Rejected Sci-Fi Ramblings from my MSc

It was only after I started editing my MSc down to its prescribed word-count, that I finally understood the phrase Kill Your Darlings. I spent ages writing florid prose, only to realise it was needless verbiage.

The delete key was hammered mercilessly.

But... As all fans of Jasper Fforde know - there is a "Well of Lost Plots"; where rejected sentences live on in the eternal library...

As I was writing about the Metaverse, and as I love reading sci-fi, I decided to merge my interests!

So, here for posterity - and future inspiration - are some of my thoughts on how sci-fi influences the development of technology.

In "Magic Mirror: The Novel as a Software Development Platform", Mark Pesce eloquently argues that the developments we see in modern technology are predicted (if not determined) by science-fiction stories (Pesce, 1999). As a note of caution, Pesce's chosen examples all display the traits of survivorship bias. That is, there are an infinite number of "inventions" in sci-fi which have not come to pass. Given the long history of the genre, it is not surprising that some of its predictions have become reality. Nevertheless, it is important to remember the "anchoring" effect that mass media has on users' perceptions of what is possible with technology.

Technology companies frequently misappropriate terms from science fiction in order to make their products sound innovative and exciting (Newitz, 2021). The original Metaverse envisioned by Stephenson was a dystopian nightmare. It serves as an allegory for how the worst excesses of humanity can corrupt an environment. Similarly, the novel "Ready Player One" presents a world where VR has reduced the majority of humanity to serfdom (Rafif and Munjid, 2022). Given this, the author finds it inexplicable that Facebook chose to rebrand their company around the notion of the Metaverse. It is akin to a military power rebranding to be closer associated with The Empire from Star Wars, or a conglomerate explicitly citing the "Weyland-Yutani Corporation" from Alien as their inspiration.

Perhaps this behaviour should not be surprising as several major technology projects have been named after some of the most terrifying and dystopian fictional products - Skynet, Palantir, Panopticon to name but a few (Levendowski, 2022).

Future-gazing sometimes means imagining the worst-case scenarios which may be exploited by future adversaries. There is an inherent tension in this line of research. If the futurist publishes their research, a malicious user may take inspiration from their research. But if the futurist does not publish, people may not be able to defend themselves against novel attacks.