{"id":1514,"date":"2022-01-15T12:36:18","date_gmt":"2022-01-15T17:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/samaran-daybreak.com\/?p=1514"},"modified":"2022-01-16T17:43:01","modified_gmt":"2022-01-16T22:43:01","slug":"daybreak-dev-diary-social-construction-of-another-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/samaran-daybreak.com\/index.php\/2022\/01\/15\/daybreak-dev-diary-social-construction-of-another-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Daybreak Dev Diary – Social Construction of ‘Another World’"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there’s one trope that’s always bothered me about the modern isekai genre, it’s the technological uplifting<\/em>\u00a0story — which flies in the face of everything I had been taught as an engineer.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Over the years, many readers of Daybreak<\/em> have asked me (or outright demanded by those less polite) why Kaede doesn’t use her knowledge more proactively. The most common request is why doesn’t she just invent firearms to give her side a major advantage in the wars that play just a major role in the story of her life on Hyperion. After all, we have an educated protagonist from the modern world, who has an understanding of so many technological aspects that should be centuries ahead of a medieval world — knowledge that can easily tilt the balance of power and earn herself an indisposable role.<\/p>\n

For a long time I felt baffled by this — shouldn’t it be obvious why such a topic should be handled carefully? Even if we assume that a protagonist could easily summon knowledge worthy of wikipedia (want modern firearms? I challenge you to tell me exactly how to create a percussion cap in a chemistry lab<\/em>). I’ve always felt that a protagonist should actually seek to understand<\/i> the world they’re in before they start introducing any new concepts to alter said world.\u00a0Thus I wrote Kaede as a character who actually seeks to understand a world first, before attempting to change aspects of it — which some readers find unacceptably passive.<\/p>\n

It’s funny how genre standards completely twist expectations.<\/p>\n

It took a while before I realized just how common of a trope ‘technological uplifting’ was, and how widely this power fantasy was abused. It also made me bemoan at the fact so many modern literary circles have basically become an echo chamber, where the same ideas were reflected again and again as they were taken to ever new heights of meta and self-entrenched expectations.<\/p>\n

Why do I say this? Because anyone with even a rudimentary familiarity with the much more established science fiction genre would realize that this is one of the top warning flags. It has been tackled again and again in countless scifi stories, so famous that it became known as the Prime Directive<\/a> of iconic Strek Trek<\/em> series — do NOT interfere with the development of civilizations that are less technologically advanced, especially technological development<\/i>.<\/p>\n

To expand upon this with a few other examples<\/p>\n

“All scientific advancement due to intelligence overcoming, compensating for limitations. Can’t carry a load, so invent wheel. Can’t catch food, so invent spear. Limitations! No limitations, no advancement. No advancement, culture stagnates! Works other way too — advancement before culture is ready, disastrous.
\n“Saw it with Krogan… Krogan could have evolved alone. Worked out aggression. Been ready to use new tech responsibly. Instead Salarians came. Disrupted Krogan culture. Use Krogan as blunt instrument against Rachni. Shortsighted. Foolish. Our fault.”<\/em>
\n– Mordin Solas, Mass Effect<\/em><\/p>\n

“Some very wise people have shown me first hand how a sudden leap in weapons technology by a civilization that’s not ready for it can lead to its destruction.”<\/em>
\n– Daniel Jackson, Stargate SG-1<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And it’s not just science fiction either. When I was still an engineer attending college, the main social science topic we were taught was the theory of Social Construction of Technology<\/a> – the idea that technological development and socio-cultural maturity forms an inseparable, tightly coupled system. In the SCOT view, society and culture must be developed in sync with technology. And if technology pulls ahead then the entire system could become unbalanced and begin to unravel.<\/p>\n

Even in the best case scenario, huge techological change could lead to mass unrest and societal chaos as people’s lives are thrown upside down. An example of this is how the socioeconomic changes of the Industrial Revolution contributed to the chain of sociopolitical revolutions in 19th century Europe, as the traditional, agrarian, village-centric social structure was torn asunder and migrant-laborers flooded into cities. In the worst case scenario, it could collapse the very foundations of civilizations and\/or spark apocalyptic wars.<\/p>\n

Einstein himself would regret<\/a> sending the letter to US President FDR that kicked off the atomic bomb race, a feeling shared by many of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So my question is — why is this topic, which is tackled so thoroughly in more established genres, largely absent in today’s “life in another world” pop literature? Where technology, including weapons technology<\/i>, are often thrown around with such frivolity that it shows zero regard for the existing sociotechnological balance of the people who lived on that world?<\/p>\n

Is it really just all about the power fantasy of a ‘white savior’* complex?<\/p>\n

(*Yes I know the isekai trend started from Japan. But that’s what the literary term is called. It’d probably be more appropriate to update it to ‘1st World Savior Complex’ but that’s too loaded…)<\/em><\/p>\n

This was one of the main reasons why I wrote Kaede as horrified by her own actions in Daybreak, when she realized that even an inadvertent revelation to Pascal led to results that she could not have foreseen. After all, the residents of the new world aren’t NPCs. They will exploit ideas to their own advantage just as people in our own history has done. And if they don’t fully grasp the implications of the knowledge they’re handling, not to mention those riding high on the hype cycle<\/a> because the technology was not given a normal maturation process — it could lead to disastrous consequences from misuse.<\/p>\n

It is also part of why the knowledge Kaede passes to Pascal are largely about how to build better\u00a0institutions<\/em>, aka social technology<\/em><\/a> rather than\u00a0technical technology<\/em>. Unlike technical technology, which can be imitated, copied, and used without really understanding it, social technology requires widespread understand and adoption on a societal scale in order to properly reap its benefits. This means that social technology has more built-in safeguards on responsible use, and is also directly synonymous with culture<\/em> — as the cultural works of a society, from art to music, is a direct reflection of its social technology in use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there’s one trope that’s always bothered me about the modern isekai genre, it’s the technological uplifting\u00a0story — which flies in the face of everything I had been taught as an engineer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[10,15,18,16,17],"class_list":["post-1514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daybreakre-dev-diaries","tag-daybreak-on-hyperion","tag-isekai","tag-prime-directive","tag-social-construction-of-technology","tag-social-constructionism"],"yoast_head":"\nDaybreak Dev Diary - Social Construction of 'Another World' - Samaran Daybreak<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/samaran-daybreak.com\/index.php\/2022\/01\/15\/daybreak-dev-diary-social-construction-of-another-world\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Daybreak Dev Diary - 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