[HN Gopher] Machine conquest: Jules Verne's technocratic worldma...
___________________________________________________________________
Machine conquest: Jules Verne's technocratic worldmaking
Author : johntfella
Score : 45 points
Date : 2024-10-20 08:57 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cambridge.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cambridge.org)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| The foreground message is quite blunt
|
| >> Here, Verne was a narrator of global integration. His heroes
| were compelled by a quest to resist politics and oppose it: their
| triumphs relied on private sponsors, gentlemen's clubs,
| scientific associations, millionaires - not governments. They
| ventured afar in spite of government, not because of it. Global
| order likewise rarely ever featured states, empires, or political
| actors. Private actors were the chief benefactors, beneficiaries,
| and interlocutors.
|
| But I found this article useful for the perspectives on
| 'worldmaking'. This helps to understand the elements in game dev
| (immersion) and speculative fiction (narrative transport) that
| make (or not) a successful game or book. Something that I find
| fascinating
| delichon wrote:
| I long used Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route
| in 97 Hours, 20 Minute" as evidence that privately funded space
| flight isn't so unimaginable. In that case by the Baltimore Gun
| Club. Then there is The Man Who Sold the Moon by Heinlein where
| the moon is first visited by "the last of the Robber Barons".
|
| Of course here in the real world space exploration is too
| costly and complex a game for any organizations other than
| governments to play, and Verne and Heinlein were optimists with
| stars in their eyes. Or that's what it seemed like in the
| seventies when it was pretty much true.
| notarobot123 wrote:
| It turns out that commanding the resources extracted through
| private monopolies isn't so different from deciding how to
| spend the revenues of taxation.
| ocschwar wrote:
| Mind you, this is because Verne loathed the British Empire, and
| his heroes using private means to challenge its authority is
| meant as a rebuke to his own government for not challenging
| Britain enough.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Political parties often take credit for social advancements,
| but if you look closely it was break through technology that
| made the advancements possible, not some social rights protest
| as the politicians would have you believe
| RandomLensman wrote:
| What technological breakthrough made, for example, women's
| suffrage possible?
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Antibiotics and vaccines. If you need to give birth to 8
| kids so that 2-3 of them could live into the reproductive
| age, fighting for equal rights is neither possible nor
| relevant.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| At the time (late 19th, early 20th century) antibiotics
| weren't a thing and vaccines, to the extent that they
| were there (not quite in the modern sense), had been
| around for a long time.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Cowpox variolation was around for longer, but vaccines in
| the modern sense were pioneered by Pasteur in 1880s. This
| is also the time when the first antibiotics (not
| penicillin) were developed, even though they reached
| marked later in 1900s.
|
| The late 19th and early 20th century is exactly when the
| dramatic (around 4x) drop in child mortality took place.
| It wasn't of course only vaccines but also a general
| increase in healthcare and living standards. Without that
| drop I highly doubt that suffrage movement would gain any
| traction.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Broad vaccination of populations against a variety of
| diseases wasn't a thing until a lot later. The
| antibiotics at the time were very limited and selective.
|
| Btw., the protests still were the thing that got the
| change at the time, not the technology!
|
| Seems to me any causal link is weak at best. Claiming
| that humans have no agency when it comes to society is
| rather a very strong claim that needs a lot of evidence.
| Usually people make the change, not technology (it wasn't
| machines protesting and overthrowing governments in
| Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for example).
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > it wasn't machines protesting and overthrowing
| governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for
| example
|
| Curious example indeed. It wasn't machines that killed
| communism but its economic inferiority. Same thing that
| killed slavery and serfdom and feudalism and sit-at-home-
| women and other outdated social systems before that.
|
| People are the same as they were 2000 years ago. The
| economic optimum is not, largely thanks to technology.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Again, the people acted, not some abstract social
| technology - the people action created the change
| (contrary to your claim that it doesn't matter).
| Technology might help/enable to do certain things, but
| human action might or might not follow from that. Without
| human action things don't simply change (laws don't write
| themselves, societies don't constitute themselves from
| technology only, ...). The presence of different societal
| model at the same time with the same technologies
| available shows that human action makes the difference.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > the people action created the change (contrary to your
| claim that it doesn't matter).
|
| This never was my claim. Of course people action created
| the change.
|
| Your question was different though:
|
| > What technological breakthrough made, for example,
| women's suffrage possible?
|
| The answer to that is "reduction in child mortality". It
| didn't "create the change" but rather "made it possible"
| in a quite literal sense. Same with the fall of
| communism.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| > if you look closely it was break through technology
| that made the advancements possible, not some social
| rights protest
|
| Edit: yes, sorry, not your claim but the claim under
| discussion
|
| Reads to me like social protest makes nothing possible,
|
| You so far advanced a hypothesis on suffrage, but not
| more.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Well for one thing I didn't write that.
| ocschwar wrote:
| > Usually people make the change, not technology (it
| wasn't machines protesting and overthrowing governments
| in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for example
|
| One of the triggering events of 1989 was a Japanese man
| walking to a university in Prague, putting a box of new
| modems in a student lounge and walking away.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Industrialization ment that women could make money working
| factory jobs. The need for factory labour and higher wages
| led people to move to cities. The technological change
| driving the industrial revolution also brought about
| printing press and reading books also became more
| accessible to women. The need for factory labour was
| driving that change. But it improved living standards
| wholesale and even changed peoples diets. So the laws were
| changed to give more rights to women. You effectively
| double the labour pool by having women working. Women
| having money to affect policy was also a consequence.
| Though the Key is women gaining leverage. Protesting is
| overrated. Always has been. Look at Palestinians
| protesting,doesn't help much. they're still getting bombed
| almost daily. Because currently they don't have leverage to
| affect policy or technology to fight back.
| nosianu wrote:
| I don't understand this "in spite of" and "vs." narrative. As
| far as I know my history the goals were aligned, not least
| because government was some of the same people, or connected
| people, and the goals were aligned. The functions were
| different.
|
| Where does this either-or (private/government) come from?
|
| I look at Gregor Mendel as an example for how many different
| parties worked as one. (Biology) professor Eric Lander of MIT
| mentioned in one biology/genetics intro course lecture video
| (on edX) that Mendel was not some lone figure, but that he got
| the task to do his research from his boss, who as
| representative of the church was in turn part of a local group
| consisting of important figures from local business and
| government. They talked about economics and decided that they
| needed better sheep - for better wool. Back then clothing was
| the big important business, the technical revolution and also
| new science was very important for it.
|
| So I don't think there was a situation as described in that
| quote. I think they all worked along and with one another in
| those days.
|
| The entire expansion of empires and colonies was not driven by
| some government officials who were bored, commerce, industry
| and politics were aligned.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > "in spite of" and "vs." narrative
|
| The point was that Verne's fictitious heroes were acting
| independently of government, real or fictional. For example
| using fictitious, privately funded super-technology (rockets,
| aircraft, submarines, etc), or emerging from their exclusive
| gentlemen's clubs to which they returned when the adventure
| was over.
| thrance wrote:
| I think it's concerning how a lot of people here seem to take
| offense at the fact the article underlines the predominantly
| white and masculine nature of Verne's protagonists.
|
| Should an analysis of Verne's work refrain from pointing this
| out? Because it would be too "woke"?
|
| Verne lived during the peak of the French colonial Empire. Whites
| were a minority in the total population of the Empire, racism was
| pretty much a state institution used to justify an ad hoc
| hierarchy of the peoples living in the colonies.
|
| Seeing how Verne's archetype of the adventurer was shaped by
| colonial imagery is relevant to understanding his work. I don't
| know what more to tell you.
| adrian_b wrote:
| While that is true, it is not something specific to Verne but
| it is how everybody was educated at that time.
|
| Verne was far more sympathetic towards non-European people that
| the vast majority of the Europeans of his time and many non-
| Europeans had very positive roles in his writings, even if
| their roles were less important than of the main European
| heroes. There were even a few strong female characters in some
| of his novels, even if most had male protagonists.
|
| Therefore I think that it is stupid to insist on this. Only in
| the context of describing racism of the entire society of the
| 19th century it makes sense to give examples from Verne, among
| many others, to illustrate the way of thinking of that time.
|
| Discussing this only in Verne can give the impression that he
| was worse than others, when in fact he was much better from
| this point of view.
|
| He certainly was not an "apostle of colonization" and even the
| article recognizes that many of his works are very critical of
| colonization.
|
| The main thing that can be reproached to Verne is that he
| tended to be much more indulgent about French colonization than
| about British colonization, under the mistaken assumption that
| in the French colonies abuses happen much less frequently than
| in the British colonies (though the British appear to have
| indeed been the worst, judging after the very small percentages
| of surviving natives in the British colonies in comparison with
| the colonies of all other countries).
|
| As a child I have read a very large number of the novels of
| Jules Verne. While there were a few passages where he expressed
| a naive optimism about the possible benefits of bringing
| "civilization" to some remote parts of the Earth, those have
| made very little impression on me. What I have retained because
| I was impressed by them have been exactly the parts where the
| European colonization was criticized and where various natives
| had very positive images.
|
| So any article author that describes Jules Verne as an "apostle
| of colonization" cannot have done due diligence in really
| reading his works.
| pvg wrote:
| _He certainly was not an "apostle of colonization"_
|
| The 'apostle of colonization' quoted by the article is
| something someone said about Verne in 1929. As a compliment.
| thrance wrote:
| The article is not painting Verne as a rabid colonialist, but
| he certainly was a product of his time, and understanding
| this is necessary to properly look at his works. I too have
| read quite a lot of his books.
|
| Having non-European heroes be subordinate to European heroes
| was a common trope in colonial times. Look at Jean-Baptiste
| Marchand's expedition though Africa, and the statue he got as
| a result.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| I don't take offense but is it in any way surprising that Verne
| being a Frenchman writing for a predominantly French audience
| depicted adventurers who actually look like him?
|
| Seems to me like taking a sledgehammer to tore down doors which
| are already wide open but maybe I'm missing something. At this
| point, the mandatory postcolonial blurb in any literature
| article feels so expected that it has become slightly trite at
| least to me.
| thrance wrote:
| My previous comment was specifically targeted to those who
| feel offended this is even brought up.
|
| Jules Verne's books often features adventurers inspired by
| the heroes created by colonial propaganda, like Lyautey,
| Marchand, Brazza... Understanding the context of the time
| Verne lived in is necessary to get where his stories come
| from. Not mentioning it would lead to a pretty subpar
| analysis, in my opinion.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| > Understanding the context of the time Verne lived in is
| necessary to get where his stories come from.
|
| Certainly but that's kind of implied by merely talking
| about Verne. Anyway, the article leans more heavily towards
| the overall Verne outlook towards colonialism than his
| simple choice of character thankfully.
|
| I don't think the analysis is particularly compelling or
| interesting - it's the usual continental philosophy
| inspired rehash you expect for any modern literature paper,
| a discipline which has apparently become entirely incapable
| of producing any novel idea - but well I guess it's nice it
| exists even if reading it feels like looking at a paint by
| number piece of art.
| WillAdams wrote:
| To help put all this in context, a member at the Mobileread forum
| read these books and commented on them:
|
| https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=340548
|
| (annoyingly, my local libraries only had a few, and I still
| resent that when I was interested in French in high school that
| there weren't any original texts available to me)
|
| For a discussion of the difficulties of reading this in
| translation see: https://www.usni.org/press/books/20000-leagues-
| under-sea --- it would be great if all of these novels could be
| so treated/updated.
| jhbadger wrote:
| This article seems to blame Verne for colonialism "At the French
| Societe de Geographie, of which Verne was a long-time member, as
| well as among imperialists across Europe, the Voyages became a
| casual frame of reference in justification of colonial
| expansion.", I don't see how this fits with Verne's most famous
| character, Captain Nemo. While his background was ambiguous in
| 20,000 Leagues, in The Mysterious Island it is established that
| he was an Indian who fought against colonialism in the failed
| 1857 rebellion and sees himself as the champion of the oppressed.
| Onavo wrote:
| > _Here, Verne was a narrator of global integration. His heroes
| were compelled by a quest to resist politics and oppose it: their
| triumphs relied on private sponsors, gentlemen's clubs,
| scientific associations, millionaires - not governments. They
| ventured afar in spite of government, not because of it. Global
| order likewise rarely ever featured states, empires, or political
| actors. Private actors were the chief benefactors, beneficiaries,
| and interlocutors._
|
| So he was writing a story of 19th century trust fund kids and VC
| funded tech bros..
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-10-20 23:01 UTC)