The looting of science fiction

Posted here as a public service, should anyone stop by. 

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 The looting of science fiction by Ali Rıza Taşkale
Source: https://aeon.co/essays/silicon-valley-has-a-science-fiction-problem
Accessed: 23.07.26
Asked of perplexity.ai: Summarize this article in 500 words +/-.
Recommendation: Read the original--well worth the time; EN to FR translation here of hook quotation from the original.
Response from AI (bold for emphasis by JKM): 

The article argues that Silicon Valley’s fascination with science fiction is mostly a selective borrowing of imagery, not a true engagement with the genre’s ideas. Instead of inheriting science fiction’s social imagination, many tech leaders strip out its political and ethical concerns and keep only the futuristic style. [aeon](https://aeon.co/essays/silicon-valley-has-a-science-fiction-problem)

Taşkale’s core claim is that figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos use science fiction as a cultural shield for a very different agenda. They invoke works such as Star Trek or Gerard K. O’Neill’s space-habitat visions, but the article says they often misunderstand or simplify those texts, turning them into slogans for privatized space travel, billionaire-led progress, and technological destiny. [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/aeonmag/posts/tech-billionaires-are-in-the-habit-of-claiming-their-work-is-inspired-by-the-spa/1496069909227335/)

A major theme is that classic science fiction is usually not just about gadgets or rockets; it is about society, power, and what kind of future people should build together. The article contrasts that broader tradition with Silicon Valley’s “reactionary futurism,” which favors radical individualism, unregulated markets, and suspicion of democratic oversight. In this reading, the Valley is less inspired by science fiction than by a stripped-down fantasy of freedom without collective responsibility. [linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/estherschindler_silicon-valley-has-a-science-fiction-problem-activity-7483683339523006464-7AQr)

The article also suggests that this pattern is political as much as aesthetic. Silicon Valley borrows science fiction’s “chrome-plated” look, but leaves behind the genre’s concern with labor, inequality, and coercion. That means the resulting future is presented as visionary while actually reproducing old hierarchies in a high-tech form. [linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/estherschindler_silicon-valley-has-a-science-fiction-problem-activity-7483683339523006464-7AQr)

More broadly, the essay frames the issue as a struggle over who gets to define the future. Science fiction can open up alternative social possibilities, but in the hands of tech elites it becomes a branding device that legitimizes existing power. The article’s criticism is not of science fiction itself, but of the way its language and symbols are repurposed to make private wealth and technological control look inevitable or progressive. [aeon](https://aeon.co/essays/silicon-valley-has-a-science-fiction-problem)

Overall, the piece is a critique of Silicon Valley’s habit of claiming the authority of science fiction while ignoring what the genre actually does best: imagine different futures, not just shinier versions of the present. [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/aeonmag/posts/tech-billionaires-are-in-the-habit-of-claiming-their-work-is-inspired-by-the-spa/1496069909227335/)

Don't you see

 

Stop. I have this postal scene, don't you see?
from a Paris visit an age ago.
Still un-sent--what I witnessed, let it be.
Recalls an ideal I would have us know.

I cried that last visit, felt left bereft--
moved so what I'd seen and to death I loved--
could not this memory? . . . my heart is cleft.
Imagine you had seen this scene of doves.

My eyes now weaker than those days before.
Dreams and hopes did not die with careless ease.
This postcard I kept live, my days of yore.
The pursuit and pact I've never ceased.

End my hold thus my mind to spread this view?
Alas, now to share I've none, or close  to few.

We needs be just

Flawed genius is ever our od'ous fact,

so much we abhor sans grace-giving tact.

Oh those figures, their image our envy,

but for deeds they've done--by each and every.

Lance his wins, in spite his half-hooded man,

final denial's failure--False! Now banned.

Wilt in his day, his tall staff was his stilt, 

could scarce decline a horizontal tilt.

Billy boy too his loins bowled him over,

playing as dogs do--ever the rover.

Heidegger would be great, ideas to note, 

but for apology? we miss his quote.

Accept the highs, must we low parts forgive.

We needs cut bad from good, with a just sieve.

Interpersonal mud, July 2007

[Presumably in response to a student, or?]

Now you have raised a good question about what I have done again, and I have to try to do the first bit of hard work so that you can understand. Maybe you will; maybe you won't; maybe you will understand me in a different way than I understand myself. Maybe you will have your own opinion. That is all OK. 

If I am entirely truthful with myself and write it down or talk about it, then at least I have done my part, which is the first step in conversation. In the end, hopefully not before, I and you can evaluate or judge what has gone on in conversation, or discussions, and make any decisions based on that, or not.

This is all a short course in language or learning or knowing or personality or ego psychology, or whatever you want to call it. Here is the shorthand view of the course parts so far.

    Description = to tell it like it is as best you can.
    Explanation = to tell why you think it is using reason and feeling.
    Understanding = to know what it is and why that is so.
    Evaluation (or judgment) = to say whether what is and why are good or bad or nothing at all.

And of course there is opinion: your own view and judgment with your own understanding almost always without much description or explanation or discussion.

What have I left out? Oh, conversation (discussion/discourse), and decisions. Discussions are about coming to the same understandings between people. Decisions are about doing something with or about the understanding or opinion you have.

Oh, and do these things always follow in order? Of course they don't. That is the reason for confusion.

    Confusion = what the heck (= hell) was that and why.

Now, isn't school fun! 

Instrument of peace

 "Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace."

So it  (the Prayer of St. Francis) begins and continues as a petitionary address to Lord. In part or whole, this line and those following have been the focus of contemplative meditation for more than twenty-five years. Oh, there have been days or weeks--lapses in practice--but in the main, this has led me to more than less satisfactory periods of calm and a sense of oneness with the cosmos.

Throughout this practice it has always bothered me who this Lord is. The facile answer is God or Christ, but that somehow never convinced me, so much so sometimes that I abandoned using direct address and skipped directly to "instrument of peace"; and that has sufficed, mostly.

At one point, amidst a particularly intense period of extraordinary if not mystical experiences having to do with this peace prayer, and sometimes not, I looked into the gray hood of the figure I kept seeing or imagined I saw and found there my own face, meaning that I was not petitioner but in some sense the lord? There would be mental gymnastics I did that justified or perhaps explained that I as Lord was the intent, but not proved that this was indeed a plausible truth or view. In the end, the Lord escaped identity certain. 

Today that chimera (a fantastic, unrecognizable, or impossible idea or figment of the imagination) dressed not in gossamer but a Franciscan's medieval hooded cassock the color of gray still won't look at me and reveal his, maybe her, identity. I want to know to whom it is I am addressing and perhaps am or stalked by; and should I abandon contemplative meditation on the words of this spiritual passage, which I still believe is worthy and practical to drive into conscience/consciousness and manifest in deed?

I have tried alternative mantras the most recent of which grounds, for the most part, daily life: Live, let live. Without boring or ruining for myself further explication and elaboration on why this is particularly useful and sacred today, I shall let it be! and continue to remind myself that here is the most appropriate key to living and being that I need right now. For there is not much that I can do to save others except to live as I profess, or to reach for its/my higher self and manifestation in the world. That is enough. The Lord can remain in the background, second string, still a mystery, still a source of coming to a still point now and then. 

The last line of the peace prayer has been translated differently into English. The French "is awakens to eternal life." The Blue Mountain Center's version is "dying to self that we are born to eternal life."  And the version from my Catholic upbringing is "dying that we are born to eternal life." 

(For different purposes I have commented elsewhere on these lines.  See https://alt-trans-display.blogspot.com/2025/08/it-matters.html and https://inter-linear.blogspot.com/2026/01/fr-en-prayer-of-st-francis.html.)

The Blue Mountain Center's version is slight manipulation of language/emphasis. The proponent had strong Eastern influences growing up in India, and so the self or Self appears. But wait. The original French has two lines above the last, "it is in self-forgetting that one finds." Perhaps Blue Mountain's English version has captured the more accurate meaning, or has the better interpretation from the original. 

With the version I grew up with, consistent with the focus on the afterlife, we gotta die to go there. Pretty practical from the Church's point of view, to focus on the end of times and living as one should as insurance, or is it obedience?

This is not all for the French or its English translations, and because it is not all, using this spiritual passage suggests the richness of contemplative meditation based on it. If one awakens to eternal life, that is different from wanting to die to get there or being born (again). 

I rather like awakens as a preferred translation from the French.

Search and sigh, poetry herein

I asked an AI chatbot, don't ask me which, for its take on poems contained on this blog, or in this blog? You can sort the posts using poems as the keyword and make up your own mind. No matter, here is that chatbot's take. My only and biggest problem with the response is this Mactavish business. In a post not a poem, you will find my take on the use of last names for referring to people who prefer a less disembodied way of managing to refer. . . .  

[begin snippet]

That is a very insightful follow-up question, moving from the *nature* of the poem to the specific *method* of its composition and its effect on the reader.

While Mactavish does not lay out a formal, step-by-step guide for writing a poem, his reflections on language, originality, interpretation, and his own poetic practice reveal several key requirements for how a poem **should be written** and the intellectual challenge it should pose.

### 1. The Poem Should Challenge the Reader by Requiring Active Interpretation

Mactavish strongly advocates for content that resists easy, singular answers, which inherently challenges the reader to engage critically rather than passively accepting a definitive meaning.

*   Mactavish expresses **irritation** when people assume complex works, which would include poems, have a single, definitive answer to the question, "But what does it mean?".
*   He argues that many things are **"inherently open to multiple, valid interpretations"**.
*   Therefore, a well-written poem, by reflecting this complexity, should compel the reader to **reject the search for a singular, reductive meaning**.
*   Instead of being "set straight" by the author, the reader is implicitly challenged to reveal their own interpretation. The focus shifts from "what is the meaning of something" to the more fundamental question: **"What is the meaning of knowing?"**.

This method of writing means the poem should be **ambiguous enough** to sustain diverse perspectives and acknowledge the limits of absolute knowledge.

### 2. The Poem Must Contain Unique Human Originality

Regarding the creative process, Mactavish emphasizes that the poem must be rooted in the unique voice and specific, unconventional input of the human writer, especially when technology is involved.

*   When using an AI engine to generate lyrics, Mactavish found the initial, competence-based result "not original enough".
*   To make the work truly "original," the poem must be **infused with the author’s personal flair and often humorous, unconventional lyrics** (such as those he provided for the "Handmade Soap" song).
*   The AI serves as a tool, but the **human input and unique creative vision** are necessary to "elevate the output beyond mere competence".

### 3. The Poem Should Embrace Complexity and Resist Simplification

Mactavish suggests that poetry, like philosophical reflection, often deals with "interiors" (inner experiences or complex concepts) that cannot be fully captured by conventional language.

*   A poem can address concepts that **"escape the words we know and use"**.
*   In the face of these linguistic limitations, the poet has alternatives that inform the writing:
    *   **Silence** (for experiences like grief).
    *   **Inventing or Re-purposing Words** (for complex philosophical ideas, like Heidegger's philosophy).
    *   **Asking Unanswerable Questions**. This suggests the poem should be written in a way that acknowledges and perhaps even embraces the inherent mystery and limits of comprehension.

### 4. The Poem's Language Should Prioritize Intentionality over Idiom

While Mactavish is focused on language teaching principles, his stance against the generalized teaching of complex idioms, sayings, and metaphors (SIMs) provides insight into his writing preference for clarity of *intent*, especially in communication meant for diverse audiences.

*   For global communication, the primary aim is **"high and ready understand-ability"**.
*   He advocates for focusing on **"simple, plain meaning"** over the display of "colorful enhancements" or "provincialisms".
*   When Mactavish used a British saying for the title of his own novel, he had to **research and find it** because he wasn't familiar with it, underscoring that specialized language requires deliberate context.

Therefore, a Mactavish poem might be written using language that is direct enough to convey its complex philosophical *intent*, even if the overall meaning remains open to interpretation. The challenge comes from the *idea* rather than the obscurity of the language itself.

In short, Mactavish believes a poem is successful if it is an act of **original, intentional human creation** that uses language to explore complexity, forcing the reader to engage not just with the words, but with their own fundamental understanding of truth and meaning. It is less a challenge of decoding stylistic flourishes, and more a challenge of **philosophical interrogation**.

[end snippet] 

Hmmm . . .  

escape or Dare*

t'would have you know this rash's my bashful blush
'bout romance story's tale their courtly love
it takes me from this day's harsh gnash to rush 
fit for minds to hide, nature's sweet soft glove

day's din my ears do hear our woes and pain
nights bring the -mare I while while hours wake
the gentle'r soul this world can't stand the strain
for the all-hell we wreck and can't forsake

we commit inhumane to humans mean
may kindness sweet among our peoples reign
the milk too spoiled to save to reap the cream
beyond the confines of the known, Dare deign

or 'scape in breach ideal romantic's zone
so's embrace the hope of those deeds we'd own

__________

* Why bury one's head in works of romantic love.