Asimov said that every addition to the sum total of rationality is precious, and that we can’t turn our back on technology or people

2016 was not the sentient manifestation of the time-space continuum out to kill us all. If it were, there are definitely other years in history, like the world wars, that would contest it for the title of “worst year ever.”

That said, it was a year that brought a lot of awful firsts, and made clear just how many negative trends we are facing across a wide range of issues, not just in tech. But it’s clear that the “disruption” and “democratisation” technology was supposed to bring about are happening very unevenly, and not been a boon to many affected by them.

It’s not a pleasing thought. But it’s important to face the reality that a change in the calendar does not prove or disprove one year will be summed up as the #worst or #best 365 (or 366) days in recorded human history.

It’s important also to think forward, think of what’s absurd, too, because what’s fiction now could be reality tomorrow. In the US, today is National Science Fiction Day, which of course coincides with the birthday of Isaac Asimov, the prolific and iconic author about whom it is said that when he was afflicted with writer’s block, it was the worst ten minutes of his life.

Also Read: Time travel: Looking back at 10 ‘stuff of science fiction’ stories in 2016

He also said, most presciently in his profession, that, “Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.”

The far off year of 2002 imagined in his childhood is, for the internet, ancient history, after all.

More and more companies are eyeing automation, whether it’s for driving, journalism, burger flipping, or accounting. Where do the people who get replaced by self-service kiosks, bots, and AIs look for work? Where are the people who’ve already been displaced from relatively secure manufacturing jobs looking? As he wrote in 1950, in the work I, Robot, “The machine is only a tool after all, which can help humanity progress faster by taking some of the burdens of calculations and interpretations off its back.” Meanwhile, “The task of the human brain remains what it has always been; that of discovering new data to be analysed, and of devising new concepts to be tested.”

We are, in fact, seeing some of that reliable, well-paying work becoming available again, as well as a pushback against just willy-nilly replacing people with droids. But even more than this, is the desire to cut costs and remove the human element as much as possible. These are not questions that have really been answered, and efforts at finding the answers are pretty piecemeal and not likely to keep pace with changes once it does become possible to go full droid.

Also Read: We are in the ‘Black Mirror’, living in a world where social media is taking us on a nosedive

We’ve also seen how mass communications is drowning itself. “Fake news” isn’t a new phenomenon, by any means, but the way we consume media has changed, and now it’s possible, with far greater ease, to create your own bubble universe. But, you can’t really force people to be “ethical” news consumers because if it’s someone’s choice to be lied to, that’s their choice, to be lied to. (Or as Asimov remarked in 1980, the choice we make that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”)

How do you confront this without making the situation worse? A question that needs to be asked whenever creating some mechanism of surveillance or enforcement is if you feel secure handing it over to someone you personally despise yet realistically has a chance of being in charge of it.

Is the system secure enough you aren’t worried they’ll abuse it? And if not, is that an acceptable trade-off? Given that we’re seeing more of these attacks – less effective, but more successful, and not just in terms of violence – that trade-off is going to be coming up a lot. But as Multivac, the supercomputer that becomes like a god (Asimov was an atheist) in Asimov’s 1956 short story “The Last Question,” says, “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

Technology has in fact caught up with a lot of older ideas, ones that could never be truly realised at time, but were imagined for the future. “This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking,” to quote Asimov once more. What seems like a science fiction concept of basing credit ratings on your weight loss regimen, number of close friends online, and spelling skills when commenting on Facebook isn’t science fiction any longer. It will be possible to run algorithms to try and “predict” human behaviour off of social media interactions, which, again is not exactly new given that advertising has sought to do so for ages – but the difference is that it’s become possible to be so specific without people needing (or wanting?) to give consent to take their data.

Also Read: Smart floating dome, zombie detector emerge winners at Sci-Fi Hardware Hackathon 2016

Just having data is basically consent now – the only real way to opt out is to not exist.

The point is that these issues aren’t going away in 2017. They’ll be even more sharpened because, if nothing else, the world’s most powerful and prosperous country, the US, is getting a new leader. So expecting that 2017 will somehow be “better” than 2016 is really just absurd. There are no such guarantees, and 2016’s baggage wasn’t somehow lost in transit. Remember that Asimov, a pessimist, humorist, and futurist, told a New Jersey audience in 1974, “We are in a situation where we cannot go back. We cannot abandon technology.”

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The article This National Science Fiction Day, remember Isaac Asimov’s words as 2017 begins first appeared in Geektime.

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