http://www.cucug.org/amiga/amiinfo/monitor/am1_10htm/solaria.htm (Amiga Plus Extra No. 5, 08/1997)By Kyle Webb, Assistant Editor, KyleWebb@aol.com
In 1956, Isaac Asimov, in The Naked Sun, examined a world colonized by mankind in his conquest of the galaxy. So named "Solaria", the human culture, liberated from toil by the embracing of robot labor, gained prosperity unimaginable, and with it unprecedented leisure. People had vast estates and were surrounded by advanced technologies that made it possible to live longer, healthier, and better. They monitored and controlled their population so as to keep in harmony with their advancing ideals, to avoid the disasters that doomed the ecology of their home planet. They numbered so few, and acquired so much wealth, particularly landholdings, that, evenly dispersed over the globe, their primary mode of communication usurped interpersonal contact. Known as "viewing", a process by which holographic real-time representations interacted and conversed, it isolated a population already zealously guarding itself against the forces that decimated their planet of origin: poverty, overcrowding, and disease. Their entire social structure developed under the auspices of electronic helpers that eliminated the need for face-to-face encounters. Even their birth processes eventually became automated...with the creation of human offspring left in the capable "hands" of robotic surgeons who would harvest the necessary organic materials, and hence "build" new life.
The Solarians maintained a dynamic economy, with a robot population of ten thousand units to each human counterpart. They maintained an assiduous social structure by means of a complex global internet. They prided themselves on their intelligence and their longevity. They prided themselves on their superiority of programming and managing their robots better than any other civilization in the galaxy.
In their pursuit of excellence, they became dehumanized dependent slaves to their machinery, unwilling or unable to perform a task they considered physically laborious.
All but one Solarian died out, victims of their own isolationism (the final human survivor of Solaria, a child who was an end-generation product of advanced intelligence and genetics, never grew old enough to have the insidious Solarian culture imprinted inexorably upon him/her; s/he inherited the unenviable position of Guardian of the Galaxy, but Asimov never got the chance to extrapolate on that concept).
So.
I have seen children who cannot write their names (keyboarding is replacing penmanship).
Online relationships are taking the place of real-life ones (no AIDS, no committments..).
Rendering programs are depopularizing traditional art forms.
Intelligence is becoming an isolated community (is average intelligence welcome in YOUR chat room, except maybe where the kids hang out on AOL?).
The computer society, as a whole, is becoming less healthy: less human contact, less physical exercise, and how's your EMR levels?
The birth rate for average-to-low IQ people is rising...conversely, the birth rate for high-IQ people is falling...draw your own conclusions.
Etcetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum...
Maybe it's time we all took a walk.
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