Letter Never Sent

Fantasy vs. Science-fiction

I’m going to try something different now to help try to post more often. Namely, not worry so much about the result and just try to exorcise the ideas as they come. Without further ado…

I was thinking about how I typically enjoy science-fiction novels more than fantasy and I wondered why this was. Then it occurred to me that fantasy is typically regressive and nostalgic. It represents a longing for the child’s world and an escape from reality. Harry Potter is a good example of this, as is the Lord of the Rings. I would even say that Star Wars is a fantasy film, rather than a science-fiction film. The technology in Star Wars is rarely focused on or explained (compared to Star Trek, which does attempt to explain), instead the story is consumed with the magical metaphysics of the Force. So, Star Wars is a space fantasy. Complete with wizards (Obi Wan) and dark lords.

Fantasy is about a small, simple, magical world. This is the world of the child, but also the world of the past. Looking back things become simple and romanticized. The concept of the Golden Age is as old as we are.

Fantasy worlds operate as cartoonish backdrops for personal dramas and interpersonal narratives. There is often little explanation of how things work or any real consciousness of the larger objective reality. There is a narrowness of perspective that often dictates a flatness and reliance on cliche that relegates fantasy narratives to the ghetto of genre fiction. Fantasy narratives like The Lord of the Rings occasionally break out and do something impressive, but only by taking on greater reality and connection to the real world. Much of LoTR is inspired directly by Anglo-Saxon and Germanic history and much of its resonance is due to its connection to this world, also referred to as “Middle Earth” in Norse myth.

Science-fiction is about the future from the perspective of the present. It is not really about the future itself. This is why science-fiction often ages badly. Science-fiction seeks to enlarge the compass of the known. It is speculative. And, in speculating it is often laughably wrong. But, it also points the way and suggests possibilities for how the present could develop along its current course. Science-fiction is prophetic where fantasy is sentimental. Science-fiction, since it encourages a more broad perspective, is more creative and interesting. Fantasy is referential and narrow and as soon as it becomes unmoored from cliche it ceases to be fantasy and becomes science-fiction or speculative fiction.

Of course, many science-fiction narratives are so narrow as to resemble fantasy. Just replace the tableau of swords, elves, and magic with lasers, aliens, and advanced inexplicable science and you have the same uninteresting garbage.

Software / Internet — Comments Off
21
Aug 09

Mobile App Pricing

I read an article today about Microsoft supporting a premium app model for its own version of the iPhone app store. Basically, they want to avoid a race to the bottom where there is so much competition for users that app developers price their products at very low prices to capture sales. The problem, which is not a problem at all for consumers, is that this encourages everyone else to lower their prices as well. Since you do not want to be the only $10 app when everyone else is $1.

Trying to just introduce something anti-competitive like arbitrary price controls will not work, for a few reasons.

For one, the cost of distribution is zero. The cost for entering the application market is effectively zero. You can market your application at any price you wish. So, if you cannot demonstrate effective value for your price, that is your responsibility. No consumer owes you a certain price, especially with relation to digital goods for which there is no necessary ongoing cost following development.

Continue reading →

Software / Internet / Technology — 7 comments
27
Apr 09

Amazon Consolidates Position in eBooks with Stanza Purchase

I’m a big fan in general of ebooks as a concept and to a lesser degree a fan of Amazon and its Kindle ebook reader. I trust Amazon to deliver a good user experience, but I think open standards and a diverse marketplace are the best way to move forward. With that said, I follow the ebook business with interest as it such a newly vital market. We can credit Amazon and the Kindle with much of the recent vitality.

With the acquisition of Lexcycle, the producer of the iPhone ebook app Stanza, Amazon is consolidating its lead in ebooks. They are also signaling that it’s less about the device you use to read ebooks and more about distribution. Distribution is where the real profits lie. People buy a Kindle once, but they may purchase thousands of dollars worth of ebooks and e-periodicalsover their lifespan as a consumer. This is where Amazon wants to be. Not in making hardware, but in selling digital goods and controlling a large portion of the marketplace. The only reason Amazon really needed the Kindle was to create the marketplace. Once people are accustomed to buying their ebooks from Amazon, the device becomes irrelevant.

Continue reading →

General — Comments Off
11
Mar 09

Notes on Jung and Persona

He carefully recorded his dreams, fantasies, and visions, and drew, painted, and sculpted them as well. He found that his experiences tended to form themselves into persons, beginning with a wise old man and his companion, a little girl. The wise old man evolved, over a number of dreams, into a sort of spiritual guru. The little girl became “anima,” the feminine soul, who served as his main medium of communication with the deeper aspects of his unconscious. #

Good description of “anima”.

The anima and animus, in Carl Jung’s school of analytical psychology, are the unconscious or true inner self of an individual, as opposed to the persona or outer aspect of the personality. In the unconscious of the male, it finds expression as a feminine inner personality: anima; equivalently, in the unconscious of the female, it is expressed as a masculine inner personality: animus. #

Personal — 5 comments
02
Feb 09

Try to see the beauty in things

It is easy to look at a situation and see the bad. Every situation could be looked at in a negative light. But, what does this attitude do but rob us of our initiative and hope? Focusing on the bad will stop you from moving forward. It is far better to accept the bad as it arrives, feel it and process it and then finally put it aside. Any other attitude goes against reality and is impractical. If you want good things in your life you will learn to let things go when it is time. Why do we try to hold on sometimes to the way things are not? It is an interesting question. Fear of the unknown? Avoidance of suffering?

General — 5 comments
01
Oct 08

The Promise of Television

Having spent so much time lately with my Dad as he recuperates, I’ve had the opportunity to watch hours of programming on Encore Westerns. They play mostly obscure westerns and western themed television shows from the 50’s and 60’s like Maverick, Bat Masterson, Big Valley, and The Rifleman.

It’s hard to remember a time when if you didn’t catch a show when it came on TV, you just totally missed it. My Dad says The Rifleman would come on once a month along with several other programs.

Watching all these shows you quickly realize that the TV western is a dead genre. Maybe like good old country music, it represents a longing for simpler times and the belief in certain values. The Rifleman is full of moral lessons: what it means to be a man, responsible for others and standing up for what’s right; the importance of hard work and honesty. Each episode Lucas McCain never misses a chance to instruct his son Mark on how to do the right thing. Watching a show like The Rifleman, you realize that popular media has the amazing ability to promote certain values through story. It just doesn’t seem to anymore. Can you think of any recent music, film, or television show which tries to promote certain values beyond the purely political? In what venue do we now consider larger moral questions?

Featured / History — Comments Off
29
Aug 08

The portrait of a doomed man.

Another argument for casting your net widely is that you learn about new and fascinating things that rarely pop up in daily conversation, especially in our cloistered workaday lives. Today by way of a diary entry by Samuel Pepys, the ‘Eikon Basilike’ (full text), the “Royal Portrait”, a purported autobiography by King Charles I published after his regicide following the English Civil War.

I am not so old, as to be weary of life; nor (I hope) so bad, as to be either afraid to die, or ashamed to live: true, I am so afflicted, as might make Me sometime even desire to die; if I did not consider, That it is the greatest glory of a Christians life to die daily, in conquering by a lively faith, and patient hopes of a better life, those partiall and quotidian deaths, which kill us (as it were) by piece-meales, and make us overlive our owne fates; while We are deprived of health, honour, liberty, power, credit, safety, or estate; and those other comforts of dearest relations, which are as the life of our lives.

Though, as a KING, I think My self to live in nothing temporall so much, as in the love and goodwill of My People; for which, as I have suffered many deaths, so I hope I am not in that point as yet wholly dead: notwithstanding, My Enemies have used all the poyson of falsity and violence of hostility to destroy, first the love and Loyalty, which is in My Subjects; and then all that content of life in Me, which from these I chiefly enjoyed.

Indeed, they have left Me but little of life, and only the husk and shell (as it were) which their further malice and cruelty can take from Me; having bereaved Me of all those worldly comforts, for which life it self seems desirable to men.

General — 3 comments
29
Aug 08

The Obama Speech

Tonight’s speech by Barack Obama at the DNC was perfect. If Obama can be the president backing up that speech, then there is room to hope for good things to happen in the next 4 years. When Pat Buchanan is praising your oratory (as he’s doing now on MSNBC), you know you’re doing something right. Can’t wait to see McLaughlin Group this Sunday.

Did you see it? What do you think?

Religion/philosophy — 4 comments
28
Aug 08

A Digital Soul

Transhumanism has become a well-flogged topic of conversation with all the discussion of the Singularity. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to transcend biology and mortality, but I do know that we would benefit from the wisdom of our greatest minds if we could preserve them. Of course, we already do this, in the sense that our thinkers and innovators left behind their words and discoveries to guide us. From Plato to Leonardo da Vinci to Isaac Newton, we are the beneficiaries of a deep wealth of human knowledge and experience. Our entire civilization, even if we take it for granted, is the cumulative result of every human contribution. Our culture is like an immortal organism, while our individual lives are its constituent cells.

In A Martian Time-Slip, robotic teachers based on important cultural figures lead classes. Although this was presented in a typically unsettling Philip K. Dick fashion, it is an interesting idea. If you could emulate the personality and knowledge of our best minds, wouldn’t it have some benefit? In the Star Trek universe, characters routinely consult with historical figures through the holodeck. Provided we had the technical ability to present a human simulation, how would you create a model of a distinct personality? What would I have to know about you to create a simulation that would reasonably behave as you would in any given situation or circumstance?

the old stuff