Once and Future Dystopia
“In our superficial life, every formula, every equation, corresponds to a curve or a solid. We have never seen any curve or solid corresponding to my square root of minus one. The horrifying part of the situation is that there exist such curves or solids. Unseen by us they do exist, they must, inevitably. ”
Google makes our world unbelievably efficiency. Back in high school, I’d carry around my trusty, black flashdrive, with a retractable USB connector. Every time I got to a new class and a new computer, I’d dig my flashdrive out of my pocket, extend the corrector, and plug it in. All of my files would be there on this new computer, and I could go on with my work. Now I can just upload things to Google Drive and everything is taken care of for me. When I write drafts for articles, I use Google Docs where they can be shared effortlessly and edited by multiple people in real time. I can take a quick picture with my phone, and it’ll automatically be uploaded to Google Photos so I can access it on my computer. But over the summer, my work is a nightmare. I work with restricted material, so I have to use CDs. It’s 2019 and I’m using CDs, ridiculous! With Google, there’s no flashdrives, no CDs, no hassle, just efficiency. Google will probably take over the world, but at least everything will be really convenient when they do.
This is why We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is currently our most important work of dystopian fiction. Written in 1920-1921 in the very early years of the Soviet Union, We shows us a world driven entirely by mathematical efficiency. We is what happens when Google takes over the world. Everything is optimized for efficiency, algorithms control our lives, and people become tools for producing data.
The question of dystopia isn’t whether or not we live in one but rather which dystopia we live in. Our three choices are 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. The truism that we live in a dystopia seems somewhat overblown. The dystopia that most closely mirrors our time is arguably Brave New World. We don’t live in a totalitarian state that invades all aspects of our lives and thoughts as in 1984, and we don’t live in pseudo-Christian patriarchy where women can’t hold jobs or be educated as in The Handmaid’s Tale. In the present-day United States, the late-night talk show environment subsists on criticizing the president, and on average women are better educated than men. But it isn’t a stretch to say we live in a self-imposed dystopia driven by hedonism and consumerism, as in Brave New World. We subjugate ourselves to the endless entertainment of social media and Netflix, and if all else fails, there’s always heroin.
So, if I was choosing, Brave New World is the dystopia that we live in. That said, we don’t really live in Huxley’s world either: people aren’t genetically engineered and born in test tubes to perform specific tasks, for instance. But the fact that none of the popular dystopias fit our current reality is a good thing! That means the fiction is doing its job. We’ve avoided the reality presented in Brave New World. As much as I think our world begins to look like Brave New World, it doesn’t help to say it is Huxley’s world, because dystopia don’t tell us what to do, they tell us what not to do.
Dystopian novels are attacks on possible futures. Authors extrapolate from the present to the extreme implementation of an idea or practice. That idea or practice becomes the single defining feature of this imagined world. In 1984, it’s totalitarianism. For the Handmaid’s Tale, it’s patriarchy. Brave New World, ease. Because they’re speculative and extreme, dystopias aren’t meant to diagnose present political realities, but to destroy the worst possible futures before they ever happen. Dystopian worlds are road signs that say in big flashing lights “Detour! Danger ahead!” They don’t tell you where to go or how to get there, but rather what to avoid.
This is why We is currently our most important dystopian work; we are potentially headed toward the future that it considers the worst possible, just because it makes our lives more convenient. We was written about 15 years before Brave New World, and about 35 before 1984. It’s is the grandfather of dystopian novels. Though Huxley denies it, George Orwell and Kurt Vonnegut both claim that Huxley stole the plot of We for Brave New World, just as Vonnegut claims he stole the plot of Brave New World for his novel Player Piano. Because it’s been adopted for future dystopian fiction, the plot of We is very familiar. The main character, D-503, is part of the dystopian system. He simultaneously falls for and is repelled by a rebellious woman, I-330. I-330 shows D-503 the secret rebellion against the powers that be, the Benefactor, but D-503 is eventually captured and tortured, giving up the rebellion. The leaders of the rebellion are cowed or executed, but the roots of rebellion take hold, leaving the future of the dystopian world in doubt.
The plots of most dystopian works follow the formula set by We. But what makes dystopia unique are the underlying danger that shape their world. For We, that danger is data. People are reduced to mere data, and are thus called by identifying numbers: D-503, O-90, I-330. The world is built around efficiency. Every hour of every person's day is determined by formula and algorithms called ‘the Table’. D-503 is horrified by the square root of negative one: the imaginary number, i. Algorithms and data seek to eliminate the irrational and imaginary. And just as mathematics is incomplete without the imaginary, our lives are incomplete without the irrational and imaginary. Fyodor Dostoevsky decries this conception of efficiency as the goal of life in Notes from Underground,
And who knows (one cannot vouch for it), perhaps the whole goal mankind strives for on earth consists just in this ceaselessness of the process of achievement alone, that is to say, in life itself, and not essentially in the goal, which, of course, is bound to be nothing other than two times two is four - that is, a formula; and two times two is four is no longer life, gentleman, but the beginning of death.
And We presents us with a future where this death has come to life.
Data and efficiency rule the lives of the numbers in We. D-503 lives only to generate and aggregate more data as the head engineer for the great space craft, the Integral, which will “integrate the grandiose cosmic equation,” collapsing all of the universe into the measurable. Just as the world is turned into data by the Benefactor, Google and Facebook and other big tech companies are turning the present world into data. And we comply because it’s convenient. I have an app called Google Rewards that gives pays me for answering marketing questions about my self. I know that Google knows all the answers anyway (‘What’s my age?’, ‘What store did you go to yesterday?’, ‘Is this a good video to recommend to you?’) because I give them all my personal information, location, and browsing history anyway, so I might as well get paid for it. But my life does not matter to the people behind Google. All that matters to them is the data I produce, because it helps make their algorithms better. As I was writing this, the app asked me for ways to improve the Google Assist feature on my phone. I’m part of the problem. I help Google’s recommendations so that they can dictate more of the hours of my day. And one day, Artificial Intelligence will integrate all of this data, understanding the grandiose cosmic equations which we cannot begin to ask or fathom, and all will become one in the AI Singularity.
We is the most relevant dystopia to our world because it is a future we don’t fear. We fear the totalitarian future of Orwell, the patriarchal future of Atwood, and the hedonistic future of Huxley, but we’re excited about more efficient lives and smart homes and Google Everything. We’re excited for a world where eventually choices are replaced with algorithms, lives become data, and people become numbers. Dystopia tells us what to avoid by calling us to consider what we value. Safety or freedom? Clarity or equality? Pleasure or knowledge? And as We crucially asks us as technology and formula integrate themselves into all facets of our lives, efficiency or humanity?
