Althouse: "One of the great victories of the tech industry was insisting that if you didn’t love its products, and by extension the companies themselves, you were not fit [as a reporter] to cover it."

July 20, 2018

"One of the great victories of the tech industry was insisting that if you didn’t love its products, and by extension the companies themselves, you were not fit [as a reporter] to cover it."

"I never understood how that edict gained traction. We don’t think that crooks make the best crime reporters. I took my inspiration from writers I admired — Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Don DeLillo, Barry Malzberg. They were all low-tech people. Le Guin didn’t drive. DeLillo doesn’t do email. Dick barely left his apartment. Malzberg lives in New Jersey. Yet they foresaw how technology would reshape society better than any of the geniuses in Silicon Valley. 'What technology can do becomes what we need it to do,' DeLillo said. Le Guin observed: 'The internet just invites crap from people.' Those quotes sum up the last 20 years."

Said David Streitfield, interviewed in "When a Tech Reporter Doesn’t Use Much Tech" (NYT).

57 comments:

Sebastian said...: "Le Guin observed: 'The internet just invites crap from people.' Those quotes sum up the last 20 years."

No.; 7/20/18, 7:31 AM
Darrell said...: People that don't use technology shouldn't write about the technology. Even he should see that.; 7/20/18, 7:36 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Reporters are stupid people, generally, who get basic facts wrong and pay no penalty. See, they are the students so dumb they stick with the easiest assignment any kid gets - a report - and make it their life’s work. They can’t do math or analysis or understand the scientific method. But they can write down (inaccurately) what people say, and there’s a market for that. Of course being dumb does have its drawbacks. For example, reporters have a hard time explaining economic or complicated scientific concepts. Those weren’t the classes they did well in. They dumb down everything they write about, being ignorant themselves. Reporting pays so little that they also lack much experience beyond their jobs. So being miserable failures, a person relegated to the drudgery of “reporting” on others and their lives also become cynical and angry within their stunted little lives. And lying for a living, er, “pretending to understand” the things they report on conditions them to think everyone are liars like them. Sad.

Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, teach.
Those who can’t teach, become “journalism” majors.; 7/20/18, 7:54 AM
Fernandinande said...: "When a Tech Reporter is Really a Meta-tech Reporter"; 7/20/18, 7:57 AM
tim maguire said...: Seems like the tech version of the usual claim of objectivity from a biased reporter.

Any tech reporter worthy of the name must be tech savvy and it's hard to see how a low-tech person could fit that bill. Even if some low-tech writers were good at philosophizing about how technology will change our lives, that doesn't mean they understand the pros and cons of any particular hardware or software.; 7/20/18, 7:58 AM
tim maguire said...: Why not? Hiring sports reporters who don't like sports hasn't hurt ESPN any.; 7/20/18, 8:00 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Love the slam on New Jersey, as if living there precludes one from keeping up with technology.; 7/20/18, 8:01 AM
FleetUSA said...: Bad analogy. Crime reporters need to understand the methods and motivations of crooks, just as tech reporters need to understand technology. Otherwise it is Greek to them.; 7/20/18, 8:02 AM
Robert Cook said...: Wow! So surprised to see Barry Malzberg name-checked! He never was a big, popular name in science fiction, and the period of time in which he had any prominence at all was for a brief period, less than a decade, beginning with and ending in the 1970s. (He published after that, but far more infrequently.) His work was too pessimistic, too morose, too utterly black and hopeless to appeal to the average SF fan. He's still alive, but I don't think he's published any fiction in years. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says of him:

"Malzberg's writing is unparalleled in its intensity and in its apocalyptic sensibility."

Yes.

"His detractors consider him bleakly monotonous and despairing, but he is a master of black Humour..."

Yes.

"...and is one of the few writers to have used sf's vocabulary of ideas extensively as apparatus in psychological landscapes, dramatizing relationships between the human mind and its social environment in an sf theatre of the absurd."

Yes.

He can be hard to read and to like, because the atmosphere of utter bleakness he achieves is palpable.

I love that the writer says of Malzberg that "he lives in New Jersey" as his illustration that he is a "low-tech person." Hilarious.; 7/20/18, 8:06 AM
Fernandinande said...: tim maguire said...
Any tech reporter worthy of the name must be tech savvy and it's hard to see how a low-tech person could fit that bill.

This guy isn't a tech reporter. He writes about scooters on the sidewalks and people at google feeding cats and old magazines don't mention Trump and protestors block a bus and amazon has weird prices and public art soars high into the skyline.; 7/20/18, 8:10 AM
Henry said...: I have that edition of Moby Dick -- the one his daughter is reading.; 7/20/18, 8:12 AM
daskol said...: just read recently somewhere, maybe instapundit, how for all their vision, most of the better scifi writers failed to "predict" or at least account for the transformative nature of the internet and the web on our society. rings true based on my reading habits, which were geared towards harder scifi and military scifi. only guy I can think in my reading repertoire who wrote with foresight about the "net" is Gibson and David Brin, the latter of whom is also an academic. makes sense: the changes wrought by the internet/web are more the domain of sociology than scifi, although I wouldn't be surprised if there were something in Heinlein's repertoire that I just haven't read which covers the net, although his main focus was always space.; 7/20/18, 8:14 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: My premise is the the rise and dominance of commentary in modern open-source journalism like blogs and aggregaters (Drudge) and team sites (Ricochet and Instapundit, to a degree) is a direct result of the piss poor quality of actual reporting in all areas of traditional journalism. The lack of sense and rampant ignorance among the reporting class drives people who want good content to find their own. Even my beloved WSJ is a front-page cesspool with a fact-based editorial section grown to take up three pages. Sure it is commentary and analysis, but it has more facts presented than the typical "nut graf" on column one up front.; 7/20/18, 8:16 AM
Etienne said...: "The internet just invites crap from people."

The seven types of crap are:

Type 1: Separate hard lumps, like nuts (hard to pass); also known as goat faeces
Type 2: Sausage-shaped, but lumpy
Type 3: Like a sausage but with cracks on its surface
Type 4: Like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft
Type 5: Soft blobs with clear cut edges (easy to pass)
Type 6: Fluffy pieces with ragged edges, a mushy stool
Type 7: Watery, no solid pieces, entirely liquid

FYI; 7/20/18, 8:17 AM
Robert Cook said...: "Reporters are stupid people, generally, who get basic facts wrong and pay no penalty. See, they are the students so dumb they stick with the easiest assignment any kid gets - a report - and make it their life’s work. They can’t do math or analysis or understand the scientific method. But they can write down (inaccurately) what people say, and there’s a market for that. Of course being dumb does have its drawbacks. For example, reporters have a hard time explaining economic or complicated scientific concepts. Those weren’t the classes they did well in. They dumb down everything they write about, being ignorant themselves. Reporting pays so little that they also lack much experience beyond their jobs. So being miserable failures, a person relegated to the drudgery of “reporting” on others and their lives also become cynical and angry within their stunted little lives. And lying for a living, er, “pretending to understand” the things they report on conditions them to think everyone are liars like them. Sad."

Gee...such hatred of journalists! Was this a former occupation of yours?

Of course, what you say is true...sometimes. Other times not.

Sturgeon's Law must be invoked here: "90% of everything is shit." (Theodore Sturgeon was another science fiction writer, and his comment was a reply to someone who asked him, "Gee, Ted...how can you write science fiction? 90% of it is shit.")

You will find examples of superior talent, skill, intelligence, honesty, and conscientious effort in journalism, as you will in any field of endeavor; but, in journalism, as in any field of endeavor, they will be the exceptions, the ones who do the bulk of journalism that is critically necessary.; 7/20/18, 8:18 AM
CJinPA said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/20/18, 8:19 AM
CJinPA said...: Le Guin didn’t drive. DeLillo doesn’t do email. Dick barely left his apartment. Malzberg lives in New Jersey.

I know what he meant, but using "lives in New Jersey" to signify a writer is low-tech made me chuckle.

Those who can’t teach, become “journalism” majors.

Former journalist here. Please carve out a little respect for the multitude of local journalists who do the grunt work of reporting the non-sexy, non-political "Stuff that Happened" stories every day. No matter how much we love blogs, someone, somewhere has to actually get off their ass, go see what is happening, and chronicle it. It can be done well or poorly, but someone has to do it.; 7/20/18, 8:21 AM
campy said...: "[...] if you didn’t love its products, and by extension the companies themselves, you were not fit [as a reporter] to cover it."

Similarly, virtually all reporters who cover politics passionately love the democrat party and its positions.; 7/20/18, 8:22 AM
Robert Cook said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/20/18, 8:26 AM
Henry said...: I actually think Mr. Streitfield makes an astute point. Tech companies want people to "adopt" their technologies. A drill I can just buy and use. IOS I'm supposed to adopt. The promise is mutual attraction. I love my iPhone and my iPhone will love me.

It is true that some people love tools and tool companies aggressively push their family of tools (usually united by a cordless battery pack system), but construction professionals -- the guys that review tools -- are hard to impress.; 7/20/18, 8:27 AM
Robert Cook said...: "My premise is the the rise and dominance of commentary in modern open-source journalism like blogs and aggregaters (Drudge) and team sites (Ricochet and Instapundit, to a degree) is a direct result of the "piss poor quality of actual reporting" in all areas of traditional journalism."

To some degree, this is a consequence of the degree to which money spent on sending journalists into the field has been drastically cut. The giant corporate behemoths who own pretty much all news entities demand profits, and real journalism is expensive, slow, and time-consuming. Much cheaper and quicker to simply make FACE THE NATION or MEET THE PRESS the model: have so-called experts expound on what they think is the meaning of this or the significance of that current event. Much reporting now comes from wire services, and newsrooms are more and more being emptied of actual journalists who go out and acquire information first-hand.; 7/20/18, 8:27 AM
Etienne said...: I was listening to Glenn Beck the other day (while driving), and he was talking about the "Dark Web".

Then he said that you need a VPN to access the dark web, and that if you have a VPN then you probably are up to no good.

In the context of his argument, this tragic misconception didn't really matter (He was saying if the NSA could crack into the dark web as they claim, then why the hell can't they arrest a Pakistani running the DNC server).

But I wanted to email him to say, that if his radio station didn't have a VPN to protect itself, and allow remote logins, that it was incompetent. Thus VPN's have nothing to do with intent to perform crime.; 7/20/18, 8:28 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: You will find examples of superior talent, skill, intelligence, honesty, and conscientious effort in journalism, as you will in any field of endeavor; but, in journalism, as in any field of endeavor, they will be the exceptions, the ones who do the bulk of journalism that is critically necessary.

Lately we have found a lot of agreement here! And yes, I was a "classically trained" journalist who focused on what we called the "five double-yous" (who-what-when-where-how) of a story. That's how I ran the paper I edited. And I don't recognize the crap that passes for journ-o-lism today. It seems to be agenda driven agitprop written by children.; 7/20/18, 8:40 AM
RNB said...: LeGuin also looked forward to the collapse of capitalism. SF writers are not prophets.; 7/20/18, 8:45 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "I love that the writer says of Malzberg that "he lives in New Jersey" as his illustration that he is a "low-tech person." Hilarious."

I know. Each of the other writers had something tech-specific that made them outsiders to tech.

"They were all low-tech people. Le Guin didn’t drive. DeLillo doesn’t do email. Dick barely left his apartment. Malzberg lives in New Jersey." That's reads like a well-0crafted joke.; 7/20/18, 8:50 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: @Etienne - I think that you go too far. The analogy that I might use is that VPNs are line cars, and just like criminals use VPNs to access the Dark Web to perform their nefarious deeds, they also use cars as getaway vehicles after robbing banks.; 7/20/18, 8:50 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: CJ, what I wrote is a generalization and I expect you are an exception not hewing to the generally dismal standards I elucidated.; 7/20/18, 8:54 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "I have that edition of Moby Dick -- the one his daughter is reading."

That whale is so specifically white — the color, we're told, of evil.

Why is he black on that book cover? It's a good-looking book cover, but it troubles me that the whale is depicted in "blackface."

***

"Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues—every stately or lovely emblazoning— the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge—pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?"

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick: or, the White Whale (pp. 180-181). . Kindle Edition.; 7/20/18, 8:56 AM
Anonymous said...: Cook: To some degree, this is a consequence of the degree to which money spent on sending journalists into the field has been drastically cut. The giant corporate behemoths who own pretty much all news entities demand profits, and real journalism is expensive, slow, and time-consuming. Much cheaper and quicker to simply make FACE THE NATION or MEET THE PRESS the model: have so-called experts expound on what they think is the meaning of this or the significance of that current event.

Yes. Same mentality that's turned "documentary" channels (History, NatGeo, etc.) into reality-TV junkyards. As if they're all trying to prove that a successful business model precludes putting out anything but crap.

I also assume that back in the day reporters did not have to have "journalism" degrees.; 7/20/18, 9:00 AM
Robert Cook said...: "LeGuin also looked forward to the collapse of capitalism. SF writers are not prophets."

You forget...she was writing about the future. You just have to live long enough to see if she is right.; 7/20/18, 9:04 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Anyone who thinks that NJ never had tech, hasn't been around very long.

I think that it was roughly 25 years ago, and I went back there, to Bell Labs to interview for a job as a patent attorney. Imagine my excitement, an avid professional C programmer less than 5 years earlier, having lunch with Kerrigan and Ritchie. Gods. My host, the patent atty showing me around, explained that they were his clients. I wasn't enamored with NJ, though I did have soon to be ex family from there, but I would have jumped at a chance to work there, despite the linoleum floors and constant dreary humidity. But it wasn't to be, and I ended up at a semiconductor company in Austin instead.; 7/20/18, 9:04 AM
Caligula said...: "I took my inspiration from writers I admired — Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Don DeLillo, Barry Malzberg."

The author can't see the difference between creative works of fiction and journalism? Science fiction authors use technology and invented cultures to explore the human condition. There are few science fiction works (and arguably none by P.K. Dick or LeGuin) where the imagined technology overshadows the human drama.

Hey, lets have automotive writers who know nothing of the technology that's built into cars, and have never (and would never) drive one! Lets hire sports writers who don't know the rules of the sport they're covering, let alone understand the importance of those rules in determining how the game is played! Perhaps they should approach everything tabula rasa, as children. Ignorance is a virtue, isn't it? And what could be more endearing than combining ignorance with arrogance?

So, no, it's not necessary to be an enthusiast to cover technology. And some journalism does suffer from this: for example, an automotive writer who prioritizes "fun to drive" above all other attributes (e.g. comfort, utility, reliability). In general (but especially when covering politics) it's always best not to have enthusiasts (or advocates) cover subjects dear to their enthusiasms and advocacy. So perhaps the author has a point. But, surely one can be knowledgeable about technology (and its uses) without becoming a cheerleader?; 7/20/18, 9:11 AM
Big Mike said...: I know what he meant, but using "lives in New Jersey" to signify a writer is low-tech made me chuckle.

Considering that New Jersey was — still is! — the home of Bell Labs, I guffawed out loud. Where would modern tech companies be without the work of Bardeen and Shockley, or Thompson, Ritchie, and Kernigan? Not to mention Claude Shannon. If you do data communications you may have heard of Richard Hamming. And that’s just for starters; the list goes on.; 7/20/18, 9:13 AM
RNB said...: "You forget...[LeGuin] was writing about the future. You just have to live long enough to see if she is right [about the collapse of capitalism]." I have no doubt that the passage of time will see collapse[s] of capitalism and even its replacement eventually by some superior system. But LeGuin never seemed to have any notion of what a better way would be, just that "Capitalism = Bad" and we would all be better off for its disappearance. It is on that point that I hang my opinion of her lack of prophetic powers.; 7/20/18, 9:21 AM
Henry said...: It's a woodcut. You just to print it in white on black paper.; 7/20/18, 9:28 AM
CJinPA said...: CJ, what I wrote is a generalization and I expect you are an exception not hewing to the generally dismal standards I elucidated.

I am convinced that reporters at major metropolitan outlets and those covering politics are encouraged to be 'political activists with bylines.' Your generalization regarding them is well grounded. I'm just showing some love for local reporters, covering fires, crime, fairs, school board meetings...

The newspaper based in the capital of Pennsylvania got rid of all their reporters covering municipal meetings. I serve on a township board of supervisors, making multi-million dollar decisions and no one knows what we're doing. (Luckily, we're not evil.); 7/20/18, 9:30 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: I should add with Bell Labs in NJ being instrumental to the start of the tech era, that they provided both UNIX and the language it was written in, "C". That in itself was significant, since for the most part, operating systems, at the time, were being written in assembly language (where I spent much of my OS and data comm time until the later 1980s with UNIX. And to this day, C is still utilized, and its objectified descendants, such as C++ and C## are still used heavily. UNIX itself (a stripped down, minicomputer, derivative of Multics) opened up the minicomputer world, greatly democratizing computers. Moreover, an entire generation of CS grads learned their programming in UNIX, and all of its related tools (including C). With the advent of minicomputers, CP/M was a conscious derivation of UNIX, and DOS pretty much a clone of CP/M. You can see that linage today with Windows Command and Shell modes. And when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he had the company transition from a standalone system to the Mac user interface sitting on top of UNIX. The result has been a significant improvement in reliability. And, indeed, much of the Internet, and the database engines and web interfaces that form the backbone of electronic commerce run on UNIX or UNIX derived systems. All descended from NJ based R&D.; 7/20/18, 9:31 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: @Big Mike - I had forgotten about Shockley - no NJ, no Bell Labs, means no semiconductor industry, and no modern computers, laptop devices, cell phones, etc.; 7/20/18, 9:35 AM
Robert Cook said...: "(Luckily, we're not evil.)"

How do you know, without someone there to watch you and tell you to your face? Even most evil people don't think they're evil.; 7/20/18, 9:36 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Sorry, should have been: "With the advent of MICROcomputers, CP/M was a conscious derivation of UNIX, and DOS pretty much a clone of CP/M..."; 7/20/18, 9:38 AM
Biotrekker said...: The authors mentioned are among the great AUTHORS, not just generic, average mediocre "authors", of which there are thousands. You can't compare a random "tech" reporter to one of these great authors, And for these authors, the tech isn't the point, the story is. The tech in their stories is in service to the narrative.; 7/20/18, 9:40 AM
Big Mike said...: Former journalist here. Please carve out a little respect for the multitude of local journalists who do the grunt work of reporting the non-sexy, non-political "Stuff that Happened" stories every day. No matter how much we love blogs, someone, somewhere has to actually get off their ass, go see what is happening, and chronicle it. It can be done well or poorly, but someone has to do it.

Well, CJ, if someone actually did do it, that would be good. Maybe I saw the least and worst, living as I did in the Washington, DC, suburbs. But on the rare occasion when a Post reporter came out to report on something local, they were young, arrogant, twits who got most of the details wrong while making it plain to us local riff-raff that they couldn’t wait to get back inside the Beltway. After the horrible murders in Annapolis Dave Barry wrote an impassioned defense of journalism, claiming that only “a tiny minority” of the profession are highly biased and actively ignore the facts to push their agendas. I got that he was hurting, but I think that he is wrong. The tiny minority research their facts, get street names right, check the spelling of people’s names, and report the facts. And the profession is trying its best to purge them.; 7/20/18, 9:41 AM
Etienne said...: Ken Thompson designed Unix, he was a Berkeley graduate. Dennis Ritchie invented C from his background as a language writer.

When I learned computers in 1971, we programmed on an HP 2116 minicomputer. It was a non-stack oriented machine. Then I programmed a DEC PDP-8 which was another non-stack oriented machine. My final non-stack machine, was the Westinghouse AYK-8.

All of these were rather difficult in planning your program memory outline.

Then came the PDP-11 and wow! Poof! Magic!

A stack oriented machine, and also byte oriented and ASCII. Finally you could write a language like C, which is stack oriented.

All computers since, have been stack oriented.; 7/20/18, 9:48 AM
Caligula said...: "But LeGuin never seemed to have any notion of what a better way would be, just that "Capitalism = Bad" and we would all be better off for its disappearance."

In her novel "The Dispossessed," LeGuin seems at least sympathetic toward anarcho-syndicalism, at least as compared with capitalism.

But, I'd argue that science fiction novels are seldom (if ever) intended to predict the future but inevitably are about the present. To take an obvious example, a novel depicting a dystopia might be merely a vehicle to display human ingeniuity (or something), but to the extend it's intended to be predictive it's usually more of a straight-line extrapolation and thus intended as more of a warning ("if this continues indefinately") than a prediction.; 7/20/18, 9:58 AM
CJinPA said...: Well, CJ, if someone actually did do it, that would be good. Maybe I saw the least and worst, living as I did in the Washington, DC, suburbs.

Agreed, Mike. I was referring to local reporters outside of major metropolitan areas. There are quite a few, and most do not (or can't) shoehorn their politics into their stories.

I'm convinced that the ones who do get political see it as a way to win awards and advance their careers. And I don't think they are wrong, sadly. It is now almost irrational to be a journalist writing without left-wing bias. It would be ethical to write without such bias, but it might not be rational, the pressure to conform is so great.; 7/20/18, 10:16 AM
CJinPA said...: How do you know, without someone there to watch you and tell you to your face? Even most evil people don't think they're evil.

Hmmm. That vote to apply for a parks grant was maybe a TAD evil. I should have mentioned our meetings are televised. So, there's that too.; 7/20/18, 10:19 AM
gilbar said...: if you're going to talk about tech and new jersey (particularly about how no NJ no semiconductors; you should go the whole nine yards and say:

No New Jersey; No Menlo Park;
No Menlo Park.... We're Sitting Around Working on Our Computers; IN THE DARK!!!

New Jersey and research laboratories are (and were) synonymous; 7/20/18, 10:34 AM
wholelottasplainin said...: Isaac Asimov was famously afraid of flying, doing so only twice in his life.

---wikipedia; 7/20/18, 10:37 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Economically, a number of sci/fi authors seem to have essentially worked with and warned us against the evils of mega corporations that are far more powerful than mere countries (or planets). The one I am reading right now has an "Alphacorp", a "Trust", and an "Alliance". Part of the plot revolves around the Trust having established a colony on a planet one of many. Alphacorp comes sweeping in with military grade weaponry, wiping out most of the people there, and seizing a natural resource that they had mined. You would think that the two would be at odds. They weren't - the Trust guy whose colony got wiped out trained the Alphacorp guy who did it, and they are plotting to do it again, but both are lying to each other, and maneuvering for advantage. All with the expectation that tens of thousands will, again, die, as collateral damage. Indeed, the problem that both are facing is that there were survivors last time, who are again slotted for elimination... The point here is that we are rapidly approaching the time when the biggest tech companies have enough money and power that only the biggest, most powerful, countries have more money and enough power to somewhat stop, or at least stall, them. I have watched, in DC, as they discovered that they have enough money to buy almost any legislation they want, unless they are opposed by comparably powerful coalitions. To, when Big Tech works with Big Pharma, the America Invents Act (AIA) blows through Congress, garnering > 400 votes in the House, despite it being horrible for American innovation, but further Patent Reform is stalled, with Big Tech (let by Google) being opposed by Big Pharma. When these companies together can throw better than $100 million a year into lobbying, most everyone else gets squashed. I remember lobbying against the AIA, and Rep Sensenbrenner, in his office (filled with Badger memorbelia), telling us that we had his vote, but we were being massively outgunned by paid lobbyists- >500 paid lobbyists pushing the legislation, and we had a dozen or so working for free to oppose it. Imaging that - essentially every member of Congress had their own personal lobbyist pushing the legislation. And imagine how this plays out throughout the rest of the world, where these companies have higher revenues than the countries' GDPs. Often individually - apparently Amazon now has half of all electronic commerce in this country. They don't have military grade armaments - yet. But it is a dystopia that I am seeing more and more of in sci/fi.; 7/20/18, 10:51 AM
PM said...: If the quote had said "understand" instead of "love", it'd be a more acceptable criticism. I find the most illuminating perspectives about tech come from techs: Jaron Lanier, Loren Brichter, Berners Lee, James Williams and Justin Rosenstein.; 7/20/18, 10:59 AM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Malzberg -- man I hated his stuff. Very "New Wave". I particularly got burned by one of his novels, which he himself meant as a meta-novel, sort of "notes to John Campbell about a book I want to write." Not his fault, but the paperback edition blurb copy ditched the meta and pitched it as the novel he was talking about writing (which sounded decent). Talk about a "What the heck?" from a 13year old's perspective! He may be entirely retired now, but for a while, after his writing popularity waned, he was doing agent work for other writers. And I think he represented A. E. van Vogt's literary estate for a while.

Le Guin shifted around. As said above, she seemed sympathetic to a libertarian-ish system in _The Dispossessed_. A lot of her most famous stuff is set against a common background where a humanoid race called The Hain have seeded most of the galaxy, causing Hain related races to evolve on many Hain-type planets (like Earth). The Hain have a long (like loooooooooong) history and she has one Hain say something like: "Yes, Hain has tried anarchy, and it didn't work, but *I* haven't tried anarchy, so I think I'll stick around here for a while". She liked keeping the doors open on the grand scale in her prime.; 7/20/18, 12:57 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Like Robert Cook, the mention of Malzberg caught my eye- not a well known figure in SF, especially today. I read a little bit of his stuff in my days of reading a lot of SF (late 70s until the late 80s. Going through his bibliography just now, I realize that I had read a couple of things he wrote under a pseudonym and never realized it. Was surprised to find he was still alive. He was prolific, far more so than I realized, during the late 60s to 1980. I will have to see if any of the stuff I didn't read might be worthwhile- I have time for it these days I didn't during the previous 25 years.; 7/20/18, 1:46 PM
Bill Peschel said...: I'll pass this along for my own amusement.

Issac Asimov put this oil prediction in the mouths of one of his expert characters in a Black Widower story:

“I see. I wish I could be optimistic on this point, sir,” said Puntsch gravely, “but I can’t. At the rate we’re going, our petroleum will be pretty much used up by 2000. Going back to coal will present us with a lot of problems and leaning on breeder fission reactors will involve the getting ride of enormous quantities of radioactive wastes. I would certainly feel uncomfortable if we don’t end up with working fusion reactors by, say, 2010.”; 7/20/18, 3:57 PM
Robert Cook said...: "I particularly got burned by one of (Malzberg's) novels, which he himself meant as a meta-novel, sort of "notes to John Campbell about a book I want to write." Not his fault, but the paperback edition blurb copy ditched the meta and pitched it as the novel he was talking about writing (which sounded decent). Talk about a 'What the heck?" from a 13year old's perspective!'

You must be talking about GALAXIES.

I can't imagine a 13 year trying to read Malzberg. No wonder you hated it. I had a hard time with it, and I was a little older, in my late teens and early 20s when he was in his heyday.; 7/20/18, 5:49 PM
Alex said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/20/18, 6:03 PM
Ryan said...: Don't forget Princeton. Einstein, Feynman etc.; 7/20/18, 11:46 PM
mikee said...: Everything I know about high tech stuff I learned from B grade scifi movies on Saturday afternoon TV, then shows like Star Trek. And what I learned was that tech will fail at a dramatic moment. Tech will allow something amazing to be communicated, with dire unpredicted results. Tech will empower the worst in people, and those people will have to be overcome by everyone else. Tech is, essentially, a plot device.; 7/21/18, 9:20 PM