by strannikov
“—and so it turned out, not simply that they found electricity to be capable of all kinds of useful and superfluous applications, but that electricity was neuro-physically addictive to their organisms.”
“—but although we've catalogued instances of this on other planets, it seems never to've led to the global outbreak of psycho-phrenias and neuro-pathologies as those that plagued the Tiānxiàns!” someone observed from the back row.
Professor Vumhksgranzh nodded in agreement. “Don't forget, though, that on their planet, in the era when the harnessing of electricity was just beginning, mortality commonly occurred in individuals well before even one of their centuries had elapsed. Lifelong exposure to unannealed electricity thereafter, of course, aggravated the development of succeeding generations as younger and younger members of the species were exposed to it earlier and earlier. Had their somatic organisms been capable of greater longevity at that historical moment, the innate electrochemistry of their brains and somatic systems likely would have been able to attenuate or diffuse the intensity of electromagnetic attractions that ubiquitous electrical appliances and electronic devices began to pose. Thereafter, as we have seen, once the attraction and the convenience of electricity was recognized by their technical classes, the propagation of electrical and electronic devices became central to maintaining and growing their economies to greater and greater scales, since a by-product of their technological prowess consisted in a rapid surge in global population and—at least briefly—to subsequent extensions of life spans.”
A voice asked from somewhere in the middle ranks of the auditors. “How extensive can we believe their species' addiction to the force of electricity to have become?”
The Professor continued. “By the end it seems to have afflicted the population of the entire globe. At first, electric appliances were designed both to augment and to replace physical labor. Soon enough, taking advantage of hydro-electric, nuclear, solar, and wind-turbine power generation, their industrial output and their manufacturing facilities became dependent upon the availability of electricity. From powering simple communications apparatuses and machines, they began using it to power illumination and thermal regulation devices in their homes, both in cities and across rural areas. They devised and fabricated more and more machines to run on electricity, to every conceivable purpose. Electricity was soon being used to regulate calculations of chronometry and to propagate vacuous entertainments and serious arts alike . . . not that electricity ever did anything to enhance their meditations on aesthetics,” and here the Professor allowed the polite laughter and twittering to subside. “They began to elaborate the use of electricity in complex communications networks, in personal transportation and in commercial shipping, in the service of all manner of economic transactions, in children's toys and games, in data transcription and in all kinds of printing and graphic reproduction, in auditory transmissions and in audio recordings and reproductions, in food preparation and storage, in the provision of medical services, in provision of education and information dissemination, in their astronomy and physics studies as in their biological and mathematical science studies, across all of their sciences, in military weapons systems, of course, and even in their executions of criminals. Refer to the comprehensive inventory in Pulksgarl's summary for further details, but the provision of electricity and its generation for practically every economic and social function on the planet was permitted and encouraged to become ubiquitous. Their addiction was manifest globally in less than one of their centuries.”
Silence reigned momentarily in the outdoor auditorium. Wind passed through gently and steadily, rippling folds of garments no matter how heavy or light the fabrics. Another voice finally rose on the back row.
“In other words the Tiānxiàns had poorly developed somatic systems in a non-conducive environment. —but didn't they also give themselves over to enhanced neurological stimulation with cultivated and manufactured pharmacological substances that augmented the electrical stimulations to which they were already exposing themselves?”
The Professor nodded again. “You've been studying Duyviwld's account, apparently. He was the astronomer who first intercepted and analyzed the contents of their late assistance beacons—I need not mention the cosmic irony that their desperate radio signaling entailed considerable expenditures of generated electrical energy—but of course by that late date, as we now know, we would have been by their reckoning tens of millennia too late in responding anyway, their planet is as dead today as it's been for thousands of our chrons. —but to your point, yes: pharmacological properties inherent to several floral species only served to augment—to exacerbate and exaggerate and intensify, that is, with the refinements that the chemicals were subjected to—the neuro-electrical stimulations they were deriving otherwise from their ubiquitous electrical devices and electronic appliances.”
An auditor on the front row now spoke. “So, in effect, the demise of proto-intelligent life on the entire planet was due primarily to the propagation of planetary exposure to electrical energy?”
“In its raw, unannealed form, yes,” Professor Vumhksgranzh clarified as he stood up, gathering himself in his robes. “They seem never to have mastered or to have noticed the importance of quantum dynamics in handling electricity, until some interval after they'd finally begun investigating quantum states of biological organisms, by which time it was too late to extrapolate to the macro conditions outside their laboratories. Duyviwld seems to have intuited their unfortunate situation from his first encounter with their cries for help, but by that time ‘spontaneous combustions', as the Tiānxiàns metaphorically termed the physiological and social conditions of neuronal and synaptic overload, had begun breaking out planet-wide.”
As the Professor began to retreat completely into his dark matter recess, he instructed his auditors: “In the next chron we will consider the case of baryonic planet Yapoy-3 and the risks its proto-intelligent occupants assumed in their daring flirtation with Technogenic Climate Change. Be sure to have consulted Gubhwldjag's account and both the primary and secondary analyses from Professor Vuljoxphnrv's studies before we meet.”
-END-
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And the year this takes place is ...2026?
Very interesting.
I read recently that electric lines. etc. can exacerbate heart problems. I also read that Sasquattal seem to be attracted to transmission lines. Are ghosts electric too?
This was great fun to read, vaguely like a Stanislaus Lem piece but original not least for the way it goes at the question of how much fish (us) know about the water (electicity) in which we swim (bathe). (Also I'm a big fan of Lem, for a while his copies of his books just kept showing up in a bookshop near where I used to live, so I'd pick them up like each was some kind of message attached to a lifeline.)
Side note: Pauline Oliveros used to ask audiences at her performances to do an exercise sometimes. Choose a pitch and sing it for the duration of a breath. Then pick another that matches a pitch you heaard while singing your own, and sing that. Generally speaking, she reported somewhere, people would devolve onto a single pitch inside 10 minutes or so and that pitch would invariably be related to the locations ambient voltage. Which we don't generally hear consciously (prolly a dimension of detail we filter out so as to be able to move about in complex environments)...so we bathe in it acoustically too (and we know as much now)....
Egad, what have we here! A preponderance of words containing more than eight letters and some weird vaguely Russian names impregnated with the letter k and others from the bottom of the alphabet. Foking hell!
Love it.
Your way of writing real life in historical/scientific-type contexts is always stellar, Edward. Love the way this piece opens. And here: "'In its raw, unannealed form, yes,' Professor Vumhksgranzh clarified as he stood up, gathering himself in his robes. 'They seem never to have mastered or to have noticed the importance of quantum dynamics in handling electricity, until some interval after they'd finally begun investigating quantum states of biological organisms, by which time it was too late to extrapolate to the macro conditions outside their laboratories.'"
Good writing.
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Dianne: thank you, thank you, and thank you.
Science surmises and satiric pokes aside, while 2026 may be premature, it may be possible by, say, 2096 to learn whether we have been premature in permitting our species to dub itself "intelligent" if it turns out that "proto-intelligent" is itself a generous (self-)attribution.
Thank you again, Dianne, do stay well, and keep up all good work.
stephen: thank you, thank you, and thank you.
Although I'm only now getting around to reading Epictetus, et al., when I wrote this whenever, I had the idea (which remained muted) of an ancient-era outdoor auditorium for such lectures, with views expressed some bit more informed than our own.
The only S. Lem on my shelf is Solaris (which I got to only after Tarkovsky spun his own story with it), I'll aim to look for some of his short fiction next time I'm in a bookstore. --The ambient acoustics of the Oliveros exercise sounds interesting, I can do a web search for that, thanks.
--and thank you again, stephen, do stay well, and keep up all good work.
eamon: thank you, thank you, and thank you.
I do appreciate both your patience and your generosity. I could not claim to have enough actual science at hand to make my satiric point--but the satiric point seems to have survived the ordeal. On the other hand I wrote this some years ago, at a time when I'd persuaded myself that if I didn't spit out some of the vocabulary I'd cultivated and amassed, I was liable to choke on it, so this effort permitted me to indulge in some welcome self-therapeutics.
Thank you again, eamon, do stay well, and keep up all good work.
Sam: thank you, thank you, and thank you.
I guess the catalyst for this piece was the realization that IF (tentatively--awaiting confirmation of the informed surmise that dark matter and dark energy contribute substantively to the physics of our baryonic universe) dark matter and dark energy impinge upon our diminutive corner of reality, then they have done so all throughout our planet's and our galaxy's existence. What interactions with dark matter and/or dark energy across the past six millennia alone could help explain circumstances of the Anthropocene Era? Perhaps possibly maybe we shall one day learn: in the interim, fictional surmises like this.
Many thanks again, Sam, do stay well, and keep up all good work.