The nautilus and capitalism

Science fiction is one of the most popular but at the same time least prestigious of the literary arts, frequently dismissed as a subgenre consumed primarily by young males obsessed by the goriest or oddest possibilities for the future of our species
Yet science fiction is a much-underestimated tool in business; in its utopian versions, it invites us to explore imaginatively what we might want the future to be like – a little ahead of our practical abilities to mould it as we would wish.
Science fiction may not contain precise answers (how actually to make a jetpack or a robot that loves us) but it encourages us in something that is logically prior to, and in its own way as important as, technological mastery: the identification of issues we would like to see solved. Changes in society and business seldom begin with actual inventions; they begin with acts of the imagination, with a sharpened sense of a need for something new, be this for an engine, a piece of legislation or a social movement. The details of change may eventually get worked out in laboratories, committee rooms and parliaments, but the crystallisation of the wish for change takes place at a prior stage, in the imaginations of people who know how to envisage what doesn’t yet exist.
In his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, published in Paris in 1870, Jules Verne narrated the adventures of the Nautilus, a large submarine that tours the world’s oceans often at great depth (the 20,000 leagues – about 80,000 kilometres – refer to the distance travelled). When writing the story, Verne didn’t worry too much about solving every technical issue involved with undersea exploration: he was intent on pinning down capacities he felt it would one day be important to have. He described the Nautilus as being equipped with a huge window even though he had no idea how to make glass that could withstand immense barometric pressures. He imagined the vessel having a machine that could make seawater potable, although the science behind desalination was extremely primitive at the time. And he described the Nautilus as being powered by batteries – even though this technology was in its infancy.

‘Wouldn’t glass shatter at that pressure?’ Keeping certain questions at bay for long enough to shape a vision. Alphonse de Neuville and Edouard Riou, Illustrations for Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, 1871.
Jules Verne was not an enemy of technology. He was deeply fascinated by practical problems. But in writing his novels, he held off from worrying too much about the ‘how’ questions. He wanted to picture the way things could be, while warding off – for a time – the many practical objections that would one day have to be addressed. He was thereby able to bring the idea of the submarine into the minds of millions while the technology slowly emerged that would allow the reality to take hold.
The key mental move in science fiction – ‘what would we want life to be like one day?’ – has traditionally been focused on technology. However, there is no reason why we would not perform equally dramatic thought experiments in quite different fields, in relation to family life, relationships and, as we’re about to do here, capitalism.
Asking oneself what a better version of something might be like, without direct tools for a fix to hand, can feel immature and naive. Yet it’s by formulating visions of the future that we can more clearly start to define what might be wrong with what we have - and set the wheels of change in motion. Through science fiction experiments, we can get into the habit of counteracting detrimental tendencies to inhibit our thinking around wished-for scenarios that seem (in gloomy present moments at least) deeply unlikely. Such experiments are often deeply relevant, because when we look back in history we can see that so many machines, projects and ways of life that once appeared simply utopian have come to pass. Not least Captain Kirk’s phone.

Sometimes ideas drafted in science fiction pave the way for real-life developments. Captain Kirk’s ‘communicator’ from Star Trek. Copyright: NBC Television, 1968
We all have a science fiction side to our brains, which we are normally careful to disguise for fear of humiliation. Yet, as Verne showed us, our visions are what carve out the space in which later developments can occur.
What follows is an attempt to work out aspects of a wiser future for capitalism.

#Capitalism
#Reform
#shi-fi
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#schooloflife
#psyche
#discussion
#Nautilus
#trade