Taco Cowboy]

I am an avid scifi freak

Have been reading scifi since 1960's, and still can't stop reading the stuff (including manga since late 1980's and animation nowadays)

But my love of Science didn't emerge from my scifi reading habit

My love of Science stems from my curiosity of what happens all around me

The scifi genre is just like any other, there are good ones and there are real lousy ones, but no matter how good or bad the scifi is, it will never encourage or discourage me from exploring

Nope, I just ain't gonna be influenced by a book

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I just ain't gonna be influenced by a book

I see that Strunk and White must have harmlessly bounced off the impenetrable fortress of your mind.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Anonymous Coward]

And what innovation failure? I and the people around me have been innovating our asses off. I'm not going to self promote, but anyone in the world can go to http://scholar.google.com/ and see all the incredible research that is going on if they want to.

Message to Neal: You ain't that influential.

At the talk, he was very clear in saying there is a LOT of innovation right now. He wasn't criticizing the rate of innovation, so I'm not too sure where you came up with this.

If you want to know the details, the moderator asked him why people were pessimistic about technology, and whether science fiction authors had any role to play in shaping this viewpoint. Naturally, he said that science fiction (as a whole) could write optimistic futures to help inspire scientists and engineers.

This is not completely off-base. If you've read any science fiction, you'll definitely notice the trend towards dystopias with pandemics, genetic engineering, energy crises, and overpopulation, especially in comparison to earlier sci-fi

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Grishnakh]

This is not completely off-base. If you've read any science fiction, you'll definitely notice the trend towards dystopias with pandemics, genetic engineering, energy crises, and overpopulation, especially in comparison to earlier sci-fi.

I think it's because sci-fi has gotten older and more mature than it was in the 60s.

Back then, people looked at what was going on in the space program, and extrapolated from that trend (humans went from riding horses to walking on the moon in less than a century) that the future would be a bright place: they acknowledged that some problems would pop up between now and then, such as overpopulation and genetic engineering (both of these were covered in 60s Star Trek; the latter being central to Khan), but that technology and improved social systems would overcome these problems.

People at the time didn't realize that what would really happen would be that people would decide they'd rather not bother too much with pursuing science and technology (unless it helps them make fancy hand-held devices they can play games on), and certainly not with space exploration, because they'd rather spend money on wars over oil. And the naive ideas people had back in the 60s about social conditions improving have obviously turned out to be bunk, with much of western society turning back to Dark Ages-style fundamentalist religion. Nowadays, sci-fi authors are just looking at the way society has turned out over the last decade or two, and they're again extrapolating from current trends, and correctly surmising that our future is quite dark indeed.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[anubi]

Taco Cowboy... you didn't waste any time getting to the very core of why anybody would mess with STEM.

My love of Science stems from my curiosity of what happens all around me

Your devotion to science is driven by the same faction that drives mine.

We had a discussion on Slashdot a few days ago of correct test answers being marked as wrong. It was full of very interesting comments.

If there is anything discouraging STEM, its not Neal. He's not even on the radar screen.

Slashdot brought the dragon right out for everyone to see.

How can we get our kids interested in science, which revolves around a lot of diligent work searching for truth, only to find the rewards start out with being called the teacher's pet, progressing through "being a Boy Scout", "not a 'team player'", then forcible unemployment because one feels obligated to "do that which is right"?

The comments here on Slashdot reinforced my observation that "being liked" is far more financially productive than "being right". No wonder the kids see through it.

I got canned for standing up for what I thought was right.

Many others had the same experience.

Like religion, rejection based on your beliefs comes with the territory. A manager may want something based on how well a salesman did his job, whereas an engineer may reject it based on his experience of seeing stuff like that fail in the field. Political power ultimately rules.

From what I can tell, this country no longer needs STEM workers, as other countries can do this much cheaper than we can. I am amazed at all the high-tech parts I can get from aliexpress.com .

And I am also alarmed that a lot of datasheets I am interested in are in Chinese. I have disassembled several Chinese Lithium Ion battery chargers and noted how cleverly they were made - with Chinese house-numbered parts, no less.

We cultivate a need for financial professionals, lawyers, insurance, and real-estate investment. Look at our tax laws - they really cream anybody earning a buck.

I don't blame businesses for not trying to innovate in the USA.

I am afraid to try as well. No sooner than I produce and try to sell anything, I will get sued - if for nothing more than paralyzing me until I financially die. This is on top of all the paperwork IRS requires of anyone that actually tries to DO anything in this country. Our Congress passes so much frivolous special-interest law that no-one can do anything without exposing themselves to lawsuits. Only the financially strongest can survive at that game.

We may still love science, But we find something else to do for a paycheck.

No, Neal, you are not killing STEM.

Our system is.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[Noren]

Yeah, because science fiction in the sixties certainly didn't have any of that. The future would be a bright place, and they certainly never wrote back then about pandemics, genetic engineering, or overpopulation. And certainly no science fiction of the 60s had some elements of all of that. (I admit that I couldn't think of good examples of 'pure' energy crisis memes in 60's SF, though it was an element in the above works that dealt with overpopulation.)

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[dgatwood]

If you want to know the details, the moderator asked him why people were pessimistic about technology, and whether science fiction authors had any role to play in shaping this viewpoint. Naturally, he said that science fiction (as a whole) could write optimistic futures to help inspire scientists and engineers.

Which is interesting, but wrong, because it incorrectly assumes that the pessimism is misplaced, that the fault therefore lies with the public, and that the science fiction affected the public as a whole. In reality, people are pessimistic about technology in large part because it is so frequently misused and abused, which is largely because the @$^@#$& science fiction writers keep giving world governments ideas. 1984? TVs with webcams. Fahrenheit 451? Book burnings. Brave New World? Witness a public education system that no longer teaches us to question, a drug war resulting in huge subcultures that are shunned from society as a whole, or the mass high fructose corn syrup addiction that addles much of the public. The governments don't read these books and think, "It would suck if society were ruled in a draconian manner," but rather, "Society is going to be ruled in a draconian manner eventually, so I'd better take steps to secure my place at the helm." And this is why science fiction causes the public to become pessimistic about technology.

Re:SciFi don't dictate what I love, or dis-love

[TheRaven64]

Some people can't handle epics.

I agree. Neal Stephenson seems to be one of them.

Re:hooray for a global military dictatorship?

[NiteShaed]

same for the other rights that suffer when all of space is controlled by a military dictatorship, aka, 'the federation'

You fail at Star Treks. The government is the United Federation of Planets, which has an elected President and representitves. It's not much different than today's democratic governments. Starfleet is the military/exploration arm of the Federation. Please turn in your geek card.

I think it is more like horror.

[khasim]

Horror works by capturing the fears of the majority at that point in time.

Afraid of losing your job to a machine?
Robot horror fiction.

Afraid of being nuked by an enemy country?
Radiation mutant horror fiction.

Afraid of losing your middle class status?
Dystopian future horror fiction.

To correct the horror fiction you need to "fix" the underlying fear that is feeding it.

Re:I think it is more like horror.

[dpilot]

Don't argue, but I see the role of Utopian fiction as injecting some hope.

Re: Neal Stephenson?

[qubezz]

I didn't know who he is, but from the "discouraging budding scientists and engineers" quote, I figured he was probably the creator of Jersey Shore or 16 and Pregnant, or a basketball commissioner.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Rennt]

Thing is, I don't believe it's sci-fi's job to sell technology at all. Even the most positive stories should be tempered with a bit of pessimism.

SF is supposed to ask questions about what technology does to society, and what that means to the society being changed... stories that are all sunshine and rainbows are nothing more then speculative fantasy.

Re:I doubt that's true

[Shihar]

I was actually at his talk. He didn't discount the tech boom. His point is that the tech boom wasn't "big" science. If anything, it might have sucked some of the air out of the room for science. He was arguing that the Intertubes landed out our feet, everyone was like "wow, WTF is this and how can we use!?" and stopped doing a lot of other things. That is almost certainly true. We diverted a huge number of people who might otherwise have been "hard" scientist into working in and around the 'tubes. He was talking more about striving for grand science, not just what we call "tech".

I have friends smart technical friends writing apps for cell phones. My most technically brilliant friends work for Google (an ad company) and Facebook (also an ad company). These people are near Savants with how scary smart they are, and their efforts are their brilliance is being funneled into figuring out ways to make you click on ads. For better or for worse, we have turned a huge portion of our most technical minds to working on shit that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't mean a whole a lot.

Now, how much of that is a lack of optimism for the future and how much of it is that Google makes a fuck-ton of money? Eh, I think the money probably has more to do with it. That said, I wouldn't totally discount the subtle effect of sci-fi. I know sci-fi influenced me into going into engineering. I wanted carbon nanotube space elevators. The (delusional) dream of working on something like that is the only thing that lured me away from programming and into engineering. If not for sci-fi, there is a non-trivial chance that my path would have sent me down the road of making apps for people's cell phones instead of making the chips that go inside of them.

Gibson and cyberpunk aren't dystopian

[Geof]

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

At least not in my opinion. In classic dystopias like 1984 or Brave New World, there is virtually no space left for individual freedom and choice. Cyberpunk, however, is all about the spaces in between in which individuals can make choices and possibly change things. Philosopher Andrew Feenberg agrees:

The world Gibson describes is grim but not strictly speaking dystopian. It is true that elites rule it with immensely powerful means, but those means are so complex that they give rise to all sorts of phenomena over which no one really has control. There are many small openings through which a clever hacker can enter the system and commit a variety of unprogrammed deeds. The future is not clear but may yet be altered by human action on the network. (Alternative Modernity: The Technical Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory, 1995, p. 140)

The happy happy, joy joy world of Star Trek: The Next Generation, on the other hand, strikes me as truly static and dystopian. Nearly all cultural expression is centuries old. Every conflict can be solved through reason: there are no genuinely intractable differences of opinion or incompatible values among honest people. Only a totalitarian society could so thoroughly crush dissent and eliminate difference. I think I would go stark raving mad.

I believe a better future is possible and worth fighting for, but compared to ST:NG I'd rather have Gibson's grungy cyberpunk any day. It is dirty, flawed, corrupt - but also iredeemably human. Its diversity and vigor are resistant to the totalitarian disease. The tragedy is that cyberpunk came true: but now we seem to be passing out the other side. A cyberpunk world might be a let-down beside visions of the future we once thought we would enjoy, but compared to many genuine possibilities it's possitively upbeat. Take a look at the world of Paulo Bacigalupi's Windup Girl, for example (which despite its fantastic elements feels right in the same way that Neuromancer once did) - though even he leaves a small space for hope.

While I agree about the worth of utopian visians, I do not agree with the criticism of dystopian science fiction. The scholars of the Frankfurt School struggled to find an alternative to what they saw as a damaged society. When the human imagination limits itself to the realistic limitations of the world we live in, it serves to accept and conceal that world's flaws. Between the horrors of Stalinism and the alienation of capitalism, the Frankfurt scholars could not imagine an plausible alternative. So to find hope, they were deliberately negative. The injustices of the existing order pointed to the possibility of something better. Herbert Marcuse writes:

The critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative. Thus it wants to remain loyal to those who, without hope, have given and give their life to the Great Refusal. At the beginning of the fascist era, Walter Benjamin wrote: It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us. (One Dimensional Man, 1964, p. 257)