Convergence Problems

"Wole is a fantastic rising voice from the African continent, and a fabulously wonderful person as well, having had the luck to interact with him a little. He’s an engineer. SFF, in its early forms, was really scientists writing about the technologies that they were working on, or had seen coming because of where they were in their industry. So hard science is one of the older forms of modern sci fi – some people believe that it’s not really SFF unless it’s hard science, but I would say the definition of science needs looking at, because hard science readers tend to pretend the only thing that’s a science is anything that involves technology. Other things are sciences as well – biology, palaeontology, archaeology – and the study of who we are as humanity is always part of the sciences. Talabi is that rare writer who understands people, and who wants to talk about the intersection of technology and people in a fast-moving world. At the same time he’s also talking about his ancestors, and writing as somebody who has come from a continent that can trace thousands and thousands of years of history and godhood and religion and tribal interaction; so it’s this wonderful, interesting mix in his work, exploring tradition and progress, and how that will look going forward. How do you reconcile the reverence of your past and your ancestors with progress, in a way that respects all that has come before, and all that we’ve been taught about respecting the world around you? This particular story highlights something that I find very interesting, and that has been a real problem for the ‘Global South’, as we are now called. Capitalism assumes that the best possible form of anything is efficiency and productivity. And humanity is not about productivity and efficiency! We weren’t put here to be productive elements for an employer, and yet we have somehow turned a method of economic distribution into not only our political system, but our entire social foundation. Tthere are tremendous negatives coming out of that, which we’re trying to grapple with. We’ve known this for a while, but the positives of trade and expansion have distracted us for a very long time; and now you’ve gotten to a point where, inevitably, you begin to have blowback. With this story, you have someone who – and I think this is something people can deeply relate to in today’s world – is just trying to keep their job. You’re just trying to please the faces you don’t see when you work for global conglomerates. So you don’t often see your bosses, and you’re just trying to make sure that your performance meets these parameters they put in place without ever considering your humanity. The story, which is a very short one, says: what do you do if your survival is tied to pleasing these people – and they say to you, “Will you do this thing, this untested brand new thing? You will have pleased us, and you will have upped your game”… and you’re left with this unspoken ‘or else’. It’s a choice a lot of people are having to make nowadays. Do I continue to work for people using technology that I can see is harmful, not only to myself, but to everything around me that I value? Exactly. That’s what I love most about the story: it points out that these things are always sold to us as an improvement, but if the employee is already performing above expectations, why do they need to improve anything? Why does every moment of their life have to become a referendum on their productivity? It’s a dehumanization that people accept nowadays – it’s just what we have to do to move forward. I have done it, many people have done it. We’ve all had that great review coming, and heard the ‘but’ and been anxious about it – “What can I do to fix this?” Then in later years, when you look back, you say to yourself, “Why was I so desperate for that extra plus next to the A? What did that change, really? I wasn’t getting a raise out of it; I wasn’t happier; I couldn’t physically work more. So what exactly was I fretting over?” But that, of course, comes with time and distance."