The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories
1 2021-03-31T12:45:59-07:00 Natalie K Meyers 4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22 33948 6 Cory Doctorow, “The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories.” Slate Magazine. October 13, 2020. New stories will help us understand the importance of seizing the means of computation and using it to build movements that break up monopolies, fight oligarchy, and demand pluralistic, shared power for a pluralistic, shared world. meta 2021-04-13T16:06:12-07:00 10/13/20 Doctorow, Cory. 2020. “The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories.” Slate Magazine. October 13, 2020. https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/cory-docotorow-sci-fi-intuition-pumps.html. webpage Doctorow, Cory Kim Stathers b8f352d1ce6eb714d5242702eaa05362c8eae357Media
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versionnumber | ov:versionnumber | 6 |
title | dcterms:title | The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories |
description | dcterms:description | Cory Doctorow, “The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories.” Slate Magazine. October 13, 2020. New stories will help us understand the importance of seizing the means of computation and using it to build movements that break up monopolies, fight oligarchy, and demand pluralistic, shared power for a pluralistic, shared world. |
content | sioc:content | Sci-fi doesn’t just imagine the future—it imagines human nature. We need to take that responsibility seriously. |
url | art:url | https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/cory-docotorow-sci-fi-intuition-pumps.html |
default view | scalar:defaultView | meta |
was attributed to | prov:wasAttributedTo | https://scalar.usc.edu/works/refusal/users/34164 |
created | dcterms:created | 2021-04-13T16:06:12-07:00 |
type | rdf:type | http://scalar.usc.edu/2012/01/scalar-ns#Version |
source | dcterms:source | https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/cory-docotorow-sci-fi-intuition-pumps.html |
date | dcterms:date | 10/13/20 |
bibliographic citation | dcterms:bibliographicCitation | Doctorow, Cory. 2020. “The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories.” Slate Magazine. October 13, 2020. https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/cory-docotorow-sci-fi-intuition-pumps.html. |
format | dcterms:format | webpage |
creator | dcterms:creator | Doctorow, Cory |
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Crisis narratives frame our response
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2021-09-14T13:16:40-07:00
In this genealogy, we will examine the role of crises, scarcity narratives, and the power of "No." Our aim is to re-frame crisis narratives in librarianship so library staff called upon to compensate for scarcity have other ways of contending with need.
This genealogy of refusal explores crises and the ways in which we respond to them. Why? Because "Stories of futures in which disaster strikes and we rise to the occasion are a vaccine against the virus of mistrust. Our disaster recovery is always fastest and smoothest when we work together, when every seat on every lifeboat is taken" (Doctorow 2017). As explored by Drabinksi (2016) and in our companion short piece, crises, both real and constructed, are behind the narratives that frame our individual and collective responses to disaster, scarcity, and refusal.
The tragedy of the RMS Titanic is an event retold over and over. The story of the unsinkable ship's doomed voyage shocked the world. It's a real crisis narrative. But the story is also a tragedy because "it didn't have to be that way." Half the seats on many of the Titanic’s lifeboats were empty. The very name of the Titanic carries connotations about hubris--it was too big to fail so it didn't need enough lifeboats for every person... and went full steam ahead regardless of the conditions. It's a story that illustrates the danger of calculated risks and compounding troubles of constructed scarcity: Let's cast off without enough lifeboats, then later when the ship's going down let's deploy the life boats half-empty."This is the thought experiment of a thousand sci-fi stories: When the chips are down, will your neighbors be your enemies or your saviors? When the ship sinks, should you take the lifeboat and row and row and row, because if you stop to fill the empty seats, someone’s gonna put a gun to your head, throw you in the sea, and give your seat to their pals?"
--"The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories" (Doctorow 2020)
Crises can be both real and constructed, as Bert Spector explains in Constructing Crises: Leaders, Crises, and Claims of Urgency (2019). Either way, crises can be a powerful tool for leaders. Real crises can be borne on the wings of natural disasters or a global pandemic. Constructed crises tend to fall into different smaller narratives. Even still they can be utilized in the wake of real crises to form a larger narrative. Constructed crises are often used as cover by those who seek to claim (or hold onto) power and resources, especially in an urgent or 'exceptional now' manner.
Constructed crisis often manifest as calls for urgency, which always stem from the desire for power. Scott Adams captures that aspect of constructed crisis perfectly in this Dilbert cartoon of workplace life:
In librarianship, crises are leveraged by administrators, politicians, and others to justify that "there just aren't enough resources" to make working conditions safe/effective or "there just isn't the time to wait!" to follow the advice of an specialist. These scarcity narratives then become the backdrop libraries use to boast about their ability to "pivot" or "do more with less", while at the same time they over rely ad nauseum on the self-sacrifice and resilience of library staff in the face of adversity.
Staying open without PPE during a pandemic, disincentivizing vacation, working people after hours without compensation, or simply allowing an understaffed, repetitive manual task to persist (that will never be efficient enough to beat the backlog) can all be positioned as stop-gap solutions in service of a noble mission. Underneath, such choices are typically justified by scarcity narratives about how resources are unusually scarce or how the matter at hand is more urgent than ever.
As you explore our genealogy of workplace refusal we invite you to consider: How long should we do more with less? Is it okay to simply exist? Instead of demanding exceptional resilience in the face of adversity could we focus on surviving with some semblance of quality of life? How do we know if there actually IS a crisis? Or if resources are, in fact, scarce? In the words of Leah Zaidi, could we design our way out of the cyberpunk dystopia we are awakening to find ourselves in? (Zaidi 2021) -
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2021-02-14T17:04:04-08:00
A Kinship Diagram of Workplace Refusal
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2022-04-04T15:44:11-07:00
Why bother doing a genealogy of refusal from literature, science fiction, and popular culture? If we want to confront the options for workplace refusal it helps if we acquaint ourselves with some common stories and the worlds they explore, exploit, and create. Likewise, it requires us to collaborate, commiserate, and co-create with our fellow workers. This project grew out of weekly discussions and a shared bibliography, where we explored the interplay between the theory we were reading, our lived experiences, and the media we were consuming. This ultimately culminated in the short essays and content selections that substantiate our multimedia project and our kinship diagram, a lighthearted visualization inspired by the Canadian Journal of Academic Librarianship Special Issue: Refusing Crisis Narratives. We know this genealogy is, by virtue of its motivation, bound to be arbitrary, incomplete, inaccurate, and always a work in progress, open to argument, revision, and criticism. We are okay with that. Here we look at workplace refusal through art, music, dance, film, sit-coms, games, literature, and science fiction, from Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" to Doctorow's Walkaway. We juxtapose broader cultural lineages of workplace refusal with the library profession’s specific inheritance of vocational awe. If we have conversations about scenarios that illustrate the ways vocational awe stands in the way of our refusals, we create cultural touchstones that can illuminate our way(s) ahead.
The above genealogy diagram was created by the authors to visualize the genealogy of refusal. To cite, please use: Natalie Meyers, Anna Michelle Martinez-Montavon, Mikala Narlock, & Kim Stathers. (2021). Genealogy of Refusal Family Tree. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4698931
In "The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories," Cory Doctorow (2020) describes how “Made-up stories, even stories of impossible things, are ways for us to mentally rehearse our responses to different social outcomes." He remarks on how Daniel Dennett’s conception of an intuition pump—“a thought experiment structured to allow the thinker to use their intuition to develop an answer to a problem”—suggests that fiction (which is, after all, an elaborate thought experiment) isn’t merely entertainment (Doctorow 2020). While science fiction authors often engage in world-building, creating entire universes with rules that differ from those their audience are accustomed to, these thought-experiments often reflect current reality, even if shrouded in metaphor. As described by Ursula K Le Guin (1979), science fiction does not work “to predict the future… but to describe reality, the present world. Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive” (156). Philip Jose Farmer (2008) wrote that "...Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and many others, write parables. These are set in frames which have become called, for no good reason, science fiction. A better generic term would be 'future fairy tales.'" We can begin our own exercise in professional foresight by examining dystopian, utopian, satiric, and humorous workplace scenarios observed in our kinship diagram. We explore workplace refusal as depicted in satire and comedy for much the same reasons, to look at our present-day situation through the lens of popular culture. The extremes presented in this type of media help us develop an appreciation for the language of refusal.
This genealogy is a launching point for understanding the librarian's role in crisis narratives in the workplace. It lets us connect the librarian's role not just to the characteristics accredited through the award of a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) or other degree or credential, but also to other memorable characters in popular culture, and to labour and feminist work. It helps if we have a common narrative history and timeline to refer to that exists alongside of and yet "outside" the profession. We hope it spurs discussion, maybe laughter, and another way of positioning the ways librarians can say and hear "NO" as a complete sentence.
Just as Bartleby lives on (and has been taken up by filmmakers, artists, literary theorists, and even RPGs), libraries and librarians don't exist apart from the culture we curate. We exist in that self-same idiosyncratic, imperfect, self-reflective culture of books, film, comics, music, history, and theory. -
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No individual solution to our problems
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Debunking myths that hold us back to enable collective ways of moving forward
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2021-08-13T12:58:40-07:00
In the “The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories” Cory Doctorow talks about "the characters’ dawning realization that there is no individual solution to their problems—that the kind of systemic change they want is a team sport and has to include people usually left on the sidelines in tech fights" (Doctorow 2020).
In “Librarians of the World Unite!” a cartoon published in The Nib during the coronavirus pandemic we get a glimpse of how weak we are when we can't communicate with one another and how much change we can achieve if we organize ourselves to understand our common circumstances better.
It's essential to organize to accomplish anything for a whole profession of people. In Cory Doctorow's For the Win the protagonists build a movement that can challenge the status quo and along the way readers find out just how hard fought and hard won are their gains. Those of us in the profession of librarianship, just like the mercenary gamers in For the Win, have reasons to seek change. In “Collective Responsibility: Seeking Equity for Contingent Labor in Libraries, Archives, and Museums" we come face to face with voices that must be heard (Drabinski 2019).
In “Black Study, Black Struggle" Robin Kelley reminds us of how "the university possesses a unique teleology: it is supposed to be an enlightened space free of bias and prejudice, but the pursuit of this promise is hindered by structural racism and patriarchy. Kelley has a lot to teach us about the universities we work in, and the ways they are perceived by the students who study at them and the professors who work at them. He talks about both "modest and more radical critics of universities" and how "Both demand that universities change in ways that we cannot expect them to change" (Kelley 2016). He argues that universities are not up the task [of modest or radical change] and leaves us with the notion that while "universities can and will become more diverse and marginally more welcoming for black students" that "as institutions they will never be engines of social transformation" (Kelley 2016).
Why? We must ask this question, for as academic librarians our jobs and our libraries are situated inside these very same universities. There's not one university for the students and another for the library. Kelley reminds us that the university won't be the engine for transformation because "Such a task is ultimately the work of political education and activism. By definition it takes place outside the university" (Kelley 2016). Perhaps some of what we seek for and from libraries has to be similarly situated, and informed by the hard-won knowledge Robin Kelley shares; perhaps the change we seek has to happen wholly or partly outside the library because it can't happen through it?
For us, as librarians, there is no single solution or snake oil to repair all our profession's problems. Studious librarian Barbara Gordon aka Batgirl lobbied for equal pay back in 1974 but the most recent AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey and the CAUT Almanac of Post-Secondary Education in Canada demonstrate that universities haven't quite caught up.
Taking up Doctorow's message acknowledges how we will come up with better solutions if more of our voices are heard. We must hear not just the superheroes' voice but also the voices of the disadvantaged and the most pained among us. Flaherty describes how the "privilege of the able bodied leads to people with disabilities being being pushed out of our movements and our society" (Flaherty 2016, 20). He calls attention to how Disability Justice says "we all must move forward together or it's not really justice" (Flaherty 2016, 20).
The most successful communes in Doctorow's Walkaway are those that don't force their citizens to compete. One leader of a failed commune reflects on his own previously aggressive and hyper-competitive mindset. He'd once ruthlessly critiqued the groups who went without leaderboards and shamed those who couldn't keep up. He later observes that such community members were not the problem:“It twists my head that I only started disbelieving in useful and useless people when I proved to be useless. Then I had this revelation that the scale I’d judged people on--the scale that I was failing on-- was irrelevant.” (Doctorow 2017, 208)This brings us right back to Bartleby and his boss's frustration at how to consider and treat his refusing employee once Bartleby wasn't fit for work. Was Bartleby a mere managerial challenge? A puzzle to fix? Or an embarrassment, an eyesore, a problem to be gotten rid of? He was much more than that, which is why Melville makes Bartleby's situation so impossible to "look away from".
There is no single 'Superhero' individual who can resurrect librarianship's "once glorious kingdom" to it's real or imagined former prestige. Individually, not even those among us who have organizational or professional power/prestige, can bring our entire profession to a state of equity or equilibrium. But through communal consciousness raising whether it happens on twitter, on librarian blogs, in journals just like CJAL, or in any of the communities where we share ideas, we can begin conversations that help us mount collective concerted efforts that build firmer ground upon which to resolve our issues and move forward together.
Our organizational weaknesses show. There's more than one reason we don't always refuse or debunk constructed scarcity when we could or should. Our weaknesses were hard felt during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. We recognize that'll it'll take more than one person, more than one action to situate ourselves better and that it will require collective as well as individual action. This does not mean we shouldn't have optimism to tackle the barriers that prevent us from occupying our profession more fully--we may be living in a cyberpunk dystopia, but there are avenues that allow us to design our way out of the situations we've inherited.