Hacker Remix

Machine conquest: Jules Verne's technocratic worldmaking

66 points by johntfella 4 days ago | 61 comments

WillAdams 3 days ago

To help put all this in context, a member at the Mobileread forum read these books and commented on them:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=340548

(annoyingly, my local libraries only had a few, and I still resent that when I was interested in French in high school that there weren't any original texts available to me)

For a discussion of the difficulties of reading this in translation see: https://www.usni.org/press/books/20000-leagues-under-sea --- it would be great if all of these novels could be so treated/updated.

KineticLensman 4 days ago

The foreground message is quite blunt

>> Here, Verne was a narrator of global integration. His heroes were compelled by a quest to resist politics and oppose it: their triumphs relied on private sponsors, gentlemen’s clubs, scientific associations, millionaires – not governments. They ventured afar in spite of government, not because of it. Global order likewise rarely ever featured states, empires, or political actors. Private actors were the chief benefactors, beneficiaries, and interlocutors.

But I found this article useful for the perspectives on 'worldmaking'. This helps to understand the elements in game dev (immersion) and speculative fiction (narrative transport) that make (or not) a successful game or book. Something that I find fascinating

nosianu 3 days ago

I don't understand this "in spite of" and "vs." narrative. As far as I know my history the goals were aligned, not least because government was some of the same people, or connected people, and the goals were aligned. The functions were different.

Where does this either-or (private/government) come from?

I look at Gregor Mendel as an example for how many different parties worked as one. (Biology) professor Eric Lander of MIT mentioned in one biology/genetics intro course lecture video (on edX) that Mendel was not some lone figure, but that he got the task to do his research from his boss, who as representative of the church was in turn part of a local group consisting of important figures from local business and government. They talked about economics and decided that they needed better sheep - for better wool. Back then clothing was the big important business, the technical revolution and also new science was very important for it.

So I don't think there was a situation as described in that quote. I think they all worked along and with one another in those days.

The entire expansion of empires and colonies was not driven by some government officials who were bored, commerce, industry and politics were aligned.

KineticLensman 3 days ago

> "in spite of" and "vs." narrative

The point was that Verne's fictitious heroes were acting independently of government, real or fictional. For example using fictitious, privately funded super-technology (rockets, aircraft, submarines, etc), or emerging from their exclusive gentlemen's clubs to which they returned when the adventure was over.

nosianu 3 days ago

And I responded to the clear statement you quoted from the submission:

> His heroes were compelled by a quest to resist politics and oppose it...

> ...They ventured afar in spite of government, not because of it.

Granted, reading the full piece shows a more complex picture, but I'm not sure it supports its own assertion that there is meant to be this "vs" towards nations and governments.

The text later contradicts itself too:

> In part, this betrayed how much Verne and his readers took a world of empire for granted: after all, circumnavigation with the ease described in Around the World in Eighty Days was only possible because of empire. Verne depicted a journey that simultaneously relied on a velocity and connectivity only possible because of globe-spanning imperial transport and communication networks, and a journey where – in stark contrast with most actual circumnavigatory voyages – the travellers return home alive and well.

So the text admits the entire private enterprise is only made possible by the global reach and security provided by empire in the first place. That clearly contradicts the earlier statement of "They ventured afar in spite of government, not because of it." The world the stories play in are based no the existence of that political structure and require it.

ocschwar 3 days ago

Mind you, this is because Verne loathed the British Empire, and his heroes using private means to challenge its authority is meant as a rebuke to his own government for not challenging Britain enough.

delichon 4 days ago

I long used Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minute" as evidence that privately funded space flight isn't so unimaginable. In that case by the Baltimore Gun Club. Then there is The Man Who Sold the Moon by Heinlein where the moon is first visited by "the last of the Robber Barons".

Of course here in the real world space exploration is too costly and complex a game for any organizations other than governments to play, and Verne and Heinlein were optimists with stars in their eyes. Or that's what it seemed like in the seventies when it was pretty much true.

notarobot123 4 days ago

It turns out that commanding the resources extracted through private monopolies isn't so different from deciding how to spend the revenues of taxation.

dukeofdoom 3 days ago

Political parties often take credit for social advancements, but if you look closely it was break through technology that made the advancements possible, not some social rights protest as the politicians would have you believe

RandomLensman 3 days ago

What technological breakthrough made, for example, women's suffrage possible?

dukeofdoom 3 days ago

Industrialization ment that women could make money working factory jobs. The need for factory labour and higher wages led people to move to cities. The technological change driving the industrial revolution also brought about printing press and reading books also became more accessible to women. The need for factory labour was driving that change. But it improved living standards wholesale and even changed peoples diets. So the laws were changed to give more rights to women. You effectively double the labour pool by having women working. Women having money to affect policy was also a consequence. Though the Key is women gaining leverage. Protesting is overrated. Always has been. Look at Palestinians protesting,doesn't help much. they're still getting bombed almost daily. Because currently they don't have leverage to affect policy or technology to fight back.

alexey-salmin 3 days ago

Antibiotics and vaccines. If you need to give birth to 8 kids so that 2-3 of them could live into the reproductive age, fighting for equal rights is neither possible nor relevant.

RandomLensman 3 days ago

At the time (late 19th, early 20th century) antibiotics weren't a thing and vaccines, to the extent that they were there (not quite in the modern sense), had been around for a long time.

alexey-salmin 3 days ago

Cowpox variolation was around for longer, but vaccines in the modern sense were pioneered by Pasteur in 1880s. This is also the time when the first antibiotics (not penicillin) were developed, even though they reached marked later in 1900s.

The late 19th and early 20th century is exactly when the dramatic (around 4x) drop in child mortality took place. It wasn't of course only vaccines but also a general increase in healthcare and living standards. Without that drop I highly doubt that suffrage movement would gain any traction.

RandomLensman 3 days ago

There was no 4x drop in child mortality during that time in, for example, the UK: 1850 to 1900 is about -20%, 1900 to 1920 another ~25% - the big 4x reduction from 1850 wasn't reached until about 1945. Protest and even suffrage somewhat proceeded the big reduction in the first half of the 20th century.

RandomLensman 3 days ago

Broad vaccination of populations against a variety of diseases wasn't a thing until a lot later. The antibiotics at the time were very limited and selective.

Btw., the protests still were the thing that got the change at the time, not the technology!

Seems to me any causal link is weak at best. Claiming that humans have no agency when it comes to society is rather a very strong claim that needs a lot of evidence. Usually people make the change, not technology (it wasn't machines protesting and overthrowing governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for example).

ocschwar 3 days ago

> Usually people make the change, not technology (it wasn't machines protesting and overthrowing governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for example

One of the triggering events of 1989 was a Japanese man walking to a university in Prague, putting a box of new modems in a student lounge and walking away.

alexey-salmin 3 days ago

> it wasn't machines protesting and overthrowing governments in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for example

Curious example indeed. It wasn't machines that killed communism but its economic inferiority. Same thing that killed slavery and serfdom and feudalism and sit-at-home-women and other outdated social systems before that.

People are the same as they were 2000 years ago. The economic optimum is not, largely thanks to technology.

RandomLensman 3 days ago

Again, the people acted, not some abstract social technology - the people action created the change (contrary to your claim that it doesn't matter). Technology might help/enable to do certain things, but human action might or might not follow from that. Without human action things don't simply change (laws don't write themselves, societies don't constitute themselves from technology only, ...). The presence of different societal model at the same time with the same technologies available shows that human action makes the difference.

alexey-salmin 3 days ago

> the people action created the change (contrary to your claim that it doesn't matter).

This never was my claim. Of course people action created the change.

Your question was different though:

> What technological breakthrough made, for example, women's suffrage possible?

The answer to that is "reduction in child mortality". It didn't "create the change" but rather "made it possible" in a quite literal sense. Same with the fall of communism.

RandomLensman 3 days ago

> if you look closely it was break through technology that made the advancements possible, not some social rights protest

Edit: yes, sorry, not your claim but the claim under discussion

Reads to me like social protest makes nothing possible,

You so far advanced a hypothesis on suffrage, but not more.

alexey-salmin 3 days ago

Well for one thing I didn't write that.

jhbadger 3 days ago

This article seems to blame Verne for colonialism "At the French Société de Géographie, of which Verne was a long-time member, as well as among imperialists across Europe, the Voyages became a casual frame of reference in justification of colonial expansion.", I don't see how this fits with Verne's most famous character, Captain Nemo. While his background was ambiguous in 20,000 Leagues, in The Mysterious Island it is established that he was an Indian who fought against colonialism in the failed 1857 rebellion and sees himself as the champion of the oppressed.

Onavo 3 days ago

> Here, Verne was a narrator of global integration. His heroes were compelled by a quest to resist politics and oppose it: their triumphs relied on private sponsors, gentlemen’s clubs, scientific associations, millionaires – not governments. They ventured afar in spite of government, not because of it. Global order likewise rarely ever featured states, empires, or political actors. Private actors were the chief benefactors, beneficiaries, and interlocutors.

So he was writing a story of 19th century trust fund kids and VC funded tech bros..