Made in DNA ([info]mopedronin) wrote in [info]cyberpunk,
2006-03-18 22:09:00
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The Gernsback Continuum Playback

All my teacher friends and I were sitting around discussing the third-year students and which schools they'd made it into, when one of them commented on how hard he thought English tests were, and more to the point, how disappointed he was that he himself couldn't speak beyond a smattering of. It's a conversation point that gets brought up a lot when education is discussed among adults in Japan, a rather tired subject in my book so I intentionally ignored it. But then he said something that made my jaw drop, something I'd never heard before. Half-laughingly, half-regrettably he commented: The reason I never bothered to study English very hard, is because my teacher told me that one day we would all be using pocket computers to translate for us. Enter the word and/or conversation and BLOOP, there would be the translation. Everyone kind of nodded like they knew what he was talking about. I was ... stunned, for the lack of a better word, because suddenly visions of flying cars, unisex clothing in silver, suburban citiblocks from Utopia, and space colonies flooded my mind. Holding my breath, I asked him, "By any chance, were there any flying cars in that promise of the future as well?" He turned and smiled at me in a very understanding way. Amazing, isn't it, how completely, universally continuous the the Gernsback Continuum is?

I hope this post wasn't off-topic.

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  • 13 comments

[info]jabber

March 18 2006, 13:42:02 UTC 6 years ago

I don't think it's off topic at all. In fact, I think it's very on topic. I see cyberpunk, at least in part, as an enactment of a great deal of frustration. A CP society is one which has been betrayed, promised a glorious utopian future, but then turned into little more than cattle by technology and those with power. In the CP world, megacorporations rule cities and nations from orbit, milk the economy, and dehumanize for proft. The people living in that world must feel cheated as they make do and improvise an acceptable quality of life by either accepting their proscribed fate as "sararimen" or by finding ingenious ways to exist between the gears of this oppressive machinery. CP heroes are those who succeed, and maybe do so with a bit of flair reminiscent of the promise of the future that was promised.

Or, more concisely, "The future isn't what it used to be".

[info]mopedronin

March 18 2006, 13:45:11 UTC 6 years ago

Very true, which is why I posted it, but there was a moment there that I felt that it might not be "cyberpunk" enough for some.

That's for damn sure. ;)

[info]telecart

March 18 2006, 13:58:27 UTC 6 years ago

Damn, that hit a nerve.

[info]mopedronin

March 18 2006, 14:35:03 UTC 6 years ago

doesn't it though?

[info]etcet

March 18 2006, 15:25:41 UTC 6 years ago

one quibble, and a thought or two

quibble: "Gernsback Continuum," not "Grensback." :-)

"I'm a twenty-first century digital boy; I don't know how to read but I've got a lot of toys." - Bad Religion

I think that you're onto something, though perhaps not quite as endemically damningly as you might predict - calculators, and even their presence in math classrooms, don't obviate the students' ability to perform some basic arithmetic... your hypothetical tool would require a similar level of groundwork, unless it had some fairly sophisticated vox-recognition and parsing software and algorithms to take input automatically [see also: "sufficiently advanced = magic"]

[info]mopedronin

March 18 2006, 23:30:09 UTC 6 years ago

Re: one quibble, and a thought or two

Actually, I knew that... how the heck did I manage to miss it??? Crap, I even looked it up. *sigh* Thanks.

AHAHAHA. Nice.

Oh, I don't damn it, but rather, I was just shocked to see that we all had the same dreams and promises made to us as kids. My reply to him wasn't a sarcastic one at all, rather more ironic and understanding.

[info]ca9i

March 18 2006, 16:42:12 UTC 6 years ago

Comparing 'Gernsbacks'(what else do you call them?) who expect a spoonfed future and people like the architects that didn't see CAD replacing them unless they got on board is a constant source of entertainment.

"I was used to be disgusted but now I'm just amused."

[info]hollow_01

March 18 2006, 18:20:02 UTC 6 years ago

It's here already.

http://www.gamespot.com/psp/puzzle/talkman/index.html

[info]mopedronin

March 18 2006, 23:32:17 UTC 6 years ago

Hahahahahahaha. Limited and clumsy. as much as I love my PSP, I laugh at efforts like this. I know the Japanese too well. If the Talkman were any great shakes, I'd be out of a any kind of job, translator or teacher.

[info]mopedronin

March 18 2006, 23:32:43 UTC 6 years ago

But none the less, an excellent example that I had forgotten.

[info]crayonshinobi

March 20 2006, 00:41:37 UTC 6 years ago

Really interesting point. I might also say somewhat typical of Japanese to seek a technological solution rather than a human one.

The idea that a machine can effectively translate a language also approaches the question of sentience mentioned in an earlier post. It's one thing to parse and translate word for word, even with an advanced system for grammar recognition, but implied meanings, slang, and other somewhat "read between the lines" meanings of a language requires what might be considered "intelligence." Just look at any babelfish translation and it's easy to understand the shortcomings of a direct translation sans interpretation by an intelligent being. Long story short, we'll need to achieve some level of actual artificial intelligence before we can achieve a universal translator device the likes of which appear in Star Trek...(Admittedly, I too have an interest in keeping my job!)

Lastly, flying cars are a dangerous dream. You see what people do with two degrees of freedom, imagine the chaos and destruction that would result from having three...

[info]mopedronin

March 20 2006, 08:18:18 UTC 6 years ago

Yeah, unfortunately I have to agree with you.

(A post I hated really... those kinds of posts are annoying... "so do you think computers are sentient because they can take a shit? please answer with your definition of "taking a shit"" *rolls eyes*) Oh man, which is why I am really pissed off at this sudden love for Kenji S(h)iratori's work in the West. That fucker didn't write in English, he just Babblefished that bitch. Fuck, that's what I'm going to do. Fuck this really putting a heart and soul into work, let the machine do it for me. Ah, ST... love that show, where do they get such GREAT gadgets????

AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA! That's a very good point.

[info]ca9i

March 21 2006, 19:21:56 UTC 6 years ago

crayonshinobi sez:
"I might also say somewhat typical of Japanese to seek a technological solution rather than a human one."

Yeah. But surely westerners(anglosaxons?) ends up at that point merely by opting for the lowest common denominator: "I want it and I want it now!"

Nitpicking aside, is there a difference between a culture that arrives at a technological advance(?) because it seeks out technological solutions and a culture that reaches the same point because of wish-fufillment of future-myths like 'Dr McKoy's tricorder'?

Check link below....

Wired News:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,1144,00.html
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