The Other
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Chair: Thank you, Dr. Sommers. Again, I would like to remind the audience that we will be holding questions until the end. I can already see some productive parallels for our first two speakers to address. But before we do that, let’s give the floor to Dr. Adya Hyaan of the University of Adamantine, who has recently finished her doctoral dissertation on the changing relationship between humans and nanotechnology over the last four centuries.
Dr. Hyaan: We are all familiar with the debate around the social dynamics of nanotechnological integration with human biology. A commonly held belief is that these debates are relatively new problems for us, the result of recent innovations in nanotechnology and biomedical research. It is also easy, when analyzing the past, to look upon past nanotechnological and genetic modifications with horror. I focused my paper on this social dynamic, and I argued that the dynamic itself has never really changed. To give a concrete example, if we take a look at the time of the Resistance, we had one group staunchly opposed to any biological modification, some even to the point of being opposed to technological advancement writ large, and another group willing to make absolutely any change. That is what it looks like to us now. But according to accounts of the people in those time periods, their own past was filled with people making terrible decisions about their health and well-being due to lack of technological expertise and general social recognition of the problems, their present had birthed miraculous new technologies capable of solving those problems, and, depending on who you asked, those technologies were either a vast cornucopia of gifts to humanity, which would keep on giving the more we invested in them, or, alternatively, a dangerous path to degeneration and the ultimate debasement of the species. Cast in those terms, does this sound like a past or a contemporary problem? It is interesting how this same paradigm persists across the past four centuries, its details always changing, the variance between the extremes always changing, but the fundamental dynamic remaining ever-present. To riff off Dr. Sommers’s astute observation of the parallel between the end of the Resistance period and first contact, I would add a second parallel: both are examples of a culture moving from an extreme position regarding the relationship between humanity and technology to a more dynamic, nuanced position. In the case of the former, the shift was isolated to Alterra. In the case of the latter, the shift affected all three societies, ultimately culminating in the integration of two of them into the FSA. I analyze our current cultural climate as one in which we are moving once more toward extremes. Although we can hardly compare ourselves to extremes such as those found during the Resistance period, it is nonetheless concerning. It is also disconcerting to hear that perhaps the only thing that stands between us and a perpetual slide into more extreme positions is perhaps chance occurrence, and I’m curious to ask Dr. Sommers if there is anything we can actively do within our social and political institutions to resist that change. But perhaps that’s a topic for another panel.
Chair: Thank you, Dr. Hyaan. Well, we certainly have an exciting foundation for questions. Where to go from here? Normally I would pose the first question to get things started, but this audience seems brimming with questions already. Let’s start with you. Yes, you.
Published by Matthew Buscemi, 2020
Seattle, Washington USA
ISBN 978-1-62802-020-5 (trade paperback)
Copyright © Matthew Buscemi 2020
Cover Illustration Copyright © Zhivko Zhelev 2019
Map of the Reclamation Copyright © Robert Altbauer 2019
Typeset by Matthew Buscemi
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.