(Anti?) Social Networks

 

Science fiction is, at its most basic, a form of popular entertainment. As such it coexists with and is mediated by the platforms on which that entertainment is presented. Science is also distributed through available media, with the public engaged and influenced through online tools, and science collaboration enabled by both traditional information technology and social media. Since its advent as a mass-user phenomenon, social media has appeared frequently in science fictional narratives. However the representations differ significantly: some early science fiction anticipated some of the benefits of socials, or different directions in which the basic concept might evolve, while other works have emphasised the very real dangers associated with their overuse.

 

Long before social media as we now know it emerged, science fiction was sounding warnings about addictive immersion in broadcast entertainment - and particularly in the lives of others through reality television - with memorable examples including Nigel Kneale’s early television drama The Year of the Sex Olympics (in which audiences watch a family on a remote island) and Doctor Who serial Vengeance on Varos (in which executions, games and political decisions are all compulsory viewing).

 

An interesting projection of future for this kind of broadcast media can be found in a 1979 novel by Norman Spinrad. In A World Between, he considers the role of networked media in events unfolding on the planet Pacifica. A centuries-since-settlement independent human colony, it is a world with a low population density, a number of distinct subcultures, and an interest approach to direct democracy. While Delegates are elected to the governing body of the planet by local constituencies, any issue on which the Chairman’s position is defeated can be taken to an electronic plebicite in which every individual on the planet can vote to either support the Chairman’s position or oppose it. If the former occurs, the governing council is disbanded as unrepresentative. If the latter, the Chairman must resign. The planet’s stability is enhanced by its position as the hub of a faster-than-light instantaneous communication network known as the Web, which links every human world, despite the limitations of slower-than-light travel between them. The people of Pacifica are mass producers of material for the Web, which is described as a mixture of broadcast channels, news and conversation forums.

 

This system works well, with minimal conflicts, until the planet is visited by representatives of two interplanetary movements determined to win Pacifica over to their philosophies. Both the Transcendental Scientists (a male-dominated and highly chauvanist organisation) and the Femocrats (a lesbian society who keep genetically degenerate males as breeders only) make use of the constitutional right of every individual to access the communications web to broadcast propaganda, polarise the population along gender lines, and foment dissent, while the planet’s political leaders - Chairman Carlotta Madigan and her life partner Minister of Media Royce Lindblad - try to navigate a middle path. In the end, the positions of both extreme movements are held up to ridicule, and the Pacifican way of life wins through [Note: while a little off-topic for this blog entry, in the wider context of science and SF it should be noted that one of the positions shown to be hollow by the end is the idea that male dominance of science reflects innate a significant difference in genetic predisposition to the field.].

 

While the focus in the book is on broadcast media, rather than text or direct social networks, the bombardment of information and imagery the population is subjected to is effectively portrayed through word pictures throughout, and elements of group think and peer pressure are described. The media participants on Pacifica plug directly into the Web through neural interfaces and there is discussion of media cafard - a malaise of disconnection from reality that results from over-immersion in the media barrage. In many respects, this represents an early vision of our social media environment as extrapolation from the proliferating media channels of the time.

 

However while this may appear prescient it is by no means the earliest example. The Machine Stops by E M Forster (Novella, 1909), famously describes a human race who occupy individual cells in vast, honeycomb-like underground structures. The majority, like the focus character Vashti, never dream of leaving their cell physically and instead lead a rich and varied social life mediated through communications media. They can watch programmes, join discussions, deliver lectures, broadcast musical performances and otherwise interact in a manner extremely similar to today’s social media environment:

 

“There were buttons and switches everywhere—buttons to call for food, for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorised liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

Vashti's next move was to turn off the isolation-switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Had she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one's own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date?—say this day month.”

 

Most characters flick between different communications (or start their own) frequently, often deciding very quickly whether to stop and focus their attention or move on to new content in constant search of original “ideas.” Notably Vashti does not find ideas in observation of mountains for the first time, or indeed anything outside her own experience. Her viewpoint is voiced by another lecturer:

 

“Those who still wanted to know what the earth was like had after all only to listen to some gramophone, or to look into some cinematophote. And even the lecturers acquiesced when they found that a lecture on the sea was none the less stimulating when compiled out of other lectures that had already been delivered on the same subject. "Beware of first-hand ideas!" exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. "First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element—direct observation. ”

 

The prescience of this story has been noted over recent years, although - like all science fiction - it reflects an extension of the status quo: a projection of the impact of increased connectivity enabled by telegram and news media in the early twentieth century.

 

However alongside the massive interconnectedness of the city cells in The Machine Stops, they are confining and encourage a disengagement with reality. The characters show a deep reluctance to consider the outside, or even to recognise signs that the machine (reverenced as an effective deity) enabling their survival may be wearing down. The only hope for the future lies with the few individuals, like Vashti’s son, Kuno, who reject immersion into a virtual world and instead seek to learn what lies beyond the cities.

 

Examples from the 1980s or 1990s begin to come still closer to modern social media. Some, like the feature film Tron (1982, dir. Lisberger), Terry Pratchett’s children’s novel Only You Can Save Mankind (1992), or “Better than Life” (1988), an episode in the science fiction television comedy series Red Dwarf (BBC TV, 1988-1999), edge in this direction with shared multiplayer video games in which many characters can interact in a shared and common space as if in the real world - a common feature of both early online social games such as MUDs (multi-user dimensions) and MMORGs (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games) and virtually a default for many large online games today (e.g. World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Among Us, Star Wars: The Old Republic etc are all MMOs). As the SF anticipated, these are used as much for communication and socialisation as they are for the actual gameplay and hence act as a de factor social network. Early science fiction narratives usually portray these games as totally immersive - overriding perception of the outside world entirely, and often involving brain implants or similar. While this differs from the screen-based games most often used today, many gamers will wear headphones, and often play in darkened rooms, narrowing their focus exclusively to the virtual environment, and leading to a similar net effect. [Note: while gaming gloves and VR goggles are sold, and are much more affordable now than in the past, their promise to become an integral part of participating in virtual spaces has not been realised.]

Many of these examples build (either directly or indirectly) from the cultural milieu formed by early cyberpunk fiction works. William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) introduced the term cyberverse, imagining a grid structure of data blocks and servers that hackers can move between and interact with. This is not social media, but it nonetheless imagined the potential of a connected and shared virtual environment. Moving closer to social media, Neal Stephenson’s influential novel Snowcrash (1992) introduced the term Metaverse (now adopted by the parent company of social networks facebook and instagram). This described an evolved form of internet in which characters interact through avatars in a single shared world that is perceived through virtual reality equipment including gloves or goggles. This total immersion form of network parallels the anarchic capitalist reality in which the novel’s character’s exist and move about, with transport, streets (notably the Street), bars and other venues where avatars interact. It has its own subcultures and societies. The novel’s lead character, named (with knowing satire) Hiro Protagonist, is simply a delivery driver in the real world, but a major player and authority in the metaverse. Hence he becomes involved when snowcrash - a digital narcotic with the potential to cause lasting physical damage in the real world - begins to circulate.

 

Snowcrash has been credited as one of the inspirations for the subsequent development of virtual worlds and shared online spaces, including the huge massively multiplayer online game and/or virtual world Second Life (released by Linden Labs in 2003), in which socialisation and co-creation is the game objective rather than a side benefit (putting it firmly in the social network category).

 

Seaquest DSV was amongst the first television series to show a screen-based online social domain, with the child-genius character Lucas revealed as a user of the game-environment ?? in the episode “Photon Bullet” (1993). This describes an online community, Node Three, that occupies a shared virtual space in which individual users each had a visual avatar (portrayed with impressively low resolution graphics) and chatted casually to other players. Lucas is tempted to join this community of adolescent geniuses, where he feels needed, but discovers that the community is engaging in criminal activity online - an early example of science fiction addressing the risks of peer pressure and radicalisation in social media.

 

A similar theme was picked up in the recent BBC radio podcast near-future drama series Power Out, written by Sarah Woods (2020). This followed a young character who appears to be involved with an online group of extremists who are destroying the UK’s power network - causing serious problems, threat to life and misery. As gradually becomes clear, the group have become radicalised by environmental concerns, but their coalition and planning are all enabled by a digital text-based forum environment. As with many of the previous examples, including Lucas in seaQuest, Hiro in Snowcrash and Case in Neuromancer, the lead character Sean is a hacker - someone who not only consumes social media but interacts with and modifies it and with other computer systems.

 

A number of recent science fictions, written in response to the impact of modern social media on society, have focussed instead on consumers of social media - the role which now describes the majority of us.

 

The potentially positive role of social networks in connecting those with common interests or ideas is picked up in some science fictions. Terry Pratchett’s Only You Can Save Mankind demonstrates how shared online spaces could provide a comfort, escape and bond between young people in need of support. Similarly, while the science fiction comedy film Galaxy Quest (??) begins as a satire of science fiction fan culture, it ends with an affectionate celebration of it. A subplot in the story involves a group of teenagers who use internet chat boards and forums - early social networks - to exchange technical information, their enjoyment in the subject of their fandom, and also friendship and a sense of community. This group proves pivotal in the conclusion of the plot.

 

A more philosophical approach can be seen in Diane Duane’s Rihanssu novel series. These take place in the Star Trek universe and represent a rare appearance of social media in that context. The Rihanssu (or Romulans) begin as a rebel group who reject the logical teachings that come to dominate the planet Vulcan. During their odyssey through space to find a new home planet, the philosophies, concepts and identities that come to define the Rihanssu are shaped through online discussion forums and conversation boards which bring together those with common ideas and consolidate their worldviews. The Rihanssu books have been rendered non-canonical by Star Trek television series from ST:The Next Generation onwards, but still represent a fascinating insight into a very well developed and distinctive culture.

 

A less positive view has come to dominate in recent years. A similar culture building exercise, although one with a far more negative outcome, is undertaken through the community discussion boards and online communities of the Arkies in Neal Stephenson’s novel SevenEves. Here the few survivors of a global apocalypse comprise a mature population in a space station and a much younger demographic occupying a swarm of small Arklets. A politician uses the social media network that connects the Arklet swarm as a tool to radicalise and integrate the Arkies into a political constituency that will support her.

 

Moving to television, Black Mirror is a speculative fiction anthology series which started in 2011 and continues to be produced. It focuses on near future, technology-driven and social dystopias, often presented with satire and dark humour. The episode “Nosedive” was broadcast in 2016 and imagined a near future in which an individual’s socioeconomic status rating can be modified by others via smartphone as a result of every interaction. This rating is decisive in access to services, medical treatment, transport and other resources. The drama in this case follows the downward spiral of a character, Lacie, whose obsessive attempts to raise her status ranking lead to a series of incidents which instead send it into a progressive downwards spiral. Reacting with increasing desperation, her actions exacerbate the problem and her rating eventually dives so low that she is imprisoned. Only then does Lacie find herself able to interact with others naturally, without a constant fear of the impact on her ratings.

 

While Black Mirror is well regarded, it doesn’t reach a large mainstream audience. The long-running television drama Doctor Who is perhaps more impactful, and in recent years has sounded warnings about the potential impact of social media. In the recent special episode “The Giggle” (2023), David Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor confronts the Celestial Toymaker. This occurs during an outbreak of irrational violence, selfishness and obsessive behaviour in which everyone believes they are right and refuses to listen to alternative viewpoints. This proves to be the result of a satellite launch, which closes a gap in global media coverage and means that “for the first time everyone on the planet is connected to a screen.”. The parallel between social media interactions and the polarised viewpoints underlying the violence is not drawn explicitly but is heavily implied.

 

This theme was taken up the following year. The episode “Dot and Bubble” (2024) focuses on a young woman, Lindy Pepperbean, who lives in a colony for affluent young people. Her world (and those of her peers) is mediated by a literal holographic bubble of screens and images which surrounds her head and blocks her view of the real world. This bubble allows her to watch videos, send video messages, interact with others individually or in groups, and even instructs her on where and how to walk between places (since she can’t see to make her own way). Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor is forced to try to break into this virtual environment in order to make Lindy and others aware that her city has in fact been invaded by monstrous slugs, which are consuming people in plain sight - but unseen because of the social media bubble.

 

The message here is not subtle - the social media world is everything, influencers and shallow conversations abound, all reinforcement is positive, and the people of the city cannot see the monsters consuming them literally in front of their faces. However a painful twist towards the end does provide an additional warning of the more subtle dangers of social media bubbles. It becomes clear that not only does the bubble environment promote selfishness, self-indulgence and false positive reinforcement, it also normalises negative biases and provides an echo chamber in which the humanity of anyone outside the bubble can be denigrated. By the end of the episode, the image of self and society initially projected within the bubble world is shown to be not just hollow but deeply toxic.

 

“Dot and Bubble” showed social media leaving a society vulnerable to monsters (both physical and metaphorical). However some narratives have gone further, demonstrating its lethality to entire societies. In some cases this is absolute. The ongoing audio adaptation of television series Space:1999 by Big Finish Productions recently included the audio drama “The Godhead Interrogative”, written by Nicholas Briggs (2024). In this, the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha find first a ship and then a planet full of aliens who each died as a result of the explosion of silicon beads which formed in their own brains. These prove to be the result of the “Godhead” - a machine designed to produce a tightly interwoven telepathic communications network between the members of a culture. The coda at the ending of the story drives this point home rather heavy-handedly [Note: The interviews with writer and actors that accompany the drama addresses the social media mirror directly. The writer, Nicholas Briggs notes that “It’s what humans always do. Our ability to create new and challenging things always exceeds our emotional maturity to deal with them.”]. A transmission affecting the Alphans proves to be asking “How is your life today?” and the characters discuss the implications:

Russell: “Strange. That they want to link themselves together like that. To know so much about each other in maybe the most minute detail. Every thought, every feeling, every experience.”
Bergman: “Sounds distinctly unhealthy to me.”
Simmons: “Agreed!”

Koenig: “I guess we’re just lucky that nothing like that was ever invented on Earth!”

 

Stephanie Saulter’s Gemsigns (and its sequels, novels, ??) explored a future in which genetically modified humans designed for specific applications fight for equal rights and status. This situation develops as a result of the Syndrome - an epidemic of neurological disorders that sweeps the planet in the early twenty-first century, striking down adolescents and young adults and ultimately proving lethal to all its victims. As we’re told

 

“The incidence of the Syndrome mapped perfectly onto the worldwide growth of what the previous century had dubbed information technology. It occurred where children had, from infancy, been exposed not only to a plethora of computing and communications devices, but to the immense load of interactions, analysis and responses they demanded, and the radio frequencies over which they travelled. Its distribution through the socioeconomic strata of every nation-state matched the degree not just of exposure but of immersion.”

 

In Saulter’s world, an initial instinct to reject most information technology, including social media, proves impossible to sustain without global socioeconomic disaster, and so the remaining population has to accept genetic modification of human embryos to cope with continued use of technology including “socialstreams”. An entire generation nonetheless dies. The demographic and economic disaster that results from the Syndrome, together with the new acceptability of genetic engineering, leads to the commercialisation of genetically modified humans - or Gems - and the restructuring of society. The socialstreams survive - and reposting, newsfeeds and conversation forums are all discussed and used by the characters - but humanity has been forced to fundamentally change in order to retain them.

 

These narratives are more extreme in their predictions for the results of over-immersion than the mere media cafard described in Norman Spinrad’s A World Between. They nonetheless represent a recognisable descendant of the same concept - and the same warning.

So social media has been anticipated, examined, celebrated and extrapolated in science fiction, but how does this bear on its relationship to the sciences themselves (and hence the remit of this blog)?

 

Science exists within the context of society, and both influences and is influenced by it. Perhaps most importantly, the development of research in the sciences is fundamentally influenced by the connectivity of communities, the free and efficient transfer of information and the availability of expertise with which to collaborate. Online connectivity, discussion forums and the social media they evolved into form part of this cultural milieu. While the primary form of communication for most scientists is still email, modern scientific collaborations see increasing use of networking and messaging tools such as Zoom, Slack or Discord. More traditional social media are also called into action as discussion forums, both to advertise scientific work and to develop new collaboration. On Facebook, closed groups exist for professional astronomers, those involved in massive star research and others. Both Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), BlueSky, Mastodon and others are frequently used to highlight academic papers and to discuss current research with peers. This informal, international connectivity can be instrumental in the development of new collaborations and research concepts.

 

Social media also plays a key role in science communication to the public. NASA, ESA, ESO, NOAA and many other major organisations have long maintained a suite of social media accounts. Their use varies from straightforward announcements of press releases and new projects to acting as personifications of space probes or other anthropomorphised objects of scientific relevance. Science communicators have built up huge followings on Twitter, YouTube and other platforms, allowing them to reach communities which may traditionally be disengaged from academic research. Social media has also provided a platform for scientists and science communicators to build a potential audience and justify publication of popular science books.

 

However social media is also recognised to have negative impacts on the popular perception of science. Disinformation and inaccurate facts can spread as quickly as scientific information, and the polarising, echo-chamber effects of self-selecting social networks can lead to unjustified radicalisation against misunderstood scientific progress (as demonstrated by the anti-vaxx or climate change denial movement), as well as more scientifically-justified but still socially damaging radicalisation on scientific topics such as climate change concerns. This disinformation role of media was highlighted by Spinrad in A World Between, but also in the corruption of information and mutual (but unjustified) mutual reassurance in “Dot and Bubble” or “The Machine Stops” which leads to the shared perceptual reality diverging from that outside the social network.

 

The connection between science and social media is widely researched, and examples of such studies are frequently reported at academic conferences or in magazine articles or reports (see for instance the examples here in the field of astronomy). In this context, the science fiction narratives discussed above provide (as is so often the case) a cautionary tale which reminds us that new developments - including the information and social media overload of the early twenty-first century - may have negative as well as positive outcomes. In many cases, as in Galaxy Quest or Only You Can Save Mankind or the Rihanssu novels, online community serves an important role in community building for marginalised individuals and a forum for the exchange of information. However in more the risks to society outweigh the benefits in terms of scientific development and communication (as in Doctor Who, SeaQuest DSV, The Machine Stops and many others). Perhaps the most interesting approach to such a cautionary tale is found in Saulter’s Gemsigns. This recognises that contemporary information overload and social media amounts to a global experiment (socially and physically) which could have massively negative consequences. Nonetheless, the medical and scientific solution relies on international scientific collaboration, information transfer and the continued existence of communications and media infrastructures. In other words, social media and online communities form an essential component of the modern world, and this is unlikely to be reversed - but that our self-identity as cultures or even as humans may need to adapt to accommodate it.

 

Social media is now part of the culture and practice of science, just as it is of society as a whole. As the science fiction writers of more than a century have warned, it is a natural evolution of the ever growing dependence of modern society (and modern science) on information transfer and communication. While the individual social media networks, their focus and their technology have evolved (perhaps never quite reaching the potential of full virtual reality immersion), and will no doubt continue to do so, they nonetheless look like being a permanent feature of our contemporary society. Radical shifts in social structure would be needed to reverse this trend. So while science continues to communicate both internally and externally through social media, it is important to consider both the best and the worst potential outcomes of its use. Science fiction provides an avenue for such consideration.

 

“(Anti?) Social Networks”, Elizabeth Stanway. Cosmic Stories blog. December 2024

 

Notes: