A picture on Facebook (which I reposted but do not have at present) caught my attention recently. Did you know, readers, that there are sixty-six years between the Wright brothers’ first successful manned flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and the moon landings with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin? Will and Orville Wright demonstrated that a plane could be made to carry a man aloft December 17, 1903. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.
There is, indeed, sixty-six years of separation between those two staggering technological milestones.
Part of the reason that this struck me as particularly important, and poignant, is that one of my heroes in Debris* mentions to the other that mankind went from manned flight and then to the moon within the confines of a single century. That is a big deal, one we take for granted today just as we do most technology. Yes, I include the hours spent by Apple fans waiting for the newest iPhone in that as well. My opinion on new model iPhones aside, the fact remains that we take it for granted that this technology exists and treat it as if it had always existed. Very, very few people consider just what life would be like without this tech, unless some natural disaster rips it from their grasp somehow.
Something that The Rise of the Discarded Series is proving to be for me is an exploration in how much people take modern society and modern ideas for granted. The human hero of the series, Rhys Callahan, is from another planet. He crashes on a planet full of griffins who have technology equivalent to the late Medieval to early or mid-Renaissance period. The humans sharing the planet with the griffins run the gamut in terms of technological development, given they have huge predators to contend with on this world, and some have regressed as a result.
Ayar, the griffin protagonist in the series, is interested in designing a new technology for his people: incubators. Though incubators are older than the first manned flight and the moon landings, they are still taken for granted. Yeonmi Park in her autobiography In Order to Live* explains that she was born premature in the coldest months of the year, and since electricity was almost non-existent in North Korea, the way her mother and father had to keep her warm and alive was by warming a stone and tucking it into the blankets with her. Incubators may exist in North Korea, but not everyone has access to them, while in the U.S. most preemies are put in an incubator as fast as possible to keep them alive.
Yet even here, that wasn’t always true, as The Strange Case of Dr. Couney* explains. I went into the details a little in my review of the book but suffice it to say, the arguments over whether or not a baby is “viable” go back further than the 1970s. Events such as the Great Depression did not help, but the real killer was eugenics. This movement got such a bad rap in World War II that it went underground with new slogans, like not allowing others to suffer, pollute the planet, or “you’re not ready to be a mother/father yet.”
Technology gets blamed for a variety of modern problems which I confess bothers me for several reasons. For an example, I ended up in a conversation wherein someone lamented to me that women should go back to washing their clothes in the riverside. That way they could gossip and connect with one another, just like they did in the old days! (My retort was that this person could wash their own clothes at the riverside.)
Serendipitously, some months after that conversation, the washer died. This necessitated trips to the laundromat and extra time spent washing clothes while trying to find a new washing machine. During the weeks this went on I gained a new appreciation for modern conveniences like the washing machine: I lost a lot of time I wanted to spend writing tending to the laundry. Once the new washer was installed my schedule had more openings in it in which I could write.
Oh, and the laundromat? I wasn’t a regular there, so not many of the people who come all the time spoke to me beyond courteous hellos and a few traded comments, but I heard them chatting away with each other while I worked. They were polite to me and I was polite in return when one or more of us ended up in one another’s way, as happens in such places. The owners never gave me or anyone else cause to be upset, either. I try not to eavesdrop so didn’t listen for gossip or anything of the like – when I could, I brought a book to read for review or kept an eye on the local news playing on the television. Going to the riverside to wash clothes is not the only place women can and will discuss matters so they can connect with one another.
Along with the societal sketches in The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, I cannot help but wonder if tech itself is actually the real problem. Perhaps it is less of an issue than many are led to believe; we are bombarded with news of studies showing children with too much screentime are adversely affected by it, but has anyone put in the time to study why the children are being given screens so much? Did computers suddenly gain magical powers and sentience when I wasn’t looking and begin luring in children like the Fae? If not, perhaps the screens themselves are not the issue. Perhaps the culture around the screens needs to adjust how it treats these devices.
From here I must ask if email is a problem. As Crossover Queen has mentioned somewhere in a past post, there are places still in this world where pigeons carry messages faster than an internet connection does. Until, as I did, you end up spending ten days in the height of summer with no AC and no running water, you may not appreciate those conveniences – nor appreciate that, in both World Wars, Russian soldiers yanked sinks out of the walls of German homes and brought them back to their huts because they believed that just turning the tap would bring water to them. Some of those sinks are still in Russian huts to this day, and it is not surprising to anyone who knows the history of the country that Russian soldiers would scrawl on Ukrainian walls early in the war there something akin to: “Who gave you the right to live so well?”
Large parts of Russia still have no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing, et cetera. Seeing the wealth of Ukraine, which we too take for granted (indoor plumbing is no longer considered a sign of wealth in America or large parts of Europe but is thought of – if at all – as a requisite), left them in an understandable rage. There are recorded phone calls where Russian soldiers talk to their wives about stealing cars from Ukrainian homes and admitting they have no idea how to get them home. Same for other items and appliances.
Yeonmi Park mentions that she was astonished to learn that spring in the outside world is considered a time of new birth and new life. Due to the constant famines experienced in North Korea at the turn of the millennium, she and other defectors associate spring with death, because that was when the food supplies had run out and people would be found dead in the streets from starvation (if winter didn’t get them first). Running water? A hot shower? Something to get rid of the lice? These were dreams for her and her family in North Korea, but the biggest dream was to have enough to eat.
“But if we had fewer screens and mechanical distractions,” some exclaim, “then we would be more connected with each other!”
I could certainly do with less screentime, it is true, but connection? For that you don’t need fewer screens, you need a culture that puts value on connection. Screens have minimal effect on a culture, and at the end of the day, so does technology itself as far as I can tell. It took us 66 years to go from manned flight to the moon, but somewhere after that, we decided to stop looking at the stars and focus on – what, exactly? Our neighbors? If that is so, why is it no longer “safe” to tell your neighbors what you think?
Were we really focused on connection since the moon landings? If so, then one must wonder: Why is it no longer safe to let children roam the streets and neighborhoods anymore? Why are mothers reported for allowing their children to play in their own backyard, even stay-at-home moms? Children are obese, we are told, but to fix that you need “better nutrition,” not to let them run around and play.
Just when did it become taboo to let your child walk somewhere alone? When did it become a crime for parents to let their children learn independence? Granted, with the high rate of crime, keeping an eye on your children is just sensible these days. But to call CPS because the children are unattended by their parents, who know where they are or sent them on a task to learn responsibility? Why does anyone think children are glued to screens these days? Could it possibly be that, in addition to some parents simply wanting the children to sit down and shut up, a “chilling effect” has been put in place to keep children indoors, where all there is to entertain them are screens of one kind or another?
That is not the fault of technology. A machine is only a thing. It’s use determines whether it is good or bad; a scalpel can be used to save a life, or it can be used to commit murder. Is the scalpel to be put on trial, or is the person who misuses it the one who needs to be tried? Likewise, is the invention of the washing machine something that keeps women from congregating and connecting with one another? (My own experience emphatically says, “No.”) Or is there another cultural issue that has nothing to do with screens causing the problem?
Someone I know likes to say that many of the “well-meaning” people “in charge” treat those they are writing laws or policies for as widgets, as machine parts that can be traded around at will and whim. That mindset predates manned flight and landing on the moon and has precious little to do with tech. However, along with others, I would posit that the explosive technological surge promoted this mindset to a place of prominence. The same can be said of science, as noted with Gregor Mendel’s 19th century discovery of genetics – it has led to good things, but also a great deal of abuse, as seen in the eugenics movements that gained too much traction around the world in the 20th century.
Do I blame Mendel for discovering genetics? That’s silly. He didn’t intend for it to be used in the death camps or as an excuse to leave premature and “weakling” infants to die on cold tables in hospitals. That was the actions of people who took his work and twisted it to make people less than people.
As Professor Tolkien noted: Abusus non tollit usum. Abuse does not negate use. Genetics as a branch of science is not evil in itself. Those who pursue it, however, may yet be evil. The same goes for screens, computers, and washing machines. Use them properly and you will be fine; abuse them by making them the centers of your life, and it is not the machines’ fault you do not connect with others or get out enough to talk to people face to face.
Likewise, if you spend your time “well-meaning” everyone into staying indoors, do not be surprised if there is a surfeit of obese people interested in virtual space rather than real life. When you confine people what do you expect them to do? Rebelling can be expensive, and opening a new door can take time. For some people, neither option is available or even attractive. You cannot fix a problem like that except for one way:
Allow people more independence.
There are various places where this is happening already, and it will continue to happen. Enforcement of existing laws, as this article notes here, isn’t as stringent as some might think, either. But if this is already going on it will continue. Screens may soon prove to be less and less of a “problem” people dedicated to a specific type of culture won’t want to change.
What do I want? I want us back on the moon, doggone it. I also want us to drop eugenics like the hot rock it is and leave people alone already. Stop trying to improve what you do not care for and do not understand – people are not cattle and you cannot “improve” them the way you can breed better animals. That mindset needs to vaporize but in lieu of that event, we need to step away from it.
How we do that matters whether we have screens or nay, but as the saying goes, you cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Screens are not going away. Furthermore, if we could go from flying planes to landing on the moon in a sixty-six-year timespan…what is stopping us from doing it again?
Maybe that is a question we should be asking more. At the very least, it couldn’t hurt to try. We might find ourselves on Mars in biospheres if we put our minds to it.
It’s how we got from the ground to the sky and then to the moon in just over half a century, after all.
*These are Amazon affiliate links. When you purchase something through them, this author receives a commission from Amazon at no extra charge to you, the buyer.
If you liked this article, friend Caroline Furlong on Facebook or follow her here at www.carolinefurlong.wordpress.com. Her stories have been published in Cirsova’s Summer Special and Unbound III: Goodbye, Earth. She has also had stories published in the Planetary Anthology Series. Another story was released in Cirsova Magazine’s Summer Issue in 2020, and she had a story published in Storyhack Magazine’s 7th Issue, Cirsova Magazine’s 2021 Summer Issue, and another may be read over at Ember Journal. Her book on archetypes, Knights of the Mutant Table, is paywalled on her substack here. Vol. 1* and Vol. 2* of her series – The Guardian Cycle – is available in paperback and ebook as well. So is her first YA novel, Debris, which can be purchased in ebook and paperback here* and here*. Order them today!
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A Song of Joy by Caroline Furlong 
The social changes resulting from the proliferation of new technologies is one of the main themes in my new collection of short fiction. In the case of my book, it’s magic, but the result is the same.
Historians tend to focus one when a particular thing was invented, but the real impact comes when the technology becomes accessible to common people. The first flight at Kitty Hawk may have enflamed the public imagination, but it was the growth of aviation as a business and the effect that had on the mobility of the populace that changed the culture.
That’s why I’ve modeled my world on America in the late 1950s to mid-1960s. The new technologies created during the Second World War filtered down to American consumers in a thousand ways that the original military think tanks never imagined.
One man being able to fly is a curiosity. Anyone who can buy a ticket being able to fly? That’s a revolution.
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“…but connection? For that you don’t need fewer screens, you need a culture that puts value on connection.”
And right there, you have smashed the problem in the face.
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