Future Tense: Unintended Consequences
Future Tense: Unintended Consequences
Posted 08/31/2011 at 3:04pm
| by David Gerrold
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First of all, it is pronounced noo-klee-ar. Not noo-koo-lur.
Please. If we accomplish nothing else in the next twelve hundred words, could we at least stop mispronouncing it?
Without fail, every August anniversary of the first atomic war (Hiroshima and Nagasaki), the commentariat trots out the usual Monday morning afterthoughts about the rightness or wrongness of President Truman’s 1945 decision to use nuclear weapons.
Regardless of which side of the argument you take today, we also have to consider the circumstances under which the decision was made and the thinking of the moment. With the victory in Europe secured, Americans wanted the war in the Pacific to end as well. The nation was emotionally exhausted.
The prospect of an invasion of Japan was daunting. Some military planners estimated a half million casualties or more. Soldiers who had fought their way across Europe were already being shipped to the Pacific theater. Marines who had island-hopped all the way from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima knew how ferocious the Japanese soldiers were, and many did not believe they would survive an assault on the home islands of Japan.
From Truman’s perspective, the decision to use the bomb was dictated by circumstances. On the one hand, he could invade Japan in a long expensive, brutal, and bloody campaign that would cost hundreds of thousands of American lives and untold Japanese troops and civilians as well—a campaign that could go on for another year or two or three. On the other hand, he could use the bomb and demonstrate to the Japanese that continued resistance was suicidal, forcing them to surrender. Truman is quoted as saying that if he did not use the bomb, he would one day have to answer a million American mothers asking, “If you had a weapon that could have ended the war and saved my son’s life, why didn’t you use it?”
That’s the generally agreed-upon history of the decision. But there was another factor as well that doesn’t get talked about very much.
It’s this simple. Very few people on the planet understood the human dimension of nuclear weapons. The first atomic test at Alamagordo in July of 1945 gave Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, and the other scientists who had created the bomb, their first inkling that what they had unleashed was going to transform the world. By all reports, it was a very uncomfortable realization. Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
And this is my point. Not one of those people involved in the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki understood what nuclear weapons really meant to the world. They had a lot of theory, they had the stats, they had the predictions—but they had no personal experience of the reality of nuclear weapons, so they saw everything filtered through everything they had experienced in the past. To the military, the bomb was just a bigger and better boom—a more efficient way to destroy a city than sending hundreds of planes dropping incendiaries to create an all-consuming firestorm.
The idea that you could destroy a city a city with a single bomb, that people would suffer radiation burns and radiation sickness—that was the stuff of science fiction. Except the science fiction writers of the time hadn’t even begun to consider the terrifying possibilities. It wasn’t until the fifties that the realities of nuclear war became a science fiction theme in novels like Pat Frank’s Alas Babylon. Only after human beings had actual experience of the reality.
The military justified the decisions to destroy Hiroshima and then Nagasaki as part of the cold calculations of war. President Truman justified his decision (partly) based on the emotional exhaustion of the nation and the consequences of not using the bomb. But whatever the reasons and justifications for the decisions to proceed—those decisions were also made in an experiential vacuum, because few people at the time could reliably predict or understand the vast future of unrecognized consequences that would inevitably occur.
Before Hiroshima, each global conflict was worse than the last, each had an exponentially higher death toll. Today, we still have wars, but not on the same scale. We’ve stopped raising the ante on ourselves. Some military strategists say that’s because the realities of nuclear warfare are now so well known and understood that those consequences inspire genuine terror in politicians and military leaders alike, a very different understanding of the consequences than existed in 1945.
Now…what does any of this have to do with your phone, your laptop, your tablet, your gaming machine, or your desktop computer?
Everything.
Today, we build new technologies because we can—because engineers and researchers see opportunities things that are newer, cheaper, faster, better, different. Even the lay person can see the possibility that a cell phone or an iPod or a tablet will provide an advantageous access to information and communication. But even as we build those things, we’re still looking in the rear view mirror—we’re designing them out of our experience of the past, so we can do more of the things that we did in the past, only better. What we keep on forgetting is that what comes along for the ride, every time, are the unrecognized and unintended consequences. And those consequences are almost always transformative.
Things get changed—often drastically. And in ways that are unpredictable before the event and look inevitable only afterward.
The cumulative effect of little things can be the most dramatic. One automobile is no big deal. A billion automobiles is a pollution problem. One light bulb is nothing much. A billion light bulbs is an energy problem. One computer is interesting. A billion computers is a network, and that’s an opportunity for thieves and hackers and malware of all kinds. It’s also an opportunity for instantaneous global communication, for political and social movements, for viral uprisings and flash mobs.
Even though we have been building and using personal computers for 35 years, we are still in the infancy of the information revolution. We still have only a glimmering of how technology is ultimately going to change our lives. Even ten years out, we cannot foresee the changes we are about to experience—the cultural and economic and emotional and personal effects that the hyper-liquidity of information will create, not to mention what happens when our cars can drive themselves, when Skyping is commonplace, when cameras are so ubiquitous that privacy disappears, when personal biology is augmented by implants of all kinds, when software agents are managing all the myriad details of memory.
Already today, we’re seeing transformations. The internet has changed global politics. Twitter produces virtual flash crowds—and real ones too. The tablet is making the internet a portable interface. Smartphones and YouTube have validated Andy Warhol’s prophecy—“In the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes.” Do something above and beyond the call of ordinary stupidity and you’ll not only get a million hits, you’ll even get a web-redemption from Daniel Tosh.
And all of this is still only the beginning.
Tanith Lee, in her wonderful book The Silver-Metal Lover, postulated a world where body-modding was commonplace, where sexuality was fluid, where the cultural moment shifted so fast that there was no continuing culture at all. Authors like Frederik Pohl and Damon Knight wrote of walled communities that locked themselves into specifically defined and limited cultures. Still other authors have written of worlds where cultural phenomena rise and fall in a matter of hours—along with fortunes. That last one may have been the most prescient. Before the internet, back in the days of fanzines, a good flame war could last months, even years. Today, it’s rare that an online flame war goes for more than a week before the participants either give up, go away, or move on to the next topic.
The unintended consequence of all of our computer technology has been a dramatic acceleration of the pace of life. We are bombarded daily with more information than we can assimilate and it is coming in at ever-increasing rates. Email, social networks, Twitter, advertising, television—everything. We are advancing both the scale and pace of all of our economic and social interactions—and we’re doing it without any serious recognition of the ultimate limitations of the human mind and body. There are going to be consequences, both for the individual and for society at large.
We will experience the effects medically, socially, emotionally, and personally. Increased rates of autism, irrational and delusional behavior, extremists of all flavors, greater investment in conspiracy theories, a general increase in neuroses and superstitions, and that impending sense of doom that feeds into end-of-the-world manias—all of these and more have been postulated as consequences of our unstoppable headlong rush into an accelerated world.
Fat Man and Little Boy transformed our world, and not necessarily for the better—the risks of nuclear disaster, nuclear terrorism, even nuclear war, are still with us. The technology revolution will be even more transformative and possibly even more dangerous. It’s the unintended and unrecognized consequences that will have the greatest impact on all of us.
The future is going to be very exciting—and like that famous Chinese curse, we are going to be living in interesting times. Perhaps we will also be smart enough to use our new technologies to make ourselves more humane.
What do you think? What would you predict?
—————
David Gerrold is a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author. He has written more than 50 books, including "The Man Who Folded Himself" and "When HARLIE Was One," as well as hundreds of short stories and articles. His autobiographical story "The Martian Child" was the basis of the 2007 movie starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet. He has also written for television, including episodes of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Twilight Zone, and Land Of The Lost. He is best known for creating tribbles, sleestaks, and Chtorrans. In his spare time, he redesigns his website, www.gerrold.com
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d3v
September 02, 2011 at 7:01am
Why do you have to include American propaganda justifying the Nuclear holocaust in Japan? I mean if you can't be objective then don't write about politics at all. You should have kept the politics out of this article.
As we've seen in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya the world is not a safer place. It's just a grossly unjust one where rich countries can attack poor ones at the drop of a hat and there is nothing that poor countries can do about it.
Finally people were a lot more superstitious in the past. Today it's all about the money. So really you're wrong again.
CanoeHead
September 01, 2011 at 10:21am
Thank you sir, for your thoughts.
My spine puckers into a cold sweat every time that I visit the SF section of a bookstore and find it dwarfed by the sword & sorcery works.
I love them all, but would seem to indicate a world where a diminishing few are looking down the road ahead and the remainder, rather than looking in the rear view mirror, are staring at the clouds wondering what it would be like to own an owl, a wand and a broomstick.
Who stands as the guardians of our foresight? Who will peer around the corners?
MeanSquare
September 01, 2011 at 7:57am
I think, at least at first, there will be a fair bit of resistance to body-modding because of the continued stigma of eugenics. In the end, the same people who resort to plastic surgery after plastic surgery will seize on the newer technologies. (Imagine, for instance, a nanite "elixer" that removes excess body fat.)
At the same time, another technology will be working cross-purposes: CGI will eventually allow a director to choose actors by voice alone and the create the "physical" actor however he/she choses. In time, every actor could be a voice actor and who cares how they look "in real life."
We already have interactive first-person games. How soon before we have first-person "movies," where the (can't just call them) watcher(s) determine the plot-flow.
On the political front(s), the Internet has allowed all kinds of like-minded individuals to connect. The end result may well be the multiplication of political parties. (I'm not fond of our defacto two-party system anyway.) It has also resulted in an odd sort of balkanization/insulation among people who think like you do. The characatures that are used to inaccurately represent "those other folks" commonly litter political sites, often without challenge. We may turn into a society where truth is completely dependent of where you start looking.
Data filtering and farming will become the biggest need for the foreseeable future. With the wealth of information out there, we'll need vastly improved ways of locating what we want quickly. Eventually filtering may spell the death of SPAM as the filters get to the point where only those looking for cheap viagra will see any adverts for it. Pulling data in from diverse sources, colating and crosschecking, maybe even some vetting will become increasing important. Right now, "two guys and a web page" can perpetrate an Internet hoax that fools major news sources. We need something better right away.
Finally, we're making the first steps toward true data portability, where your data is wherever you want it to be, often without tedious sending or synching. Data networks, especially the cellular ones need to be even faster and completely ubiquitous. You can't have your data held hostage by a dropped cell-connection. Cloud-based data will also have to be far better protected before most people make the jump. I can see a time when where your data actually is will be completely irrelevant.
TerribleToaster
September 01, 2011 at 6:20am
How come no one ever mentions that nuclear bomb was the first step on the road of nuclear power and that wer are now looking at essentially solving the world's energy crisis winthin the next 50 or so years using fusion power plants that produce no toxic or radioactive waste?
Keno5net
September 01, 2011 at 6:14am
After reading your essay it occurs to me that if not for the example of those two cities the first use of nuclear weapons could have been much more devastating.
What would have happened if the danger and horror was not revealed in Japan at the end of World War II. The first use could have been deferred to a time when all sides had nuclear weapons and better ways of delivering them. Instead of two cities devastated it could have been a whole country or the world.
Just a thought.
Thanks for inspiring it.
Ridnarhtim
September 01, 2011 at 2:02am
Actually, it's pronounced new-clear. But anything is better than nookoolar.
TheZomb
September 01, 2011 at 12:32am
I think this is just blatantly untrue. Its easy to look at historical problems we didn't predict and go, "We should have looked forward more and we would have seen this." Somethings you just can't predict and somethings you can and still you can't do anything about them. Using the nuclear bomb as an example do you really think that telling Truman or the scientists developing the bomb the consequences of their actions would stop nuclear weapons from being developed or used at least once, if not by them then by another nation. Both the Russians and the Germans had nuclear programs.
Even ignoring this there is plenty of fear of developing hostile AIs and super biological weapons. There is a large portion of people who build zombie apocalypse shelters underground. There is even an national organization focused on developing AI ethics guidelines.
Competition and the view that if "If we don't do this, someone else might and they might not be as ethical us." Will always drive innovation past the line of "It would be better if this was never invented at all".
Brdn666
September 01, 2011 at 6:43pm
I don't think he was saying that we should try to predict what is going to happen. He was mostly saying that we really have no idea where instant access to information/people is going to take us. Could be terrible, could be fantastic.
lordmidnight
August 31, 2011 at 11:29pm
That's what Lowtax was on about when he said "The Internet Makes You Stupid." Sure, it's a great tool for communication, and has been the instrument of radical change. However, it has also given a voice to everyone. Some of those voices were better left in the dark.
mjanzen
August 31, 2011 at 9:38pm
I appreciate reading your thoughts on this matter. Have you read "The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion" by Tim Challies, or "You are not a Gadget" by Jaron Lanier? Some of your argument is very similar to their line of thinking, including the nuclear aspect as a major change in society.
macumber
August 31, 2011 at 7:37pm
We are still evolving. We still haven't shaken 10,000 generations of programmed survival and fear instincts. We might select some of these instincts out in future generations if we don't snuff ourselves out first. We are only ten generations away from being majority illiterate as a species! The pace of advance was accelerating long before PC's and electronic conveniences were born. There are 7 billion people on Earth. We've gained a billion since 99. Talk about the law of unintended consequences ... war and other predatory threats to human life were also a crude method of population control. In their absence (relatively), we might wish to address population planning . All the while we are covering and consuming our planet like some Borg. We may need to "thin the herd", not grow it. It seems that the strong urge to have families and have children is also being selected out of our instincts to some extent. To some extent it is being made tougher due to economics and overpopulation. Look at birth rates in Western Europe. Loved Bill Joy's little paper a few years ago about GNR and the laws of unintended consequences. If it isn't a plague or climate change or nuclear war or food supply ... I get the feeling our species better enjoy what is left of our little day in the sun. If the planet is 4.5 billion years old and we had our last ice age about 10,000 years ago ... I am not too worried about us having enough time to figure all this out. Humans will be long extinct before then.
warptek2010
August 31, 2011 at 8:25pm
With advanced science and accellerated technology we also have to balance out ethics and morals now more than ever before. You speak of the population bomb and "thinning out the herd". To me, these are terms that raise an alarm bell on the ethical and moral front. I once heard some leader of some scientific think tank talking on a radio program in effect stating that we need to reduce the worlds population by about a billion people. More than 5 or 6 billion is unsustainable according to him. Okay pal, who lives and who dies and who gets to decide? The last thing I'd want to see is some realistic version of Kodos the Executioner. I don't know about you but the last I checked prosperous countries like the United States have some natural built in system of population control. We tend to have a lower number of children by choice of freedom where as the lower you go on the econmic scale the more children people tend to have. Sound like a paradox? You bet it does but it is statistically true. When you get into the numbers of 3rd world nations the numbers are even more bizarre. The less money you make, the more kids you have. Coincidence? Political/Economic incentives?
Dartht33bagger
August 31, 2011 at 6:56pm
I've thought this for a few years now. While I absolutely love computers and video games, it feels like it almost makes my life more difficult in some instances. Sometimes I wish I could go back to times before cell phones, before social networks and before I had internet. Back when I only played single player games and when I had to call my friends on their home phones.
bobla90042
August 31, 2011 at 5:28pm
You raise several important points. You are corrent that to understand any event, we need to look at the circumstances, the paradigm, by which the decision makers understood the decision to be made. It's true that they didn't really know how momentus was the decision they were making, nor the ultimate consequences. It was, to many of them (not all) just a bigger bomb.
However it's also important to understand that the Japanese had only2 weeks of food left on the island. They had no merchant marine--no ships by which to supply their people. Their military was stranded in mainland China and Korea; they had no way to tranfer those troops to the Japanese homeland. The nation was essentially defenseless. Reports from the military recommended preparations for an invasion, but they also recognized that by the time the allies were ready to invade, the country would be freezing and starving. The emperor would likely be dethroned. Chaos would consume the island.
The allies were also keenly aware of the menace emerging from the Soviet Union. The Soviet's had agreed to enter the Pacific once Hitler had been defeated. With Hitler's defeat, Russia was preparing to move into Manchuria and other areas in the east. By then, however, the Allies recognized that allowing the Russians to enter the war would also create major unintended consequences; it was essential that the Allies end the war before the Russians took territory and resources from the defeated Japanese. That required quick and decisive action. There was no need to hurry an invasion; it would take months for preparations to be completed, and by then the Japanese would have been desparate for food and fuel. Indeed, as soon and the peace treaty was signed, the Allies had to start airlifting food and fuel into Japan at an unprecedented rate. But responding to a Soviet threat required very quick action.
No one signle factor can be seen as the deciding factor that pushed the decision to use the bombs on two cities. But avoiding an invasion may not have been at the top of the list of factors.
However, your broader point remains well taken. We will be the participants in all manner of unintended consequences, and quickly. Your article was written at 3:04 pm. By days end it will have been read and digested by who knows how many people--hundreds, thousands? A few people will leave comments. Who can imagine what the consequences of your article--your ideas--will be? In the past an article would be written weeks before publication in a magazine. Snail mail would require days for all copies to be delivered. It would only be available for a month, a week, before the next issue came along and your article disappeared into oblivian. It would take weeks, perhaps months, for the consequences of your article to be felt, maybe years. Today, consequences could be seen in hours, days; your article will live indefinitely on the internet to be dredged up by searches and hyperlinks to countless other "webpages" (magazines).
What if the next Bill Gates sees from your comments a new way to understand and predict unintended consequences? Now that could spark a revolution!
Zharin
August 31, 2011 at 4:02pm
Thank you Mr. Gerrold, for another well written and thought provoking piece that was a pleasure to read. I can't wait for the next column.
Zharin
August 31, 2011 at 4:02pm
Thank you Mr. Gerrold, for another well written and thought provoking piece that was a pleasure to read. I can't wait for the next column.
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