Summa technologiae

There are a truly impressive number of potential sci-fi novels lurking in the pages of this speculative treatise, which covers such a huge range of subjects that it would seem incredible if this weren't by the famously imaginative Lem. Actually, given that it was originally published in 1964, it's still impressive, since only now are many of these topics coming to the light of day in the form of new technologies. Joanna Zylinska, who fills in ably for fan favorite translator Michael Kandel, sadly absent here, sums up the questions Lem was trying to explore at the beginning of her introduction:

"Is the human a typical phenomenon in the Universe or an exceptional one? Is there a limit to the expansion of a civilization? Would plagiarizing show more Nature count as fraud? Is consciousness a necessary component of human agency? Should we rather trust our thoughts or our perceptions? Do we control the development of technology, or is technology controlling us? Should we make machines moral? What do human societies and colonies of bacteria have in common? What can we learn from insects?"

Heavy stuff, and that's really only some of the subjects he discusses, at far greater depth (and length) than those teasers even hint at. A stumbling block is his blizzard of neologistic terminology ("theotechnologists", "phantomatics", "imitology", "ariadnology") or words that are just plain obscure ("biogeocenosis", "cybergnostic"), but regular readers should be used to his ability to dig deeply in the dictionary for a needed term or, should that fail, his unhesitating willingness to make a suitable term up. His style will be familiar from his other essay collections: dense in argument, assumption, and expansion. Here's a sample from the "Two Evolutions" chapter:

"The technologies that facilitate living are becoming a tool for life's impoverishment because the mass media are turning from their role of a compliant duplicator of spiritual goods to that of a producer of cultural junk. We are told that, culturally, technology is at best barren. I say 'at best' because the unification of humanity it promotes takes place at the expense of the spiritual heritage of the past centuries and also at the expense of the ongoing creative efforts. Subjugated by technology, art begins to be dominated by economic laws, showing signs of inflation and devaluation. Above the technical pool of mass entertainment - which has to be easily accessible because general accessibility is the mantra of Technologists - only a handful of creative types survive. Their efforts are focused on ignoring or deriding the stereotypes of mechanized life. Briefly put, technoevolution brings more evil than good, with man turning out to be a prisoner of what he himself has created. The growth of his knowledge is accompanied by the narrowing down of possibilities when it comes to deciding about his own fate."

So on a purely formal level, you have several overlapping economic and cultural arguments, wrapped up in a spiritual argument, which itself is only one part of a long, dense chapter comparing and contrasting biological and technological evolution. One can argue that he's right or wrong, but he's arguable regardless - many many hours of debate could be spawned just by that one paragraph.

Unfortunately, I feel like the whole of this vast treatise is more "arguable" than "enjoyable". I'm not sure if his primary goal with these writings was to provoke any particular reaction from his audience; to my mind, he's so effective in general at presenting his ideas in his fiction that perhaps in this case he felt like constructing narratives around these ideas was simply too difficult. But these ideas feel so hermetic that it's often very difficult to appreciate the nuance and vision, and all too easy to simply get lost. One example is the section "The Dangers of Electrocracy", which resembles an exceedingly condensed version of Isaac Asimov's short story "The Evitable Conflict", wherein robots tasked with ensuring the well-being of mankind slowly usurp more and more power over the world economy until a few executives realize that humanity has unwittingly ceded an important measure of control over its destiny to its servants - but possibly for the better. In Asimov's telling, this is a powerful moment of ambivalence for mankind, an illustration of how the aggregate of many small decisions can have an overall questionable effect; in Lem's description, it's simply a technical matter of odds, black boxes, and homeostatic equilibria.

However, once allowances have been made for the scope of Lem's ambition, the imposing edifice of Summa Technologiae can be seen for what it is, less an attempt to settle disputes than to spawn a whole literature of new ones. This is not the last word on anything, merely a first few hundred questions from one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time. I could wish that he had worked these into his novels, yet there are so many potential novels lurking within that this deserves a closer study by anyone interested in a pure work of ideas. show less

I was very excited to read this new translation of a previously untranslated Lem philosophical treatise on technology. There's the occasional side comment that I found thoughtful, but I got really bogged down in this on the whole. I know many smart people have praised it, but I came to dread picking it up everyday and slogging through a few more pages. I guess I like Lem more when he expresses his complicated ideas through fiction, especially fiction with a lighter touch. Probably my favorite of his observations was this comment from near the end of the book:

     What is therefore possible? Almost everything, with just one exception. Having conspired in advance, people could decide one day, many thousands of years from now, show more "Enough! Let things be the way they are now; let them remain like this forever. Let us not change, seek, or discover anything new, since things cannot be better than they are now, and even if they could, we do not want it."
     Even though I have outlined many unlikely things in this book, this one seems to me to be the most unlikely of them all. show less

A far reaching and comprehensive look at the future of technology and the autoevolution of mankind within that future. Even fifty years after its composition it seems very relevant. For me, Lem is a more compelling and thought provoking futurist than Kurzweil.

Talk about ' Way ahead of everyone else ... ' ( staggering )

Talk about ' Way ahead of everyone else ... ' ( staggering )