Alternate History and New Media

Study of Alternate History-themed Speculative Fiction Valuable to Practice of New Media

New Media is about exploring possibilities, as a category under the breadth of science and technology, and is far from a philosophical field such as Humanities and Social Sciences, where the factor of ‘chance’ or ‘luck’ could be reasons to change the phase of the humanity. Alternative histories could be defined as literary or fictional pasts where history, and in our case the future pattern of technological development, is arbitrarily changed. Hence, the idea of “What if” is substantially significant to the studies of New Media practices, since histories define the course of the future events and that makes the ‘digital future’ dependent on the past inventions and/or decisions; today is tomorrow’s promised yesterday.  The technological growth taking place in an era is highly dependent and wrapped up with the politics and social structure of the time and place, such as the policies of the government at the time in particular nations as well as social and religious paradigms. The genre of science fiction is mostly devoted to the speculative fiction of either the envisaged future or the past alternate history-themed speculative fiction, which is vitally valuable to the practices of new media, for it opens the possibilities of the surreal and imaginative world set free from the clutches of the everyday local practicalities, which might make it harder for the mind to delve into abstraction.

In the Cyberpunk Meets Charles Babbage: "The Difference Engine" as Alternative Victorian History Sussman (1994) states that “Alternative histories occupies a cusp between contemporary notions of the constructed nature of history and the demands of the historicity. The narrative of the past is altered, but in distinction to fantasy or Well’s later alien invasion or time-travel plots, events within alternative history remain in the realm of the historically possible, potential, unrealized (p. 1-2).” This is vital to understand that the aberrant courses of events in the past could have led to a different present, which provides an opportunity for the contemporary new media practitioners to consider peculiar routes of creating or solving ‘things;’ providing food for the unleashed imagination. Sussman (1994) claims, “The primary rhetorical effect of alternative history lies in the shock of defamiliarization” (p. 5) which is vital to understand that technology should not be taken ‘for granted’. Furthermore, the author uses a concise and expressive phrase to illustrate the importance of studying alternative histories: “One major effect of alternative history is to dramatize that what we accept as inevitable is only contingent, one among an infinite number of possibilities, of forking paths;" presuming that the occurrence of events is predestined, that social change and technological change are determined, which certainly is not the case and the option we are living with is one of many. The study of alternated history themed speculative fiction could be valued by the study of science speculative fiction novels. For instance, ‘The man in the High Castle’ (1962) by Dick depicts repurposing of body parts as a part of technology, and ‘Century Rain’ (2004) by Alastair Reynold, which articulates Earth being cloned in the 1920s-30s by aliens that developed its own history. Each novel imagined the world where the trajectory of technological development is very different and where the past might have been altered. This discussion furthers brings about the idea of ‘Variantology,’ stating that the history of civilization does not follow imperative divine paths. Media are bridges, coupling linkages; they are constructed attempts to connect with what is separated. Conclusively, the study of alternate history-themed speculative fiction is food for intellectuality and indicatively guided pathway for multi-directional future innovations. 

Reference:

Sussman, H. (1994). Cyberpunk Meets Charles Babbage: "The Difference Engine" as Alternative Victorian History. Victorian Studies, 38(1), 23-23. Retrieved October 28, 2015, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4618879

Virtual World, a mirage

I aim to explore the subject of cyberspace involvement and its possible consequences in the real world. The question I raise here is what benefit does one gain from redundant cyberspace involvement, which could instead have been replaced by real world constructive tasks. Such as unbound scrolling of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram feeds, mundane Snapchat exchanges and more. Generally, an individual from the standard population lives with the illusion that one is gaining something out of cyber involvement such as maintaining and extending personal and professional networks. The idea works like that of a mirage, which is like the desert sand. It gives the impression that it can be controlled and held static within one’s grip until the fist opens and realization strikes that there is nothing to hold anymore. The act of embedding the virtual world deeply into one's real world comes at a high cost, where cyberspace soon gives the hallucination of the real world. The use of cyberspace is not only limited to social networks but also includes gaming, video watching, news reading or building some sort of all pervading online addiction. This idea of a mirage is also supported by William Gibson, who coined the term Cyberspace and claims: it is not really a place, it's not really space (Gibson, 1995). On his statement, I would point back to the concept of a mirage, and question whether virtual worlds bring us together with others or do they just make being utterly alone a little more bearable? Gibson also used the phrase Consensual Hallucination with regard to the illusionary cyber world and virtual reality that the participants chose to delve into forming all-pervading addictions. Elizabeth Grosz, an author and professor of Comparative Literature re-emphasizes the concept of consensual hallucination. She states, “What seems so alluring about the half-formed promise of Virtual Reality technologies is the ideal of a world of one's own that one can share with others through consensus, but that one can enter or leave at will...that brings with it a certain guarantee of pleasure without danger (Grosz, 2001).” This statement by Grosz refers to the pleasure of a utopian mirage displayed by the cyberspace that the participants seek to extract.

Kevin Robins in The Cybercultures Reader (2000) adds that Consensual Hallucination has turned the blind eye in the world we live in. Many consider it to be a stress reliever and it provides them a window to escape real world issues. Robins claims that the exhilaration of virtual existence and experiences comes from the sense of transcendence and the liberation from the material and embodied the world (Bell 2000, 79). It nullifies one from their weaknesses in the real world and allows them to feel the power of the self in the virtual world. Robins argues that the elsewhere of cyberspace is a place of salvation and transcendence. Virtual interaction being about adjustment and adaptation to the increasingly difficult circumstances of the contemporary world that it is all too easy to think of them as an alternative to the real world and its disorders (Bell 2000, 87). The utopian mirage gives a pleasure of illusionary power to carry out activities on one's own will. The point worth heeding is it just provides the illusion of being away from the mundane world, and it does not save one from the possible consequences such as the after effects of procrastination in the real world. Therefore, the cyberspace is seen by Gibson as Consensual Hallucination, which Grosz furthers as pacifying the negativities of the real world. Robins supports the claim by adding that virtual reality is as an alternative reality in a world gone wrong. Hence, one shall ponder whether the amount of time and energy distribution for the cyberspace involvement and its productiveness in the real world is worth it?

References:

Bell, D. (2000). The cybercultures reader. London: New York.

Gibson, W. (1995). Neuromancer. Norstedts: Pan.

Grosz, E. (2001). Architecture from the outside essays on virtual and real space. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.