Let’s put up a sign
First, some XKCD:
How exactly do you communicate a hazard? Or anything else? Would it help to "put up a sign"?
It’s a common science-fiction trope for the good guys to encounter some kind of wired-up culture where people have traded individuality for connectivity; Star Trek’s “Borg” being the most famous example. There’s always a big fight where the collective tries to “assimilate” the culture of heroic individuals but in the end individuality always wins out. At least, in stories written by individuals.
I’m not sure that’s how it would play out in the real universe. I’m thinking there wouldn’t be a big battle; the wired-up culture would ply some economic advantage to perfect coordination and win by delivering better goods and services.
I suppose the outcome you expect depends on your theory of economic advantage. If efficiency is everything then yes, The Borg will win every time. If innovation matters most, then you can expect the culture that allows minds to escape to privacy of thought to come up with that big, disruptive surprise that wins the day.
I think about this fairly often because I have to communicate asynchronously with crowds. For instance we’d like people to avoid using the handicap doors during the Winter months (unless of course they actually need them) because the automatic doors stay open long enough to turn our main hallway into a giant icebox. And lacking the budget to hire ten more cleaning professionals, we like to keep coffee drinks out of classrooms and labs. To these ends we put up signs, varying the design to try and get the message across. Our (lack of) success makes me glad we aren’t handling a nuclear reactor. (“Caution! Please stop leaving fuel rods in the break-room refrigerator”)
Information design guru Don Norman capsulizes this experience in three words: “Signs don’t work.” In the XKCD comic above you could put up a sign indicating the hazard and it might actually increase the number of accidents by diverting attention away from the sidewalk. Reading and interpreting signs seems to take place in a different part of the brain than navigating 3-dimensional space. This is why it’s important to design well, do a/b testing and measure results. Slapping any old thing up there only satisfies the need to have a sign to point at, when someone falls in the gap in the sidewalk.
The problem of communication is multiplied when the hazard is something complex and dynamic, like climate change. Or abstract, like the economic consequences of anti-science education. This explains a lot of political speech, which takes the shortcut of presenting some out-group as the object of hatred and fear. Perhaps gays or Muslims put the gap in the sidewalk, and attention is gained by putting a rainbow or a turban on the sign. At this level even the hazard itself can be made-up. There’s no need to be data-driven when your only goal is to get elected.
NOTES:
- (You do read XKCD, don’t you? If not, please consider this recommendation my one good deed for the day.)
- A lot of innovation comes from speculative thinking and stories, but I wonder how fiction would work in the Borg culture. How would anyone get away from the collective long enough to write interesting stories? Or would the whole collective try to do it? If everyone is connected, surprise is impossible. And if they did manage to write fiction, what would it be like?
I’m not sure about this at all. A clash of civilization is generally asymmetric and generally goes to the more collectivist – sometime through coordination by better communication and technology (the Europeans encountering natives be it in America, Africa or Asia), and sometimes because culturally people stay on message (such as deep cultural ties – religious perhaps – that overcome the larger, better equipped force through attrition and will to muster through casualties – like Viet Nam or Afghanistan.)
Results in Viet Nam and Afghanistan are not the triumph of the individual but of the collective.
BTW, I recall an interesting short story – don’t remember the name – where the technology superior humans arrive at a backward planet and immediately start making plans for exploitation.
The native chieftain, in all his resplendent non-technology arrives and says to the spaceship captain, “You will never leave this place”, which the captain interprets as a primitive threat and summarily dismisses the chief, and proceeds with exploitation.
Only later, when they make plans to leave, do the technologists realize that microbes on the planet eat rubber, plastic, metal and technology rendering them helpless and unable to leave.
Huh – can’t believe I have not read that one! Sounds like something Asimov would write. I can think of another one where they found out all life on the planet was collective and was assimilating them. After sterilizing everything they could, they took off, unknowingly carrying some of the planet’s collective life that had ensconced itself into a wire for the journey. All of Earth would have been assimilated except it was the wire that powered the main hatch motor, frying the stowaway.
Of course in Avatar the collective culture – that is the blue people who communicated through plants or whatever, were the victors.
Whoops, I failed to communicate. By the “wired-up culture” – in that example, the Borg – I meant the collective one, not the individualists. I meant that if the Borg actually showed up, they might conquer by efficient trade instead of battle. Much as Wal-Mart has taken over the less-coordinated smaller retailers without firing a shot.
I did some quick research.
I believe the story is called “Beachhead” also goes by “You’ll Never Go Home Again” by Clifford D. Simak (a real uber-nerd and a favorite together with Dick) – if Clifford was Michael Bey, Avatar would have been the result of that short story.
Thanks! I might have that in an anthology.
Heaven forbid Simak were Bey.
There’s also Starman Jones by Robert Heinlein. It has a subplot collective/individualist story, in which several species cooperated and the explorers barely got out by the skin of their teeth.
Oh, and weren’t the bugs in Starship Troopers collective? And the inhabitants of that totalitarian world of A Wrinkle In Time.
Heinlein was a well know Libertarian, although not of the current ilk.
He can be forgiven for polluting my young and impressionable mind with that anti-collectivist drivel.
RE signs: We see divers put up the “A” pennant, and the “Diver Down” flag, (meaning: Keep boat propellers away!) only to have boaters power over to ask what the flags mean.
The thing is, it seems to be common practice to place automatic doors in the most central and prominent section of an entranceway. This might ensure easier handicap access in some cases, it also could be a leftover from earlier times when automatic doors took pride of place as a futuristic “status” feature. Either way, there’s a good chance that your signage is in conflict with non-verbal design cues.