Cyber-Curriculum

I very much enjoyed Cory Doctorow’s riff today on why people keep building torment nexii: Pluralistic: The Coprophagic AI crisis (14 Mar 2024).

He hits on an interesting point, namely that for a long time the fact that people couldn’t tell the difference between “science fiction thought experiments” and “futuristic predictions” didn’t matter. But now we have a bunch of aging gen-X tech billionaires waving dog-eared copies of Neuromancer or Moon is a Harsh Mistress or something, and, well…

I was about to make a crack that it sorta feels like high school should spend some time asking students “so, what’s do you think is going on with those robots in Blade Runner?” or the like, but you couldn’t actually show Blade Runner in a high school. Too much topless murder. (Whether or not that should be the case is besides the point.)

I do think we should spend some of that literary analysis time in high school english talking about how science fiction with computers works, but what book do you go with? Is there a cyberpunk novel without weird sex stuff in it? I mean, weird by high school curriculum standards. Off the top of my head, thinking about books and movies, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Johnny Mnemonic, and Strange Days all have content that wouldn’t get passed the school board. The Matrix is probably borderline, but that’s got a whole different set of philosophical and technological concerns.

Goes and looks at his shelves for a minute

You could make Hitchhiker work. Something from later Gibson? I’m sure there’s a Bruce Sterling or Rudy Rucker novel I’m not thinking of. There’s a whole stack or Ursula LeGuin everyone should read in their teens, but I’m not sure those cover the same things I’m talking about here. I’m starting to see why this hasn’t happened.

(Also, Happy π day to everyone who uses American-style dates!)