Cassandra Complex

"Some people say a man is made out of mud.

A poor man's made out of muscle and blood.

Muscle and blood and skin and bone.

A mind that's weak and a back that's strong.

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store."

"Sixteen Tons" by Merle Travis. An American pro-labour anthem.

I'm particularly fond of this version: Link

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."

Ray Bradbury, author of "Fahrenheit 451"

Cassandra knew. She knew and was cursed by Apollo to never be believed. Hers is one of the worse fates from Greek tragedy to consider from high-minded perspectives. Certainly, Orpheus has his torments, Daedalus his regret, and Tantalus his suffering. But among the mythic tales of valour and human failing, I see Cassandra as the most human of all, and her misery as most distinctly human.

She spurned the advances of a god (entirely within her rights methinks) and so was blessed and cursed in turn. Phebus Apollo gave her the gift of true prophecy yet damned her to never be believed. The fall of Troy (Ilium, in case you were curious (as in Iliad meaning tale of Ilium. Or Troy Story, if you like.)) she foresaw and was ridiculed. Odyseus's famous ruse with the horse she saw through and was ignored.

King Priam then locked her in a tower, doomed to disbelieve his daughter and thinking her bad for morale. Eventually she was captured, removed from the ruins of Ilium with the Achaean king Agamemnon and predicted both his murder by Clytemnestra and her own. Of course, she was not believed and so the prophesies were fulfilled.

Ever since, the gods in their wisdom, if any truly exist, have seen fit to 'bless' certain persons throughout history with true prophecy. Not, as they did poor Cassandra, with true prophecy in its purest sense - that those persons thus 'blessed' would be always correct in their predictions. Rather, they have been cursed with instances of clarity. With glimmering fragments of truth that are disbelieved. And, according to the nature both of their common humanity and their curse, they are mocked. Ridiculed. Hidden away. And ultimately proven out.

There exists a cold logic to this disbelief, quite apart from divine interference necessarily limiting the breadth of human free will. The Boy Who Cried Wolf is a story that has lingered in our hearts for time out of mind for a reason. What if Cassandra had been wrong? What if the people, soldiers, nobles and king himself of Ilium had believed her? They would have burned the horse, and if she had been wrong? Then vengeful gods might have wrought horrors on the city greater than the ten years of war just passed.

In every generation, in every crisis, and every political division of humanity from country down to village there are Cassandras. There are true-sighted prophets by the million who read the auguries and tell us to beware. Beware the self-styled king on his throne of bones. Beware the easy answers elucidated by those with something to gain by them. Beware the poisoned gift and beware the one who gifts it.

Naturally they are disbelieved. Naturally, so the worldly and educated like to think, they are mocked and ridiculed. Enough falsehood and baseless conspiracy fearmongering exist in the world to show us that we have good reason to disbelieve.

At the beginning of this piece, I placed two quotes. The first is from a song that explains, somewhat, the horrors of the Company Town that was particularly prevalent in North America in the last century. Discerning observers will note the similarities between Panem's District 12 and those Appalachian mining towns. The second is from an author whose work, much like so many of the great dystopian writers, is being treated as a blueprint for progress, rather than a cautionary tale.

Had I read Margret Atwood's most famous novel, perhaps I might have made reference to it. There are, every day so it seems, attempts to bring the Republic of Gilead off the page and into our homes. So, it may have fit. Had I the inclination, perhaps reference to either of Orwell's most famous novels would have been sufficient. After all, when the most singularly powerful individual on Earth, in a Nation of equals no less, rises to power on the promise of peace and produces only conflict, are The Party's own words not in our minds? That war is peace?

Why, it is only natural to assume that, making an argument such as mine, the man who wrote an Homage to Catalonia be front of mind. After all, "the Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." Is this not what we are called to do every day?

No. Well, yes, but that is distant to the point which I am trying to make. Vocal, in their shiny and glorious wisdom, have invited us to: "Write about one technology, tool, or habit in your everyday life that already feels like science fiction, and what it’s quietly changing." So, I use for my second quote the words of a man who once wrote that "it was a pleasure to burn."

Particularly in the United States, ironic as that formal name might be at present, there is a confluence of crises. However long I might spend, however much ink I might spill, there is no way for me to address them all. What I can do, is talk about, as Vocal requested, what feels like science fiction and what it is quietly changing.

To achieve this goal, I invite you to join me on a thought exercise. Ready?

A rare book is purchased. Once one of many, this first edition may well be the only of its kind left in the world. Out of print for decades, or perhaps even hand-written, it belongs in a museum or archive. It contains something invaluable, be it information or merely a snapshot of life decades before living memory. Of a place that is unknown, or the truth of one well-known in the world today.

Human hand, be it in a word-processor, typewriter, or pen and ink, created this book. Labour was poured into its every verb tense and allusion. Pure creativity and drive sought to craft something entirely new on the page, and for that to be shared by another mind in another place in another time. Be it a story well told, or information neatly catalogued, each element required human input. Not a whiff of it generated by the cause and targets of the Butlerian Jihad.

Now Frank Herbert's abominations, machines made in the likeness of a man's mind, exist and they hunger. As they boil oceans, drain lakes, flatten woodlands, and make demands of old man coal and his lady crude, they hunger. They have devoured what can be devoured. And made what they can make. Art and history and information of all stripes stripped and digitized and thrown uncaringly into the machine to serve as "training data."

Yet their resource, the pure, raw matter of their inferior output is run dry. Their well poisoned by the effluent of their generation. This product, homunculi of better minds wearing the skin of creation, now feeds the machine and taints the newest generations. Bad habits multiplying, generation after generation, incestuous corruption of product. Proof beyond proof, I say of the failure of the technology's promise.

Still in the world, however, there exists a sampling of text, for it is primarily text, uncorrupted by these silicone 'minds.' Books, magazines, newspapers, essays, pamphlets, by the score out of print and read no more by the average eye. But of these, I call the books the most at risk. That rare book I mentioned four paragraphs ago, once one of many, now one of few, contains something invaluable to the pale hands directing the silicone 'minds.' They contain words and ideas, thoughts and arguments untouched by artificial imitation of human creativity.

The very things that we say their tools cannot replicate.

So, that rare book is bought. Perhaps it is one of one, but in the end, it does not matter for the companies directed by the hands that guide the silicone's hallucinations buy great quantities of books. You might imagine yourself one such, a book with physical copies so few they might be counted on one's fingers. Or limbs. Or nose.

No digital copies exist of this text, the pages and words and humanity between the covers of that rare book. So, the company buys this book, places it carefully on a machine and with a skillfully made and razor-sharp blade, they slice out its spine. One by one the pages are then fed through a scanner. Each of them carefully, with skilled and trained human overseers, recorded and preserved. Then those pages, those same overseers shred. And once they do, before they go home to bed, they take those shreds and burn them until nothing remains that could ever be read. Now the only record of that book, the rare one I mentioned, is on the company computer.

What will they do with this information?

Naturally, they will train their models with it. Books such as these, proprietary things now since the company has the only version of them, the original burned, may well become the pure-strain DNA that we often see in fiction including clones. Preserved intact and as-is to in turn preserve the purity of the strain.

But those books now belong to the companies that scanned and destroyed their final copies. They decide what the words on the page are, they decide what they mean. Unlike governments, functioning democratic ones that is, they are not obligated to release their information. Nor their processes. Nor even such things as might be "corporate secrets" to the public.

Vocal asked me to write about something that feels like science fiction and what it's quietly changing. What I want to address is something that has been true for years if not longer and only getting worse now. Even if it has not affected the majority of who it will affect, or even a majority of those who will notice.

Almost since its inception, my mother has had an Audible subscription. And so, I have been listening to audiobooks for most of my life. I love them. Through audiobooks, I have listened to hundreds of texts that I have never physically read. And ones that I doubt I ever shall. But I noticed something the last time I listened to the Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan.

Percy Jackson's original five books are incredibly important to me. They were constantly on repeat in my ears for years over years. Then, as we are wont to do, I grew up and moved on. I did not listen to them again for a while, though goodness knows how long. And when I came back, to the Sea of Monsters specifically, I noticed something had changed.

During the exploding dodgeball scene, one of the characters yells out, "I have to go potty!" And in the original version I had, the one that by all appearances is still in my family account, the narrator put on a stereotypical Indian accent. Now, that element of the narration is different. The statement more in line with the narrator's regular voice, and the unfortunate micro-aggression gone.

Do not mistake me for someone who believes that offensiveness is allowed or should be encouraged. But that recording should belong to my family. It should remain as we bought it back when we bought it. Should it not? Making things, especially things aimed at children, less racist is a good thing. Objectively speaking, it is one of the better things that we can do, and this example is not one wherein the racism was intrinsic to the art being expressed. Nothing of substance is lost by its removal.

Existentially, however, I cannot accept it. That audiobook was changed, and we have other examples though I don't have any to hand, of ebook platforms (especially Amazon) live editing and censoring books the company disapproves of. Print editions of the books are still in circulation, I have many, but paper is imperfect. It rots and decays from neglect and from use both. One day they won't be in circulation anymore.

One day, the only versions of the books that anyone will be able to access will be electronic. They will be ebooks, audiobooks, virtual reality books that are more like interactive movies, radio dramas or their snazzy future equivalent. But they will not be physical and that means they will be able to be changed at the whim of whoever owns the server on which they are stored.

Changed. Edited. Censored. Deleted.

Yes, deleted.

That is what feels like science fiction, and that is what is quietly changing.

Will Orwell's books be the same when the pigs are the unambiguous heroes? Or when Winston's love is not a product of horror, but beneficence? Will Gilead's gender roles become the happy ending for Atwood's tortured protagonist? Will the reader walk away from a future version of Bradbury and say to themself, a smile on their lips and self-satisfied sway to their hips, that it is a pleasure to burn?

These companies are literally burning books. Collecting the rare and the unique, digitizing and destroying them. Burning them. Does it give them pleasure, I wonder now. Was Guy Montag right in the first line of his book? Or was it the last? Or was it in the book at all?

I began this piece with a long ramble about Cassandra and her curse of prophecy. I began this piece with a song and with a quote.

Sixteen tons is about people functionally enslaved by companies that controlled every aspect of their lives. Born into debt, growing up in a company house eating company food, going to a company school, praying in company church lead by a company priest, then dying in or because of the company mine. "A mind that's weak and a back that's strong." Those miners were not encouraged to read, those of them that could. Because that makes it easier to control them.

Escape from the town was the secret ambition of thousands, and it was possible. But only if the escapee was truly exceptional. Truly special. One in a million. And "that ain't you, is it? So, pick up your shovel and walk to the mine."

Bradbury explains how to kill a culture. But, and I can only imagine his horror, what is society still read books, but the content changed to suit the narrative of the day. He and Orwell are rolling in their graves fast enough to power Toronto if we capture the energy. The Ministry of Truth itself could never dream of a potential for greater control.

And across the internet I see Cassandra. I see her in the terrified and wrathful faces of people who speak out about what this means. I see her curse in their low view counts, and I see it in the responses heard both in-person and seen online, where those people are ignored. Laughed at. Told they're being dramatic. Called jealous because they dare to disagree with the top.

I see it in the jeering, hateful, ignorant responses that flood this dead internet of ours when we dare to question the oligarchs. The people who own our communication, our photo albums, our personal libraries that can conveniently fit in our pockets.

We know what history was like because someone wrote it down and saved that information for us. They wrote it in stone, on vellum, papyrus, paper, wood, clay. Now, we live in a gilded future of abundance of every kind (at least where and how I live) yet we are losing that writing. We are losing that tangible, unquestionable connection to our history. Whether what we read from the past is true, it is still of the time. It is true in that it was written and created back then and we know about it now.

Power exists in information. And when those few individuals can control that information, more than they already do, then after a fashion they decide truth. Disagreeing with them becomes impossible, they are facts. Their word is cosmic law. I call them the Silicone Reich because of this level of control. They could delete my dog from my albums, they could delete books from my shelves, they could delete people from photos. "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.

What do we leave behind?

That is what feels like science fiction. The sheer quantity of book we have the machines that can 'write' for us, and the companies that control them. The companies destroying what came before and building for libraries on pillars of sand.

I don't know for certain what the changes are yet. I simply don't. But much like Cassandra I see the end of this road. I and so many others see the end. And yet we appear cursed to be disbelieved by those who do not understand, or do not want to acknowledge, the risk. What scares me is this question, absurd though it may be, "how long until the people who least embody religious generosity, compassion, and love remove all references to those things from sacred texts?"

We can only hope that the next generation won't have to "owe my soul to the company store."