Lori Duff Writes

My husband and I were watching Mystery Science Theater 3000.  If you’ve never watched MST3k, please remedy that right away.  It’s basically stupid: the conceit is that it’s the future and this guy is kidnapped by evil scientists who put him on a spaceship and see if they can break his brain by showing him really awful science fiction movies from the 1950s.  The guy builds some robots to keep him company, and the guy and his robot pals make snarky comments while they (and we) watch the horrible movies.  If you’re in the mood for the cotton candy of brain candy – all fluff and funny and zero redeeming value – this is truly where it’s at.

All of which is a long wind up for this pitch: I realized that our current state of being, aside from space travel, is far and above even the imaginations of sci-fi nerds in the 1950s.  In these movies, computers are still huge with a lot of flashing lights.  They have tiny little screens with wavy images.  Communication devices are all wired.  Women are either evil empresses or wasp-waisted arm candy.  The actresses are, presumably, chosen because of how terrifyingly they can shriek when confronted by the bad guys.

Also, apparently, in the 1950s it wasn’t that hard to get a movie made.  I can’t imagine any producer nowadays green lighting this dreck.  Even Tik-Tok wouldn’t let you put up something that bad.

It made me appreciate how far we’ve come.  I know a lot of people who remember the 1950s.  Heck—my own husband does.  In that short time (1950 was only 73 years ago) we’ve gone from airplanes being either military or exotic to highly sophisticated camera-drones being sold in toy stores.  What General Patton would probably have killed for in WWII, you can now buy alongside a Scrabble game. 

I have a watch – a watch! – which will allow me to answer phone calls and to which I can say things like, “Set an alarm for 7:30” or “How old is Chuck Norris” and it will respond accordingly.  Take that, Maxwell Smart’s shoe-phone. 

I’m told that there are nano-bots out there that fold themselves up like origami and can be manipulated to perform micro-surgery.  Set phasers on stun, Scottie.  I’m stunned.

It seems like the more we invent, the quicker the next invention comes on its heels.  My daughter is only nineteen years old – in her lifetime, YouTube was invented and GPS went from a military device to something – again – my watch can do.  The iPod was both invented and became obsolete in that time.  She was alive when smart phones became a thing and, if you remember what your phone was like that long ago, it was a pretty dumb and clunky smart phone.   Still, even the dumbest of smart phones is smarter than the best computer that landed a man on the moon.

Those of you over 40 – remember being excited as a kid to get a pair of walkie-talkies because you could talk to your friend in the other room???  Imagine trying to impress today’s eight-year-old with that.

Of course, technology can be a double-edged sword.  We can find out more or less any piece of information instantaneously wherever we are.  Patience is no longer widely considered a virtue.  We can’t hide from emails and phone calls the way we used to.  It’s harder to go ‘home’ from work.  We can use technology to take the blood out of warfare.  Not that I think face-to-face combat is a good thing, but wiping out a village with a push of a button that activates a remote drone feels more like a video game than what it really is.  At least if you had to look at your enemy, you could see the human in them.  Same with social media – most trolls would never say those things out loud to your face.  No science fiction I’ve ever read imagined that consequence.

Technology can save lives, yes, but it can also make us less human. 

If you enjoyed this and want to read more like it, visit Lori on Twitter or on Facebook or read her award winning books.  You can order her novella, “Broken Things”, by clicking here.  The audiobook can be found on Audible or iTunes.  Look for her novel “Devil’s Defense” coming in August 2024 by She Writes Press.

Lori Duff

Lori B. Duff is an award-winning author who practices law on the side.  Her latest book, “If You Did What I Asked in the First Place” was awarded the Gold Medal for humor in the Foreword INDIES awards in 2019. You can follow her on Twitter at @LoriBDuff and on Facebook. For more blogs written by Lori, click here. For more information about Lori in general, click here. If you want Lori to do your writing for you, click here. If you want Lori to help you market your book, click here.