Wells, Orwell and Technology

My relationship with G.H. Wells is one of antagonism. Although both of us are idealists, Wells is a true optimist, and myself, am a Pessimist.

Wells revolutionized literature and all of the other medias that contain any kind of narrative that came after him ( Take War of Worlds for ex). Being the father of science fiction himself. In his stories, technological progress is always intrinsically linked with Ethics and morals. Scientific knowledge, following his ideal, must absolutely not have zero relation with evil. It would be illogical for him. History proved his idealism to be of a childish innocence, but it is easier to comprehend his world view if you realize all this optimism was before the disastrous XX century happening, changing everything, forever..,

Quoting William Golding on his essay “Fables” “ There were things done during that period from which I still have to avert my mind lest I should be physically sick, they were not done by the headhunters of New Guinea, or by some primitive tribe in the Amazon. They were done, skillfully, coldly, by educated man, doctors, lawyers, by man with a tradition of civilization behind them to beings of their own kind. I do not want to elaborate on this”

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Few years before the first airplane took of, Wells was already preaching : The invention of the aeroplane will be the beginning of the abolishment of frontiers between nation states. He couldn’t be any more wrong here.

Another literary giant, this one a tad more realistic, George Orwell opens a dialogue with Wells in his essay “Wells, Hitler and the world state”

“We were once told that the aeroplane had “abolished frontiers” actually it is only since the aeroplane became a serious weapon that frontiers have become completely impassable.”

Orwell is a born critic, on the very start of the essay he announces he is aware that as a XX century writer, criticizing wells is like committing fratricide. That is really what it means to criticize Wells, but yet he has no mercy towards his “father”. We can’t deny his claim about the actual uses of airplanes, but we shall not forget the time period this was written on, during the 50’s, after World War two and in the very beginning of the cold war. The airplane had little to no use outside dropping bombs or warfare related activities. This has to be emphasized, so we can better understand Orwell’s position

Being myself an writer from the XXI century, I’m the child of Orwell, Grandchild of Wells. And, even thought my ideals unfortunately approach more the ones of Orwell than of Wells, facing the wide, devastating problems caused by the boom in modern technology all over the place, I can’t help it but to try and rescue Wells optimism.

Let’s make a quick change of object representing technological advancements, from airplane to the internet. Although there aren’t many technical similarities between them, the opinion that the internet would stir people up together and fortify democracies all over the world with transparency and the sheer easiness to communicate with large scales of people was prevalent in the 90’s academia. Like Wells, they couldn’t be any more at wrong. Misinformation, Trivializing the truth resulted in the radicalization of democracies that should not be possible without the instrument of cheap manipulation that became the internet. It has already begun the new pattern or weakening all worldwide democracies blinded by XXI century version of nationalism. It is impossible to predict what might happen, but unfortunately, a repetition of the past century mistakes are more probable than they should possibly be aloud to be. For fuck sake, I am Brasilian and we just elected a bigot that makes Trump looks competent enough

It is in this context that I try to get some kind of optimism. We already are in too deep into this hole called technology to the point that I believe nothing outside of some kind of miraculous technology leaps could save our sorry ass now. At the same time, we should take way more serious than we already do every technological achievement we make and even predict how is this new gadget going to fuck up everything before actually FUCKING EVERYTHING UP. We are going to need the power of the internet to spread fact checked information although I have no better idea than the other guy on how to do it. It is a systematic problem that needs world wide cooperation and it is just not happening.

Like Orwell predicted in 1945 in the essay “You and the atomic bomb” : “Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralized police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a ‘peace that is no peace’.”

We live in this society that the larger “Peace” is maintained by the existential threat that is nuclear war. It is the same peace during some cartel trades with a bunch of guys pointing guns at each other and a click away from a bloodbath. I know it is stupid to just try and ban the technology, but understanding better how to control the things we took out of the Pandora box so we do not cause our own destruction is with such an urgency that maybe our generation is the last one that can make a decision.