Ender's Enemy

A week or so ago, while catching up on reading blogs that I subscribe to, I came across an interesting post from NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich. As a whole, his blog embraces a light-hearted and humorous approach to topics in science and technology, though he doesn't adhere to any strict guidelines. This post, however, raised a serious subject towards the end: that of the very nature of human innovation. Citing Wired editor Kevin Kelly, business scholar Peter Drucker, and science fiction writer William Gibson, Krulwich advances the idea that communication and technology have pushed human interactions with each other (and with their environment) further from the physical and closer to the theoretical -that is, thoughts over actions, brains over brawn. He quotes William Gibson, who writes about our communication technologies becoming increasingly similar in structure to the complex wiring of a mind, the connections growing finer and finer even as they stretch across greater distances.

Krulwich chooses to joke about this observation in his post, but he does so knowing that there are serious and rich trains of thought waiting to depart from this idea's station. The concept of an overarching "hive mind" is no stranger to human thoughts. In fact, it has been present in science fiction literature and media for quite a long time, a classic example being Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, featuring the "buggers," who are led by the queen's hive mind. For more, see this entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the phenomenon. If you skim through the list just linked, you'll notice something odd: almost every single one of the dozens of examples are antagonists in the settings they appear in. Here is the disturbing aspect of the notion which Krulwich touched on so lightly: the idea of a hive mind, of a real and active collective conscious, scares us. It challenges our individuality, removes to a certain extent our ability to empathize with any "person" acting under a "hive mind", and thus cements the role of a sentient collective conscious as that of a foreigner or alien (literally).

Examples can reach beyond sci-fi stories. In American history, we see this narrative in play during periods of rampant anti-communist fervor. What made the typical "communist" so inferior to the average (capitalist, Jesus-lovin') Joe? The most relevant difference to us, looking the competitive lens, is the lack of economic freedom. A participant in a communist system surrenders to the state their freedom to compete, instead performing the functions which are allocated to them by the state in the interests of the system as a whole. This removes a key aspect of all competition: self-interest.

The book that gave birth to so many young and imaginative geeks (as well as politically-charged critiques).