This is topic Currency Futures in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.


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Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
 
Hey, yeah, not monetary futures, per se, rather, current events projected futureward or whenever for prose event and milieu and language features. Science fiction's reputation for at times prescience is well-known. Trend extensions futureward are a stock in trade of statisticians of every walk of life, from economists to cool sharks to political geographers to writers and beyond.

Otherwise or additionally, science fiction writers invent technological, scientific, social, or cultural features that serve a dramatic need. Ursula k. Le Guin's ansible is a strong and fine example. Other writers have used the ansible for their works, perhaps to less dramatic effect and more so as an extant, if fictional, communication device.

So my curiosity lays within how present-day social circumstance trends serve a narrative's dramatic needs. More than one writer has bemoaned the fallout from the recent slates wars, for and against any faction's advocacy of this or that or another social aspect for fantastic fiction literary awards. Each identity matrix factor is under fire or furthered, maybe promoted or glorified or condemned: sex, age, ethnicity, lifestyle, social status, ad nauseam. A Pluralist notes that life takes all kinds; a writer notes that competition, contests, complications and conflicts internal and external, motivations and stakes risked are at heart prose's dominions, without which drama isn't dramatic.

A Pluralist also notes that target of any one group identity for satire's commentary risks hypocrisy of the do as I say, not as I do mien, at the least. Also, more, much more; for example, the think for the self, otherwise, others will, to their detriments and yours, aligns, too, with mind your own business's greater than disingenuous substances. Beyond those perils and feral civility, what's a writer to write about that both satirizes the either-or and with us or against us fallacy mentalities of duality and nevertheless comments on and transcends the petty squabbles of self-supremacy in a dawn age of Pluralism?

A different path notes that, while those factions squabble for supremacy, another tack realizes the diversion distraction leaves occasion for ascendance of a third or more space. Quietly, subtly, in plain sight, non-surreptitiously.

Several tenets from economic theory and political geography, and -- well, current market and social trends, advise that technology is both occasion for exclusion and inclusion of minority interests. The Pareto principle advises that twenty percent of causes yields eighty percent of effects, and vice versa, therefore, eighty percent of causes yields twenty percent of effects. The long-tail marketing principle, that is at root a success cause for online commerce, advises that the larger the marketplace demographic is the greater the less-served consumer base is.

Political geographers, among others, have noted the Digital Age, also known as the Information Age, the Network Age, the Internet Age, and many others factions' labels put forth as their preferences to the exclusion of other labels, causes a greater social adjustment than at any past time technology caused changes between people, the state, and territory. Hubris, that.

Many innovations now taken for granted caused substantial adjustments, language at first, for one example, agriculture soon thereafter, and the making of ale and wine, then the thin veneer of civilization in support of the making of the wine and ale and bread and cheese. However, the Digital Age's social causes and effects are legion regardless, firsthand, secondhand, and thirdhand and more. Firsthand, for example, a social access explosion; secondhand, mass inclusion; thirdhand, mass incivility.

Sociologists observe that outliers drive innovation more so than capital or state management or territory influences. Misfits, social beings excluded due to social strife factors -- social exclusion causes alienation and isolation, even madness. Reactions to alienation split between creative endeavors that pursue social reintegration and social abreactions. Digital Age technologies are occasions for both and more, and the Pareto and long-tail principles.

Back when, a village was, say, thirty or so persons who knew each other intimately and needed each and all to participate in and contribute to the village good. Misfits were unconditionally accepted, in part, due to their differentnesses occasioned helpful innovations at times, plus, they pulled their weight as best they were able according to their abilities, as small as their contributions were in one tangible area and large in another intangible area. However, far extreme persons were exiled at least, maybe given a second chance at first. Generally, though, idiosyncrasies were tolerated or even food for humor, maybe delight, possibly awe and wonder.

Today, the globe is the village and seven billion and counting. Yet humans are still only capable of by degrees meaningful personal interaction with about thirty others. Not even that in the device-connected impersonal climate the Digital Age fosters.

Yet technology occasions connections between far-flung individuals of shared or mutual sensibilities; a minority identity matrix group may connect across the globe, for good or ill will, rarely if ever neutral. Where a mill town community might have only one one-of-a-kind outlier, across the globe, maybe ten thousand occur. United by technology, the voice of ten thousand might stand for notice of its rights and values before the whole, at least, though, they can know they are neither alone nor community-belonging-less. One would be silenced and alienated, for sure, isolated. Ten thousand or so, that's about the core maximum of what any active faction can muster on mutual issues without descent into categorical dissent and dissolution.

For fantastic fiction writers, this means any topical subject matter near and dear to a given writer has an audience potential that warrants publication, at least self-publication. The Pareto and long-tail principles apply, and shown by online bookseller distribution of such. Then product marketing only -- only, yeah, right, as if -- need notify like-minded consumer audiences for, say, ten thousand or so copy distribution. Never mind at this time language and craft and literary merits, which do matter as much as appeal.

My consideration is, of course, large-audience appeal; I would not write to exclude anyone from my satire, nor needlessly alienate, say, any given literary award community: WotF, Hugo, Nova, Nebula, Pulitzer, Mann, Nobel, etc. What then to do? One faction, call it mainstream, or Western Educated Industrial Rich Democracy Patriarchy Christian readers, WEIRD PC excludes any of column A subjects; WEIRD PC and column A exclude any of room B; WEIRD PC, column A, and room B exclude any of starbase C, each of the former exclude any of fairyland realm D, and yada, ad nauseam, not to mention, again, alternative identity matrix facets exclusions.

Why not celebrate each's warts and glories, that is, participations in and contributions to society's common goods? Mind, though, Jerome Stern's character population-explosion risks. Huh? Well -- so many modernist writers created universal appeal from individualized specificity, specific to limited persons and places, times and events. Plus, that way overtly does not condemn and alienate entire identity matrix groups, covertly, though, nonetheless expresses a writer's different identity matrix and opinion positions. Besides, though school composition instructors advise write about what you know, creative composition fosters write about what you do not know, for to explore and experiment with the personal meanings of unknowns in order to preserve dramatic excitement and urgency.

So what does the future hold? More of the same as before through to back when? Though different MacGuffins? Realize extinction? Realize a pause in global incivility? Realize the banes of industrialism and urbanization? Could humanity at last transcend resistance to self-sapience's strictures? One small increment at least? Hey, no, impossible? For each generation is born anew into the pure state of Nature? And development of natural law guidance is unique to a generation's young and later ages?

[ May 22, 2018, 04:54 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]
 


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