[p2p-research] Thinking about science fiction bias

[Michel Bauwens]

and of course, to explore transhumanism, TechnoCalyps, which is my own
exploration, with frank theys, of that topic, it's on YouTube, part 2 and 3
are best,

from the bkk airport ...

Michel

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On a slightly different aspect of the same topic - the social function of
> sci-fi (and fantasy, utopia, dystopia, cyberpunk, steampunk, etc) is very
> often expanding the boundaries of the thinkable in relation to the present,
> for instance thinking otherness by suspending aspects of the present,
> critiquing aspects of the present by a kind of reductio ad absurdum, or
> critiquing by showing contingency and the possibility of at least
> conceivability of other ways of being, or showing other ways which the
> author thinks are better or worse, or even modelling aspects of the present
> in a more abstract way.
>
> In this context, the "alien" (or in fantasy, the demi-human - elves, orcs
> and so on) often models the "otherness" of social settings - at its crudest,
> other cultures and races (there's a long history of critiques of implicit
> racism in sci-fi), or in more complex cases, aspects of humanity which are
> feared or treated as different.  Hence one sees shifts over time between
> aliens as threatening and as necessarily "evil", to friendly and supportive
> aliens, and back again.
>
> I noticed that 90s-era sci-fi was moving towards a liberal cosmopolitanism
> reflecting the political conjuncture - the likes of Babylon 5 and Deep Space
> 9 models a situation where the humans are acting like a galactic UN, trying
> to resolve insoluble conflicts among aliens, and facing dilemmas about
> whether to intervene and take sides - very similar to the international
> politics of today.  Plus also, a strong vein of conspiracy sci-fi, things
> like the X-Files and the Matrix, expressing fears about the New World Order,
> where the "alien" (other) becomes the dark side of the world government or
> the conspirator.  More recently I think we're back with more traditional,
> menacing aliens which pose an overwhelming threat - the Battlestar Galactica
> remake for example, and Star Trek: Enterprise.
>
> Hence - I don't think sci-fi aliens express an assessment of what aliens
> would actually be like...  I think they express a projection of how humans
> conceive otherness in a particular moment.
>
> If Ryan is looking for explorations of transhumanism and effects on
> subjectivity of robotics, AI, reconstruction of bodies, etc, this certainly
> gets covered but most often in futuristic cyberpunk and dystopia rather than
> "straight" sci-fi...  I'm thinking of things like Blade Runner, Ghost in the
> Shell, Perdido Street Station, Spielberg's AI, Gattica, Total Recall, etc.
>
> bw
> Andy
>
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>


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