Science Fiction is cool as plutonian ice

As posited in Le Guin’s “Rant about Technology,” science fiction in one capacity or another addresses new additions extant in a futuristic society absent in the one in which we currently live.  Ignoring her differentiation between hard and soft technologies (i.e. computer chips vs. improved fire-making capabilities), we come to understand SF as generally addressing certain facets of technology in reference to how society has taken shape and evolved either as a result, or in a coinciding manner.  In combination with Ocatvia Butler’s analysis of predicting the future and the ineffable resolutions that certain predictions carry, I found it interesting that SF is always concerned with a type of prediction, almost framed as a warning to show certain consequences of our society if on the same path (in certain realms of society, like prisons and public schools to name some of Butler’s examples).  In Benford’s piece, the whole construct of a foreign alien is to make it relatively human enough in order to cause the reader to reflect on him-/herself in conjunction with the issues that these foreign creatures face in light of their own societal practices and problems.  A point I found interesting in this piece, connecting with that of Le Guin’s technology serves as the typical method of communication authors deploy, in order for interacting between the two lifeforms.  She challenges the notion that technology and the laws of nature would hold true throughout a universe in which lifeforms have evolved differently, for example, by logarithmic counting.  And at this point, in combination with the unpredictability of the future, my piece on Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy comes into play.  Known as a very typical and (I would like to say) famous piece of literature, the book have a pivotal scene in which a society asked the “Deep Thought Computer” what the answer to the Universe is.  An alien civilization reveals certain human truths about our society when constructing dialogue with a computer and resting its faith in this futuristic technology.  In regards to prediction, this question ironically serves to point at the trivial nature of trying to know certain qualities and quantities beyond doubt in our world, especially in a science-fiction world, created more as it seems for reflection on our current society’s path than an actual genuine prediction of what we are to expect in millennia to come.  Also unique is the intersection with technology and our trust in it as a beacon towards the future; so much so, that the society talked about in the scene essentially waits around as it dies and is reborn with new members to wait around for the supercomputer’s answer.

(notice that the members’ names in the scene do not change much in the millions of years that pass before the computer cranks out an answer; this, in my opinion, is a statement to a similar mindset extant in the society’s millions of years in existence of a certain faith in technology and its willingness to put all efforts into its perfection – but this is just an aside)

The answer, after all this time has passed and much deliberation has gone into the calculation, comes out to be 42.  Baffled at the lack of helpfulness and the amount of faith and energy gone into the prediction, the society is reasonably ticked off.  But the scene tactfully ends with the computer asking whether they as a society knew the right question to ask.  The message I received when reading the scene the first time very nicely fits into the science-fiction ideologies expressed in the assigned pieces.  Analysis of an alien species, causing us to reflect on our own in relation to our love for and faith in technology; the predictive nature of science fiction, not always as hard and concrete, but based loosely on continued thought projections of modern society and how certain events could play themselves out; and how our faith in something I at least few as partially alien, computers and technologies I interact with daily but unknowing of how they operate in the slightest; all these ideas seem to be touched upon and played with in the scene.  And Douglas Adams, in this representative piece of science fiction, essentially says that no answer to the universe can be given unless we know the right question.  And I think to myself a step further, how will we ever know the question but by advancing technology and our subsequent knowledge of the inner workings of the universe? I guess this futuristic society that asked the Deep Thought Computer put in some deep thought themselves into the question before resigning to asking and waiting for Deep Thought’s ultimately trivial answer.