There’s a local primary election going on today where I live, and at least two of the candidates are running on a “common sense” platform. From what I can determine, and I know one of them fairly well, outside of the use of the term, their approaches to civic government differ considerably, but each is clear about the fact that he is the “common sense” candidate. But before I muddy the waters even more, I’d note that the dictionary definitions of “common sense” are “practical understanding” or “sound judgment.”

That said, after spending some twenty years in and around national politics, my instinctive reaction is to immediately distrust anyone who uses the term “common sense” in a political arena. The realistic translation of the term is more like: “Given my values, biases, background, and feelings, this is what makes sense to me.” The problem, of course, is that many of the rest of us may not share those values and feelings, and what is “common sense” to him or her may seem like anything but that to others.

Then, when you mix “common sense” with politics, unfortunately, the results are often anything but what reflects “sound judgment” on a larger scale. Why? Because politics requires compromise, and politicians tend to reflect the views of the majority of their constituencies, and those constituencies can and do have very different views. On the local level here, for example, the city council agreed to sell the condemned junior high school building to the university because renovating it would cost far more than building a totally new facility and because the empty building sat where it was surrounded on three sides by the university. On those grounds, the sale seemed to make sense… except the sole municipal swimming pool — which was not condemned — was located on the property. The university demolished the condemned structure and replaced it with a parking lot until the university could obtain the funding for a new theatre center [still pending with the state legislature], and leased the swimming pool back to the city for two years at a token fee.

The city council proposed to replace the swimming pool with a full-scale recreational center, including a better and larger pool, which seemed like a good idea to many, since there isn’t such a public-access facility of that nature closer than fifty miles away. One group in the community protested the spending of taxpayer funds at this time of financial difficulty as showing no common sense or fiscal restraint. Another group said that it was only common sense to have a recreational facility for a rapidly growing city — and to have a swimming pool to support the swimming programs at the two high schools, which have among the better swim teams in the state. A third group claimed it was only common sense to replace the pool with a better pool, but not to spend the money on a larger recreational center. One can cite “common sense” arguments for all three positions, but the debate ended up in a free-for-all requiring a ballot initiative on which proposal to adopt — which turned out to be, from what I can determine, a sort of compromise building that will be more than just a swimming center, but far from a full recreational center… and then last week, the council revealed that they’d under-budgeted for the facility now under construction.

So much for common sense — and this was just about one building in one small city/large town.

The current national debates involve far greater costs and complexity, and incredibly involved trade-offs between costs and life-and-death situations, and when someone starts in on “common sense,” take a good hard look at just whose “common sense” viewpoint he or she is espousing, because common sense evaluations rest on who gains and who loses, and what costs are borne by whom, and who “gets” and who does without.

And I won’t even call that observation “common sense.”

The other day I got an email from my editor telling me that the sales department didn’t much care for the title of the novel I’d just turned in. I called him back and asked him what the problem was. The sales types’ reaction was simple. The title was too much like that of a previous book of mine. Now… the two titles only shared one word, and there was a similarity and synonymy between the last word of the old title and the first word of the new title. Upon reflection, I could see their problem and went to work coming up with an alternative title — which I did and which both editor and sales types accepted as “much better.”

Except…artistically, the title wasn’t much “better.” It will certainly be commercially better, and it won’t confuse book sellers and book buyers, and I’ll definitely be better off in so far as those concerns translate into higher sales.

Even though titles cannot be copyrighted, using the exact same title as a previously published book usually isn’t a good idea, for multiple reasons, but I did it once, unknowingly, with the Recluce book Colors of Chaos, only to find out, years later, that Bob Vardeman had published a book with the same title eleven years earlier. It didn’t seem to hurt my sales, and I hope it didn’t hurt his.

Besides avoiding being a copycat, there are more than a few reasons why the title brainchildren of authors may be changed. One, interestingly enough, is that certain terms can be trademarked, and in most cases, that trademark cannot be used without the consent of the trademark holder. At least one New York Times bestselling author has been required to change a title for that reason.

Another reason is length. No matter how perfect the title, it has to fit on the cover of the book, and preferably in a type size large enough to be readable from a distance. Some art directors are not terribly fond of the word “the” to begin a title, because they think it takes up unnecessary space without adding to the clarity of the title in the slightest. And, frankly, some of my titles, in retrospect, probably didn’t need the article. Some did. And at least one is far better without the article.

The original title of Archform:Beauty was Beauty⁵. Why was it changed? First, because the sales computers couldn’t handle exponents, and second, because sales types kept asking where the first four “Beauty” books were. Yes… that’s right. They apparently don’t teach exponents in sales.

And of course, sometimes a title is just plain bad for any one of a number of reasons. It may make perfect sense to the author, but not to anyone else, or it may be culturally limited. The original title of The Green Progression was the Russian word for “green.” That made sense to us, but not to anyone else. Unfortunately, even the title change didn’t help sales much. On the other hand, “Recluce” doesn’t translate into Swedish, not with the overtones the word has in English, and finally the Swedish translators — through the efforts of a Swedish acquaintance of mine, for whose perspicacity I am most grateful — changed “Recluce” to “Sarland.” I’m told this makes much better reading in Swedish, and I have to take their word for it, but since the Swedish publisher is still acquiring Recluce books, the sales evidence would seem to support that conclusion.

Now… I’ve had generally good experiences with Tor with regard to titles, but I understand other authors have not had entirely sanguine results with their publishers over titles, and I occasionally see titles on the shelves… and shudder, but that’s another matter entirely, since I’m clearly antiquarian in my thinking that titles should exhibit some modicum of taste… whether the title refers to a cookbook or a vampire novel.

Years ago, a friend who worked in the consulting field with me deplored the growing use of the computer mouse, which he still called a GUI [graphic user interface], as the first step toward a “post-literate” society. At the time, I thought he was over-reacting. Now… I’m not at all sure.

The College Board just released its latest statistics, and the SAT reading test scores for last year’s graduating seniors were the lowest since 1994. That choice of 1994 as a reference point is particularly interesting because, in 1995, the College Board “recentered” the SAT reference point, which had been based on the average scores set in 1941. The practical effect of this “recentering” was to raise the median score by roughly 80 points. That means that last year’s reading scores might well be the worst in far longer than a mere fourteen years.

In addition, just a few weeks ago, the ACT test annual results were released, and ACT officials noted that, according to the test results, only 25% of test takers, again graduating seniors, had the ability to handle college level work.

Add to these data the facts that the number of young adults reading is down by over 40% from those of a generation earlier and the fact that close to 40% of those young adults obtaining graduate advanced degrees have inadequate verbal and reading analysis skills, and my friend’s suggestion that we are headed toward an electronic and post-literate society doesn’t look quite so far-fetched.

Why am I concerned? Besides the fact that fewer readers will result in fewer book sales?

Because:

1. The ability to frame complex thoughts correctly is vital if we wish to retain a semblance of a representative government in a complicated and highly technological society, as is the ability to analyze what others have written and to be able to sort out the misinformation based on understanding and logic, rather than through preconceptions and emotional reactions.

2. There is a vast difference between emotional responses to an individual on a personal basis, where first impressions are often correct, and emotional responses to complex issues framed simplistically by talking heads and politicians.

3. Perception and understanding are severely limited if one cannot read quickly and understand well, and those limitations make people more vulnerable to shysters, deceptive business practices, and clever politicians.

4. Enormous parts of our culture and history will be lost, and most people will not even understand that they have suffered such a loss.

5. History can be “changed” at will in all-electronic formats. Have people forgotten that Amazon just recently eliminated two electronic books without anyone being able to stop them? What if they’d just altered the text? How many people would even notice? And… if the news is all graphic and auditory… then what?

As for the decline in book sales… well, it will likely be gradual enough that I won’t have to worry about it. The younger authors… that’s another question. Maybe they ought to consider graphic novels as a fall-back.

Recent studies on brain functions and learning have determined that learning associated with increased brain function is largely dependent on three factors: concentration, difficulty, and leaving one’s “comfort zone.” The first makes perfect sense and certainly is nothing new or unanticipated. If you don’t concentrate on learning — whether facts, concepts, or new skills — you won’t learn them, plain and simple.

The second factor is a little trickier. If what you’re trying to learn is simple, you may learn it, but it won’t improve brain functioning. If it’s so difficult that you can’t even begin to understand, you won’t learn or improve brain functions, either. The optimum for learning and increasing brain function and neuron creation is trying to learn something that is very difficult for you, and at the edge of your ability, but still possible.

The third factor is that for actual learning to take place, you have to consider factors and facts that move you outside your “comfort zone,” possibly to consider other viewpoints or facts that you might otherwise reject and to examine them open-mindedly, and not with a view merely to dismiss or discredit them.

Now… what do these findings have to do with “decline,” as indicated in the blog title?

First… concentration. The growth of the computer and video culture has resulted in a generation that is having an increasingly difficult time concentrating on a single subject for any appreciative length of time. In addition, all too many schools, particularly in the lower grades, are pandering to this decreased attention span by switching subjects more frequently. Any subject — or book — that requires time and effort to master, particularly if not filled with action or gee-whiz amazing facts, is termed “boring.” Unfortunately, a great many basics of any culture and civilization could be termed boring, yet mastery of many is vital to maintain civilization and technology. Perfection in engineering requires painstaking and often tedious work, but without it, equipment, bridges, highways, and buildings all can fail… with catastrophic results, as we have been recently reminded.

Second… difficulty. Because of the “every child is wonderful” syndrome permeating U.S. culture, there’s also an increasing tendency to praise young students rather than to challenge them to the limits of their ability. There’s also a tendency to limit challenges in the classroom because it will hurt the “self-esteem” of less talented or less motivated students. While many private schools and some charter schools are not falling into this trap, all too many other schools are… and since future learning patterns are set by early learning patterns, all too many children are not only not learning, but they’re not learning how to learn.

Third… comfort zones. Our entire high-tech communication and learning systems are designed and operated to allow people to maximize remaining inside their comfort zones. Pick only the friends you want. Talk to them on your cellphone, and ignore anyone else. Pick only the music you want, and isolate yourself with your earphones. Watch only the news that caters to your biases. Study at your own pace, never under pressure. This also translates, more and more, into behavior patterns where people listen less and less to those with whom they disagree, while becoming more and more intolerant of differences. We can see this playing out in our political discourse daily.

I’ve talked to scores of teachers over the past few years, from all over the country, and most of those I’ve talked to agree that, while students are certainly as intelligent, if not more so, than their parents, a majority of them have difficulty learning anything that challenges them. They especially have difficulty in transferring skills learned in one discipline to another, or even learning from their own mistakes in writing one paper and applying what they should have learned from those mistakes to the next paper.

At a time when we live in the most complex and high-tech societies in history, the ability to learn and to keep learning becomes more and more important, and even as we have discovered what is necessary to enhance and improve that ability, as a society we’re turning away from the kind of education and discipline necessary. Almost fifty years ago, in The Joy Makers, James Gunn postulated a future society where everyone eventually retreated into their own comfortable self-reality bubble, blissfully unaware that the machines that maintained them would eventually fail and unable to comprehend that, let alone develop the expertise to continue society.

Is that where we’re headed?

While I’ve often bristled, especially as an author, at the slogan “the customer is always right,” perhaps because I don’t think that fiction should be totally consumer driven on all levels and that authors should make efforts to elevate their readers’ understanding, there’s definitely more than a grain of truth to the adage. It also invites a tremendous amount of hypocrisy in the business community.

In the previous blog, I noted how certain products often aren’t available because the re-sellers are actually selling space and not the product per se. In this instance, customer service clearly takes a back seat to other considerations, i.e., maximizing profit rather than customer satisfaction. While I’m the first to understand that those businesses that don’t make a profit won’t remain in operation long, I have trouble when they also talk about their commitment to the customer. The other day, my wife found a product that she really liked, from a company that was sending her a similar type of product. She liked the new product much better, but when she called to change her monthly order, the company representative told her that they couldn’t change her order, that the “new” product couldn’t be shipped under the old program. My wife’s reaction? She canceled the old order and now buys the new product from a local merchant. Her total spending for products from that company is less, and she probably would have continued to buy more if the company had been more accommodating.

There’s another firm that has a slogan along the lines of “we haven’t forgotten who keeps us in business.” I don’t patronize them very much any more — except when I absolutely have to — because they tack fees onto everything and at every turn. And I’m getting more and more irritated at the airlines for all their fees for everything. I often travel long distances, and given what I do and how I do it, it’s simply not possible to cram all the handouts, press packages, and the clothes into a carry-on. So I have to collect more paper [for the IRS, to document more expenses] that I’ve lost more than once, which costs some money over the course of the year. Then, there’s the boarding pass/baggage routing problem. Because of where I live, there are often considerable layovers, and the computers won’t issue a bag tag if too many hours elapse between first take-off and last take-off. That means I have to program extra time into things so that some overworked airline clerk can laboriously override the computer and make sure my baggage tags are printed to the right destination.

I could go on and on… with example after example, but the point behind all of this is that all too often the slogan or the idea of customer service comes far down the line of business priorities — and yet all too many companies tout it, some of which provide very little of either customer consideration or service. I understand that there are other business considerations, but if there are, I’d really appreciate it if companies in such a position weren’t so fawningly hypocritical… and I suspect I’m probably not the only one who feels that way.

But then, if the ad or the internet says that they really serve customers, it has to be true, doesn’t it?

To begin with, let me preface what follows with several disclaimers. First, I am a registered Republican and have been my entire adult life, even serving in the Reagan Administration. Second, I’m what one might call a “Teddy Roosevelt Republican” and more than a little disenchanted with and appalled by the current Republican “leadership” — which can be better described as “followership of the far right.” Third, I have six very professional daughters and an extremely successful professional wife.

All that said, I’m absolutely disgusted with the media and all the pundits who have hounded and pounced on Hillary Clinton because she questioned an inquiry about what “President Clinton” thought and pointed out that she was the secretary of state, not her husband. Media talking head after media talking head has claimed that this was a gaffe, carelessness, a serious mistake, etc., and even blamed her for distracting from the great health care debate.

Telling the truth — a serious mistake? Are we still mired in the mindset of 1890 where a woman’s opinion means less than her husband’s? Where, when a woman points out the blatantly obvious, it’s a gaffe and a mistake? Where a woman is not allowed to show a certain irritation with such a question? Where an honest response is immediately attributed to being “over-tired”?

The media reaction demonstrates, once again, that even the so-called liberal media, who flaunt their liberalism and their supposed lack of bias, are still imbued with a “liberal” amount of male chauvinism, and some of those who exhibit it are unfortunately women. Yes, the “liberal media” tended to champion Barrack Obama in the last election, but looking at history reveals another story. Black men received the right to vote — however hemmed in that right was by wide-spread prejudice, narrow-minded custom, and outright lawlessness — before women did, and the supposedly more liberal political party of the United States just one year ago decided that a black man was preferable to a white woman as the party nominee for president. The amount of criticism faced by now-Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor in her confirmation process emphasized as much the fact that she was a woman as a Latino, although the feminine aspect was clouded by almost always linking “Latino” and “woman.”

Should it be surprising that women may not reach the same decisions under law as do men, even when they have the same education? We are all products of our backgrounds, genders, educations, and experience. While I don’t agree with all the decisions rendered by Justice Sotomayor, frankly, I don’t agree with all the decisions made by other Justices, either. That divergence of opinion is exactly why the Founding Fathers created a Supreme Court with nine members, not one, or a lesser number, so that differing views could indeed be factored into interpreting the law.[Note: I stand corrected. The original number of justices was five, and then varied from six to five to ten until 1869, when it was fixed at nine, although Franklin Roosevelt tried to add more justices.] And why, exactly, are the decisions made by men automatically assumed to be correct? After all, it was nine men who once affirmed the “constitutional legality” of segregation in Plessy vs. Ferguson, a Supreme Court decision that affirmed segregation and stood almost sixty years in error, a decision by a Court that has had exactly two black jurists and three women in its entire history.

Both history and the events of the past few weeks point out, once again, just how deeply male chauvinism remains embedded in even the supposedly most “liberal” institutions in this, the self-proclaimed land of the free. And the fact that I seem to be one of the few pointing it out is even more depressing.

As at least one result of last year’s and this year’s financial meltdown, economists and politicians are back to debating the relative merits of “free markets” versus “regulated markets,” and everyone has a different idea of how much, if any, regulation is required for a given sub-market, i.e., securities, mortgages, housing, health care, etc.

One of the problems with these kinds of debates is that often the debaters aren’t actually debating what they think they are. What do I mean by this? I’ll give you a very prosaic example. On a Tuesday, in mid-day, I went into a food retail giant — WalMart. Among the items I was seeking were a particular brand of non-allergenic shaving gel and a variety of cat food. I’m particular about the shaving gel because I have sensitive skin, not that the brand that works best for me is either more or less expensive; it’s priced the same as the others by that company, presumably because the base is the same, and all that differs is the additives, or the lack thereof. The cat food is also standard, neither more nor less expensive than the others, and since my cats prefer it to all others, many of which they turn their noses up at, I buy that brand.

When I got to the shaving gel shelf, there were no cans of my variety. Every other variety — except the one I wanted — was stacked to overflowing. This is far from the first time this has happened. It’s so frequent that I usually buy two, and often pick up some when I don’t even need any. Needless to say, the same was true of the cat food… and that was nothing new, either. I’ve seen the exact same thing happen year after year with other items, as well as these products, in other grocery chains. Now… in a truly “rational” market, why would a retail seller have the shelves filled with items that don’t sell and continually sell out of those that do without restocking more frequently? For two reasons. First, in most grocery chains, we’re not talking about the sale of product, but the “lease” of shelf space to the manufacturer, who clearly puts a higher premium on trying to sell a wider range of products than in maximizing profit from a best selling item. Second, customer product preferences often vary from store to store, or region to region, and many manufacturer clearly must believe that the cost of maximizing sales of a given consumer product on a store-by-store or even a regional basis is less profitable than adopting a standard shelf-stocking model.

This has been a problem for F&SF sales in the big-box stores, because, depending on locale, F&SF sales can be the largest fiction seller in a store… or the worst, and sometimes that depends on as little as whether the section manager, or even one employee, is enthusiastic about a given genre. But again, the primary consideration for some booksellers isn’t necessarily maximizing sales, but minimizing costs. Of course, if you don’t sell enough books, or anything else, minimizing costs merely prolongs the time before you have to declare bankruptcy — which has been one of the problems, in my opinion, facing Borders.

In terms of healthcare, similar questions arise. One question that many, many women raise is why so many healthcare plans stint on things like birth control and preventative care, while paying for erectile dysfunction drugs and expensive heart procedures for older white males? Is it because health plans are run largely by men with those priorities or because there’s a wealthy section of the health-care marketplace, albeit through generous insurance plans, willing and able to pay for those health services? Or are there other economic reasons?

The biggest reason for the housing and financial services meltdown lay in the fact that there was a far greater profit margin — short-term, to be sure — in selling houses — and mortgages — to borderline homeowners than in servicing honest and reliable homeowners.

All of this leads back to one question: Rational and profitable economic behavior for whom… and at what cost to everyone else?

For the past several years, I’ve been running across a mantra, or slogan, along the lines of “knowledge wants to be free.” This is complete bullshit. Knowledge isn’t an entity; it’s a compilation of data, information, insights, and the like. What the simplistic slogan means is that people want knowledge, information, and entertainment to be free, and many, if not most of them, will pirate songs, stories, e-books, and the like under the excuse that those who create it are already making exorbitant profits… or that it’s somehow their right to have such “knowledge” without paying for it. Now… we have a rationalization of this in book form.

A gentleman by the name of Chris Anderson recently released a book entitled Free, which I have not read, but which, according to interviews and commentary, which I have read, makes the point that the internet is the marketing model of the future, where content is free, because that’s what people want. I’ll agree with half of that. People always want good things for less than they cost, but a great deal of what’s free really isn’t. In fact, most of it isn’t. It’s paid for in other ways.

Take this blog. Whoever reads it gets the contents without charge, but it didn’t come for nothing. Tor paid for the design and pays for the servers on which it is hosted, as well as for the technical people who put on the artwork and book covers. I write the text, questions, schedules, and news, and no one pays me. The hope is, of course, that both Tor and I will be repaid by readers who go out and buy more books. But free, in the sense of costing nothing, it’s not.

Mr. Anderson also apparently believes that whatever appears on the web should be free and that whoever creates it should profit, as do some musical groups, apparently, by sales of tickets to live events and selling merchandise. This may be fine if one has other merchandise to sell, but if one’s livelihood is gained from people buying intellectual property, one has to limit what one provides for free. I can provide economic, political, and fiction-related insights here for free, because I have fictional “merchandise” to sell through online and bricks-and-mortar bookstores. Other writers, I have to admit, are far better at this than I am. But what of editorial writers? What will happen to that profession if news goes entirely on-line for “free”? Or musicians and songwriters? We’re already seeing a dwindling of truly professional smaller musical groups, the kinds that actually could grub out a living by touring small clubs across the nation. In fact, I recently read that some clubs are now actually charging the musicians, rather than paying them. Is this because something like 90% of the “recorded” music out there is either “free” or pirated? Or because the smaller groups can’t effectively use the “free” aspect of the internet to promote money-generating concerts that will repay the costs of providing “free” services? In a related aspect, my wife the singer and opera professor has noted that the cost of sheet music has skyrocketed because singers and students are buying far less because they can copy it easily… and consequently, the music for more and more songs and operas is out of print, because those songs and operas are less popular and sales won’t pay for even the printing costs.

In addition to these questions, there’s another one, and to me, it’s far more troubling. It’s the idea that worthwhile services — whether insights, music, or entertainment — should be marketed as “free,” because they’re not. They’re paid for indirectly and in other ways, either by advertisers, or subsidized by the sale or other goods and services, and often the user/consumer has no way of knowing who or what is behind anything. Some “free” providers are very up-front, as am I in offering this blog to interest readers in my books. But how many people know how many hundreds of millions of dollars Google has poured into YouTube? Or even who all the other providers of “free” stuff happen to be, and what their agendas might be?

To me, the disguised “free” content idea is just another way in which social institutions end up separating responsibility and accountability from making money. The concept of “free” is also intellectually dishonest… but… all that “stuff” is free, and that excuses everything… doesn’t it?

The fact that I was once an economic market research analyst still plagues me, because it’s become clear that I ask questions about writing that probably are better left unasked, at least in public forums. But then, when I was an economic analyst I also asked those questions, and they were part of the reason why I didn’t remain an employed analyst. As the most junior economist in the company, you don’t question the vice-president of marketing’s brand-new and very expensive product, no matter how bad an idea it is, or express doubt about fancy economic models, not if you want to keep your job, no matter how correct posterity proves you — because if you do, you won’t be working at most companies long enough to experience that posterity. I wasn’t the first economic type to learn this first hand, and I was far from the last. More than a few analysts and economists did in fact question the long-term effects of derivatives, and most of those who questioned were not exactly rewarded. A few were fortunate enough to be ignored; the rest fared worse.

With that as background, I’m going to observe that the vast majority of the very most commercially successful authors write “more of the same.” By this I mean, for example, that while the events in subsequent books may change, the feel and structure of each “new” book tends to mirror closely the feel of previous books. I’m not saying that all authors do this by any means, just that a large percentage of those who sell millions of copies of their books. This practice, from what I can tell, emerged first in the mystery/thriller field, followed closely in what I’d call the “high glamour” type novel by writers such as Danielle Steel, Judith Krantz, Sidney Sheldon, and others, but now it seems to be everywhere.

Some authors [or their agents] are so sensitive to the commercial aspects of the “more of the same” that the author uses a different pen name when writing something even slightly different, so that Nora Roberts also writes as J.D. Robb, and by noting that she is writing as J.D. Robb, she gets to cash in on her fame as Nora Roberts while announcing to readers that the J.D. Robb books are a different “more of the same.” In F&SF, Dave Wolverton became David Farland to write fantasy, and perhaps to also make clear that he wasn’t writing Star Wars books about Princess Leia, Jedi apprentices, and the like.

Who knows? Maybe I should have adopted a pen name, say Exton Land, for all my fantasies when I started writing them and saved the L.E. Modesitt, Jr., moniker for my science fiction. But then, which name would I have used for the “Ghosts of Columbia” books? And The Hammer of Darkness really isn’t either. By strict logic, then, to maximize commercial success, I shouldn’t have written any of those… or even The Lord-Protector’s Daughter, because it has a “different” feel.

And in some ways, I may be in the worst of both worlds, because the Recluce books have enough of a similar feel that I’m often criticized for being formulaic there, but I’m clearly not formulaic enough to replicate the success of Harry Potter or The Wheel of Time, etc.

At the same time, when I do something different, such as in Archform:Beauty or Haze, those readers who were expecting a faster book, such as Flash or The Parafaith War, feel that I haven’t met their expectations.

Then again, at least I’m not totally captive to “more of the same.” That would be almost as bad as having been successful as an industrial economist.

Over the past few years, there’s been a great deal of enthusiasm about the internet and how it’s likely to revolutionize the world, and almost all of the commentators express optimism.

The Economist recently reported a study on the effect of the internet, and the conclusion of the study was that the extent and range of contacts of internet users had become more limited, both geographically and culturally, with the growth of internet usage. This certainly parallels the growth of “niche” interest sites and the “Facebook” effect, where like gathers to like.

In effect, if these trends continue, and if the study is correct, and the authors caution that it is only preliminary and a proxy for a far wider and more detailed effort, the internet is creating a voluntary form of self-segregation. What’s rather amusing, in a macabre way, is that when Huxley, in Brave New World, postulated the segregation of society by ability and by the programming of inclination, the government was the evil overlord pressing this societal division upon the population as a means of indirect and effective repression and social control. Now it appears that a significant percentage of internet users are effectively doing the same thing enthusiastically and voluntarily.

A similar trend is also occurring as a result of the proliferation of satellite and cable television, where programming is broken into a multiplicity of “viewpoint-orientations,” to the point that viewers can even select the slant and orientation of the news they receive. This is having a growing impact as the numbers and percentages of Americans who read newspapers continue to decline.

At the same time, we’ve seen a growing polarization in the American political system, combined with a disturbing trend in the government away from political and practical compromise and toward increasingly strident ideological “purity,” along with the growth and vehemence of “public” and other interest groups.

Somehow, all this open communication doesn’t seem to be opening people’s viewpoints or their understanding of others, but rather allowing them greater choice in avoiding dealing with — and even attacking — the diversity in society and the world. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

One of the canards about genre fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, is that it’s not “real” or realistic. But what, exactly, is “real” or “reality?” Is the definition of “real” a setting or set of experiences that the reader would experience in the normal course of his or her life? Is a “real” protagonist one who is similar to most people?

Even in mainstream fiction, the most memorable characters are anything but normal. Let’s face it, there’s nothing dramatic about the life of an honest, hard-working machinist, accountant, salesman, or retail clerk who does a good job and has a solid family life… and, consequently, no one writes that kind of story, except perhaps most rarely as a dystopia. Most readers only want to read about these people when they’re faced with a great challenge or disaster and when they can surmount it, and by definition that makes the characters less “normal.” Readers generally don’t like to read about average people who fail; they do like to read about the failures of the “superior” people or the golden boys or girls. And just what percentage of readers actually live in multimillion dollar houses or penthouses or drive Bentleys or the equivalent? That kind of life-style is as removed from most readers, if not more so, than the backdrop of most fantasy or science fiction.

One of the great advantages of science fiction and fantasy is that it can explore what happens to more “average” or “normal” people when they’re faced with extraordinary circumstances. That’s certainly not all F&SF does, nor should it be, but what all too many of the American “literary” types fail to recognize is that a great amount of what is considered literary or mainstream verges on either the pedestrian or the English-speaking equivalent of watered-down “magic realism.”

After the issue of “realism” comes the question of how one defines “literary.” Compared to F&SF, exactly what is more “literary” about a psychiatrist who falls in love with his patient [Tender is the Night], dysfunctional Southern families [Faulkner], the idiocy of modern upscale New Yorkers [Bright Lights, Big City], or any number of other “mainstream” books?

When one asks the question of American literary theorists, and I have, the immediate response is something along the lines of, “It’s the writing.” I don’t have any problem with that answer. It’s a good answer. The problem with it is that they don’t apply the same criterion to F&SF. Rather than look at the genre — any genre, in fact — and pick out the outstanding examples, as they do with their own “genre,” and mainstream fiction is indeed a genre, they dismiss what they call “genre” writers as a whole because of the stereotypes, rather than examining and accepting the best of the genre. Yet they’d be outraged if someone applied the stereotype of “parochial” or “limited” to mainstream fiction.

Interestingly enough, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy — which awards the Nobel Prize for literature — just last year issued what amounted to that sort of dismissal of American mainstream fiction, essentially calling it parochial and narcissistically self-referential. Since then, I haven’t seen a word of response or refutation from American literary types, but perhaps that’s because all the refutations are just being circulated within the American “literary” community.

Maybe I’m just as parochial in looking at F&SF, but I see a considerable range of literary styles, themes, and approaches within the field, and intriguingly enough, I also see more and more “mainstream” writers “borrowing” [if not outright stealing] themes and approaches. That does tend to suggest that, even while some of the very same writers who have insisted that they don’t write SF are doing the borrowing, that some of the artificial “genre” barriers are weakening.

Of course, the remaining problem is that the book publishing and selling industry really loves those genre labels as a marketing tool… and so do some readers… but that’s another issue that I’ve addressed before and probably will again. In the meantime, we need to realize that F&SF is far from “an ineluctably minor genre,” as one too self-important, if noted, writer put it, but a vital component of literature [yes, literature]. Eventually, everyone else will, too, at least those who can actually think.

Last week, a reader made the comment that “Most literature professors would dismiss Mr. Modesitt’s novels with the same contempt he probably reserves for Harlequin romances.” While I can’t argue with his evaluation of “most literature professors,” even though I spent several years teaching literature at the undergraduate level, I can and do dispute the assessment of my views on romances, Harlequin or otherwise. Having survived the adolescence and maturing of six daughters, who now tend to prefer F&SF, I have seen more than a handful of romances around the house over the years. I’ve even read a few of them, and I’m no stranger to including romance in at least some of my books.

Because of my own contempt for those literary types, whether professors or writers, who sniff down their noses at all forms of “genre” fiction, I’m not about to do the same to romances… or thrillers, or mysteries. I do allow myself some disgust at splatter-punk, and the pornography of violence and/or human plumbing, otherwise known as ultra-graphic sex, but that doesn’t mean some of it might not be technically well-written. Snobbery and blanket exclusion under the guise of “excellence” or “literary value” is just another form of bias, usually on the part of people who haven’t bothered to look deeply into genres or forms.

While more than a few “sophisticates” and others dismiss romances as formulaic, that’s just a cop-out. Just about every novel ever published is formulaic. If novels weren’t, they’d be unreadable. The only “formulaic” question about a work of fiction is which formula it follows.

Romances happen to have some redeeming features, features often lacking in mainstream “literary” fiction, such as a belief in love and romance, and optimistic endings, and often retribution of some sort for evil. There’s often a theme of self-improvement as well. Are these “realistic” in our world today? No, unhappily, they’re probably not, but paraphrasing one of the grumpy old uncles in Secondhand Lions, there are some things, which may not even be true, that people are better off for believing in, such as love, honor, duty… And if romances get readers to believe in the value of such traits, they’re doing a lot more for the readers and society than “realistic” novels about the greed on Wall Street or the narcissism of the wealthy or the depths of violence and degradation among the drug and criminal cultures.

From a practical point of view as an author, I also can’t help but note that romances are the largest selling category of fiction by a wide-selling margin. Nothing else comes close. As in every other form of writing, there are exceedingly well written and even “literary quality” romances, and there are abysmal examples of fiction, but as Theodore Sturgeon said decades ago, “ninety percent of everything written is crap.” That includes F&SF, romances, and even, or especially, mainstream “literary” fiction.

So… no, I don’t dismiss romances. Far from it. And I just write my romances as part of my science fiction and fantasy.

Newspapers are dying. The drum-beat goes on. Some readers are worried; others think their time has already passed. Yet another major city is threatened with the loss of all newspapers. Another newspaper cuts staff and sections to the bone. Book reviews are cut; business news is shortened; advertising revenues are plummeting.

In the meantime, I keep reading my local newspaper and the major daily paper in the state, and I notice things. The local paper trumpets its awards, and it has won a great number. So why does scarcely a day go by without a misspelled headline? In fact, the lead headline last Saturday read: “Mountain of Dept Faces US.” If this is an award-winning local daily paper, I shudder to think about those that aren’t. And why are all the “national” and “state” stories a day behind the large state newspaper? Why do all the major local scandals never make the local paper, but appear in the state paper?

As for the major paper, it’s scarcely much better. Almost never does the weather section appear without errors. On Sunday, the weather temperatures predicted for the next two days — by town statewide — were listed as Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, the next two days were Monday and Tuesday. The lead headline the other day began “An State Issue…” Oh?

In both papers, syntax and grammar errors appear regularly, yet I can remember when it was rare to find these kinds of errors in newspapers, as opposed to being so common that any issue offers plenty of examples. These problems don’t even take into account the quality of reporting and the choice of stories. The lieutenant governor of the state — soon to become governor — appeared at a national meeting of governors and made comments that indicated that he knew nothing about the global warming issue — right after listening to [or at least sitting through] a speech on the issue by Dr. Stephen Chu, the U.S. Secretary of Energy… and the only story that appeared was days later in a political commentary story. One Utah author won a Newberry medal, and while it merited a TV news story, it never appeared in the paper, while a story about an author who wrote a novel about a platonic affair between a married Mormon woman and a British actor was a feature article. Unhappily, what I’ve seen here in Utah seems also to be happening in other locales, if perhaps not so egregiously.

Might a certain lack of quality have something to do with the decline of newpapers… or is it that the decline of advertising revenue means that newspapers are both understaffed and with fewer and fewer true professionals? Either way, it’s a sad situation.

My latest novel — Haze — has been out for about a month now, and sales are respectable, but not outstanding, and that’s not surprising, because Haze is a science fiction novel, and my fantasy novels have always sold better than my SF. Interestingly enough, though, in general, the major review sources, particularly those published outside the genre, have been far more favorable to my SF than to the fantasy.

Characterization is key to the success of most books, and one of the things I’ve observed over the years is the wide variation in reader and reviewer assessments of my ability to characterize — even when they’re talking about the same book;

For example, in looking at reviews of my novel Flash, I found the following from three different sources:

“…nonstop action, which, however, never sidelines good world-building and characterization…”

“…the relationships are wooden.”

“…tells of the close relationships between deVrai and his sister’s family…”

One of the reader reviews of Haze includes the following phrases… “agent/assassin has no depth… we learn Haze is honest/open…” Except that neither is the case. The protagonist, Keir Roget, reveals little emotionally in an overt sense, because he is aware that he lives in a world where every motion, every indication of feeling, is observed. There are many subtle indications of character and motivation, but few that are grand and overt, not if Roget wishes to survive. As for the planet Haze… this “open” society conceals a considerable amount, some of it rather enormous in scope, implication, and eventual consequences, through its apparent openness. In fact, what is “open,” both in Roget and in all the cultures depicted, is a misrepresentation because what is obvious overshadows what is not readily apparent.

From observations such as these, it seems fairly clear to me that people have a very different idea of what characterization is. My own belief is that any character reveals who he or she is through acts, words, and self-observations (which may be accurate or self-deluding, if not both). The issue of acts would seem to be self-evident, but it’s not, for several reasons. First, what a character does not do may be as revealing as what he does, but many readers key on acts, rather than on the omission of acts. Second, small acts may be more revealing than “large” acts. Third, the consistency of acts — or the lack thereof — also reveals character. The same three aspects also apply to what is said, or not said. In addition, character can be revealed by how others speak of and to them and how others interact with them… or fail to do so.

What this leads me to believe is that when I see a series of reviews, and different reviewers either praise or trash “characterization” in the same book, it’s often likely that those who are negative about a writer’s ability to characterize are either unwilling or unable to look at anything other than large acts and obvious statements. In addition, a significant percentage of such negative reader reviews tend to contain factual and technical errors, including citing the incorrect names of characters, suggesting a rapid and superficial reading. These factors suggest that obvious and broad-brush characterization is necessary to reach the widest possible audience. That doesn’t do much for nuance and subtlety, not that they’re exactly a priority for more than a few readers.

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, particularly about individual likes and dislikes. But not all opinions are of equal value. A doctor’s opinion about medical matters is far more likely to be correct than that of someone with a limited or no medical background. An environmental scientist’s views on global warming, by the same token, are far more likely to be correct than those of medical profession. The opinions of a professional singer with advanced studies and a professional career about music are more likely to be correct than that of someone with no formal musical training. Likewise, the collective and peer-reviewed views of the professionals in any given field are almost always going to be more accurate than those of non-professionals in those fields. This is one of the principal reasons why doctors, engineers, pilots, and many other professionals are licensed and regulated… because we don’t want unqualified people handling life and death measures, regardless of their personal convictions and opinions.

Now… we all have opinions, particularly in areas such as politics, music, theatre, art, the weather, as to what we like… and that’s fine. What’s not so fine is the ever-growing assumption that all opinions are of equal value, or that “likes” equate to validity or correctness. All opinions are not of equal value, and whether one likes something or believes it to be so does not translate automatically into excellence or validity. Add to that the assumption, particularly by “educated” individuals, that one’s opinions and beliefs outside one’s field or fields of expertise are equally valid or superior to the professionals in another field, and a society risks sewing the seeds of its own collapse, particularly in cases involving elected officials, such as Congress, who too often defer to popular opinion or their own unfounded biases.

And yet, no one seems to see it. The doctor who can see so clearly how the “everyone is wonderful” philosophy undermines medical excellence cheerfully and vociferously disputes years of research by thousands of climate scientists because he cannot believe what they report, yet he’d be outraged if those climate experts disputed key aspects of his medical practice. The engineer who understands the importance of accuracy and perfection in structure would be furious if a group of professional musicians pointed out non-existent weaknesses in his engineering, but sees nothing wrong with making blatant and incorrect assessments about professional musicians and singers. And of course, all the readers who make the thousands and thousands of misguided and incorrect statements about books — largely because they don’t like what the author did, rather than because the book was technically bad [not that there aren’t many, many, technically bad books, but those aren’t generally the ones these “reader reviewers” pan] — would be outraged if people made the same petty comments about their work.

The problem is that, in a society that has become almost totally consumer-oriented, such opinions guide politics and public policy. Education is no longer based on what works, but upon making students and parents feel good and upon the widely held opinion that “anyone can be anything he or she wants to be” [which is almost never true, rhetoric to the contrary]. Government has become more and more widely based on the opinion that someone else should pay for the programs, despite years of recommendations by economists and other professionals that a nation cannot continue to expand government programs without increasing taxation or cutting other programs. Even within fields such as the investment banking and securities business, executives with no expertise in complex financial systems, such as derivatives, thought they were experts and made decisions based on the popularity of short-term profits… leading to the resulting disaster.

Entertainment has become based more and more on strict popularity — what the majority wants — and factors such as the skill or performers, the excellence of scripts or music, have almost entirely vanished, although everyone cites excellence as the basis for their views, and that “excellence” is based on what they like, usually superficial appearance and/or crudity, and seldom are such likes based on an in-depth and studied expertise in the field. The same is true in athletics. Never in our history have there ever been so many Monday morning quarterbacks, and almost none of them have any experience on the professional level in the sports they criticize.

Everyone’s an expert, and fewer and fewer Americans are listening to those who truly are the experts — and yet they wonder why the problems are multiplying?

A while ago, I was talking to my editor, and I mentioned a book that he had edited for a new author — one for which I’d offered a blurb. My editor sighed, and informed me that he wouldn’t be able to publish another book by the writer, although the first book had received a considerable number of favorable comments and reviews, because it hadn’t sold well enough for the publisher to risk a second book. At present, this is scarcely news to any author in the field, because the same thing is happening all over publishing. Sales of a majority of established published authors are down, and while they’re not down enough to hurt the really big names, the decline tends to affect newer and less established authors much more. And it makes sense, unfortunately.

In a time when readers, along with everyone else, are watching their purchases more carefully, fewer are going to risk their entertainment dollars on an author they don’t know, unless someone they know personally and trust recommends that author. But… with new authors very few, if any, readers know the author — unless the publishing house pours a ton of money into publicity, and that is happening less and less.

Now, in this time of economic downturn, this is relatively self-evident. What isn’t quite so evident is that it’s merely the continuation of an on-going trend. At a time when blockbuster sales — such as the Twilight books, the Wheel of Time, Nora Roberts, etc. — are dwarfing best-seller numbers of previous decades, the sales numbers of mid-list and low best-selling authors at major publishing houses tend to be flattening, if not declining, especially mass-market sales, although there are some exceptions. These exceptions are always cited as contrary examples, of course, rather than the anomalies that they are.

The reaction of many authors is to aim for that “popular” audience, to the point that F&SF aficionados can cite example after example of imitation, subtle or blatant, and that the media and series tie-in section of the F&SF section at many chain stories is almost as large as the “regular” section.

One reaction in the F&SF field has been the growth of small presses, some of which stretch the definition of “small,” but these presses are limited in what they can do, although they often publish novels of high quality. This has had another off-shoot, as well, in that it appears a number of “professional” and “semi-professional” F&SF reviewers tend to concentrate on such works, almost as if assuming that most of what is published by a large publisher is “merely commercial,” and seldom worthy of comment.

Writers who have the ability to write excellent books are placed in an unenviable position, because books which tend to be technically outstanding usually have lower sales. As one of the responders to this blog has pointed out, outstanding books also get fewer and “less favorable” reader reviews, and those reduce sales. Since most professionals do write in hopes of making a living, there is a not-so-subtle and continuing pressure to “write popular,” even if an editor never says a thing to a writer.

More than a few readers have pointed out that these trends could very well lead to more self-publishing, more web publishing, and more electronic alternatives to getting stories and novels out. It probably will, but it won’t solve the “popularity” problem, because for those stories and novels to reach more readers requires word about them to reach readers, and successful “word-passing” on the web requires the support of widely-read and popular websites. Thus… the web-publishing option merely transports the popularity problem from one form of publishing to another — and does so without nearly the same degree of quality control as is exercised by the old-line print publishing business. This shift also results, in most cases, to a reduction in the income of writers, along with the problem that readers are left having to spend far more time sifting through web and other less conventional forums to find books they like that fall outside “popular” parameters. Again… there are exceptions, such as Baen’s Universe magazine, but they’re few indeed.

In the end, it all boils down to the fact that readers, as a whole, get what they’re willing to pay for, and if most readers flock to the “popular,” before long, that will represent most of what’s available — and that will be the case whether the source is “conventional” publishing or the web.

The other day I read an article in a well-known economic publication about how “talking websites” could empower the illiterate. I’m doubtless in a small minority, but I’ve been concerned for a long time about all this emphasis on “empowerment.”

I do tend to worry about universal suffrage when something like a third of the American electorate doesn’t even know who’s president — but then, again, that percentage has varied between 25% and 35% for at least 20 years, and we haven’t had any more political catastrophes during this period than any other, although those who disparage the previous president tend to forget that we had a few problems with a man named Nixon, and moral and upright as he was personally, a fellow by the name of Carter wasn’t exactly the most effective of chief executives… and even when suffrage wasn’t even close to universal, we managed to elect Warren Harding.

But… as a writer and as an individual who believes in both the written and the spoken word, I have to ask whether we want to grant more power to those who cannot master, even if through no fault of their own, half of whatever language their culture uses to bind that part of civilization together. Writing changes culture, and, based on history, it does so for the better. Exactly why, at a time when written skills are declining, when a smaller and smaller percentage of so-called educated individuals have actually mastered the written word [according to a study released by the Department of Education three years ago, almost 40% of individuals with advanced college degrees do not have the analytical skills to explain the arguments in a standard newspaper article], why do we want to grant more power to those who cannot write and write at all?

We’re already substituting test results for analytical skills in far too many school districts across the country. Newspapers are failing left and right because most people under thirty don’t have either the inclination or the ability to read more than a sentence at a time, let alone a paragraph, and before long those of us who can and would like some detail in our news will be relegated to perusing a relative handful of printed or subscription online sources, because, so far as I can determine, there’s less and less of a market for real news… just for sensationalism or for targeted “in-depth” rationalizations of what various groups of people already believe.

But then again, maybe we should expand the internet and website system so that no one has to master reading and writing — and add an amendment to the Constitution that no one can run for public office without being able to explain in detail and on the spot and in writing what the duties of that office are and why he or she would be qualified to hold that post. We could even return to handwritten paper ballots at the same time.

All you’d have to do to be politically empowered would be able to read, write, and think. Would that be so bad?

All too many years ago, when my brother and I were growing up, my parents, and even my grandmother, piled on the aphoristic practical platitudes, such as… “If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.” “A penny saved is a penny earned.” “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” “A stitch in time saves nine.” “An honest day’s work…” With those platitudes came a no-nonsense attitude. My father insisted that we do the best of which we were capable — in everything from academics to athletics to what he termed “the necessities of life,” matters such as lawn and tree and mechanical maintenance, simple woodworking, basic electrical repairs, house painting… and the need to approach everything in a practical, realistic, and — most important — an honest way. For him, dreams were possible, but only if one prepared and worked hard and long to achieve them. One didn’t achieve success by merely wishing or saying that it would happen. Nor by cutting corners, either practically or ethically. In addition, we were not allowed to be bored. If any word even hinting at boredom even came up, various tasks were immediately assigned, monitored, and the results were inspected. At that time, this approach to raising children was not in the slightest unusual. It was close to the norm, and it led to a generally realistic outlook on life.

So… what happened?

Today, we’re weathering a recession created largely by incredibly unrealistic assessments of how housing and securities prices would perform over time. Never in the history of mankind have the values of real estate and structures continually appreciated upward for more than a few years, if that. So why did so many people buy into the unreality the values would continue upward at high rates indefinitely? Stock and security prices have fluctuated widely over time for as long as there have been such financial instruments. Yet some of the supposedly brightest and best minds in finance not only bought into the idea of continual rising securities’ prices, but they developed instruments that magnified through leverage both gains and losses — and never considered what would happen when the inevitable transpired. And, worse yet, for this lack of competence and foresight, hundreds of them were granted million dollar plus bonuses.

The same unreality permeates state and local politics. Through legislation and referenda, the federal and state governments promise more and more in the way of programs and benefits while the electorate demands — and largely gets — tax levels that are in no way able to pay for the programs people insist are their rights. California, to no one’s surprise, leads the way, and political experts across the spectrum [except, of course, from the far, far right, who are even more unrealistic] have declared the state essentially ungovernable — with a deficit approaching more than $50 billion and a legislature unable and unwilling to act because to do so would indicate to voters just how unrealistic they’ve been. Everyone wants to tax everyone else, but no one wants to pay more taxes, and no one wants his or her program cut or eliminated. And the simple, and unrealistic, answer is to tax the “rich” and to stop waste and fraud, never mind the fact that such a simplistic solution won’t raise enough revenue without grinding the economy to a total halt.

The polar ice caps are dwindling. Meltwater from the Greenland ice cover is at an all-time high and increasing annually. Ice sheets are melting and breaking off the Antarctic icecap in chunks of hundreds of square miles. Most of the glaciers in the Alps have either disappeared or melted back to a fraction of their previous size. The legendary snows of Kilimanjaro have vanished. Over the centuries, goats and overgrazing have turned the Sahara from an arid grassland into a true and total desert. The combination of disease, pollution, and warmer seawater has devastated the world’s coral reefs. Increasing temperatures have resulted in literal transformation of the mountain forests of the southwestern United States into high desert. Cattle and grazing in the previous century destroyed most of the grasslands in the Great Plains all the way from the Dakotas to Texas, changing the climate so much that we’ve experienced one Dust Bowl and are continually fighting against another, while the once massive Ogallala Aquifer is pumped dry. There are huge dead zones in the Caribbean, and areas in the Pacific hundreds of miles across where human floating trash clogs the waters. In less than two centuries, human beings have used up 30%-50% of all the oil created over hundreds of millions of years and raised carbon dioxide and methane levels to heights not seen in hundreds of millions of years, if ever. And yet… tens of millions of Americans, among them highly educated individuals, persist in the illusion that there is no global warming and that human activity has no significant impact upon the planet.

This unreality has infused the younger generation, in particular. Everywhere is the idea that any student, if she or she wishes, can do anything he or she wishes, and that each of them is “wonderful.” This unreality is boosted by: (1) the plethora of television “reality” shows that suggest that success has little to do with anything but ambition, desire, and immorality; (2) educational institutions that punish those teachers who actually assess student performance realistically and who insist on results; (3) the increasing reliance on tests that measure assorted facts and basic intelligence, but not the ability to think and learn; and (4) greater and greater reliance on pleasing parents and students than upon imparting skills and the ability to think. On top of these factors has come the change of education from a social good to a consumer good, where the consumer demands a specific product, and in the case of education, with the advent of student evaluations, eighteen year old students are telling seasoned and experienced professionals what they — the students — need to know when those students, and often their parents, almost always have no knowledge of the field. This is reality?

Now… I’ve seen studies that show the current “collegiate” generation is more “results-oriented,” but the problem is that getting results is difficult, if not impossible, when students have inadequate skills and unrealistic ideas about their own capabilities and about the amount of work it requires to accomplish anything of worth.

Distorting an old aphorism, Rome was not built by wishes and mouse-clicks…

… but it, too, fell when its people lost sight of reality and basic values.

For the past several months, some of the technicians dealing with my website have been having difficulty in updating the graphics on the rotating “carousel.” You may note that the problem has finally been addressed. I kept asking why there was such difficulty… and finally got an answer — a very simple answer, and yet a chilling one. The previous tech, who had worked with the web-designer, had departed for greener pastures… and had left no written documentation. If there happened to be any electronic documentation, no one could find it, and the techs who were trying to update the graphics were, as are many today, overworked and didn’t have the time to reverse engineer the system until recently.

This particular phenomenon isn’t limited to my website. The other day I was trying to install a piece of software for my wife and discovered a rather interesting situation. The directions were on-line. They weren’t simple. They wouldn’t print out. There was no way to keep a window with the directions and install the software. In the end I had to write them out by hand. Then there are the companies who have “solutions” to problems on-line, but seem to forget that those solutions are useless if you have problems with their website, even as you wait in a telephone queue for “technical assistance.”

These are all symptoms of a society that seems to think that electronic storage is permanent and that, because it’s electronic, anyone can access it and figure it out. Neither assumption, of course, is true, widespread as both appear to be.

We have books and records dating back thousands and thousands of years, evidence from other cultures and civilizations, written insights into what they did and how they acted. If we follow the trend — and go “paperless” as all the businesses urge us — what insights will we leave? We can’t even read computer records of thirty years ago.

This is even truer on a personal letter. My father kept letters he thought were memorable, and they’re still available, yellowed paper and all. Somehow, I don’t see much in the way of memorable emails being saved (if there are even such)… and there’s another factor involved as well. Most letter-writers, and possibly most writers whose works are recorded in print form, tend to write more accurately and clearly, almost as if they understood that what they wrote might be scrutinized more than once.

In my mind, all this leads to a number of questions:

Do disposable communications too often equate to disposable thoughts and insights?

Do impermanent and easily changed records lead to greater carelessness? Or greater dishonesty and fraud?

What exactly are we giving up for the sake of going electronic and paperless?

Science fiction has postulated the rise and fall of many civilizations, and the causes of those falls are many: warfare, famine, ecological disaster, energy shortages, internal collapse from overindulgence, conquest, pestilence, plague… and doubtless many others.The one cause I’ve not seen explored much is the collapse of infrastructure, and yet I suspect it’s the most likely reason for the failure and fall of a high-tech civilization. When most people talk about infrastructure, they think of highways and bridges, but infrastructure consists of far more than that.

The more people that live in an area and the greater the population concentration, the greater the infrastructure requirements, even in low-tech societies. In higher-tech societies, the physical infrastructure requirements pyramid. A clean and reliable water system, sewage and waste disposal systems, paved streets, roads, and bridges, dependable electric power and other domestic and commercial utilities are just the beginning. We also need redundant communications links, banking and financial systems, not to mention a system for maintaining law and order and adjudicating disputes.

The more infrastructure a society requires, the more each part of that structure has the potential for conflicting with the requirements of a another part, and the more of a society’s resources and effort that is required to keep all the parts of the infrastructure in good repair and operating properly. Also, the more susceptible each section is to damage and failure. For example, in the United States, the electric power grid is being stressed toward its limits, and electric power outages are already increasing. More powerful transmission lines and more power sources increase the vulnerability of the entire system to a host of problems, from solar storms to extreme weather, to simple wear and tear. Repairs or damage to one system can disable other systems, as when a backhoe used to excavate to repair a water line breaks a fiberoptic cable, or when a broken water main floods a subway tunnel, or…

The other significant problem with infrastructure is those aspects dealing with human interaction require acceptance and trust. Even the income taxation system in the United States is based largely on trust and the fact that the majority of Americans and/or their employers largely voluntarily submit their tax payments to maintain government. Likewise, most people obey the law without being forced to do so at gunpoint. Most civil and personal disputes are settled without recourse to physical force. And this is the norm in most countries. It is, however, not universal. No such trust and agreement exists in Somalia… or in other parts of Africa, nor in much of Afghanistan… and we’ve all seen the results. We’ve also seen the results in the financial sector in the United States, where greedy financiers betrayed the trust of investors on a massive scale.

We all know that physical infrastructure fails when it is not maintained, as in the case of collapsing bridges and deteriorating highways, but few politicians or other leaders consider the need to maintain the underlying trust that supports our society’s human infrastructure.

Right now… we need to shore up both aspects of infrastructure, or the science fiction that hasn’t explored infrastructure might end up being history.