Die Buribunken as science fiction: the self and informational existence

ABSTRACT

This paper takes Die Buribunken seriously as good science fiction. It is argued that it is good science fiction as it provides tropes, images and narratives through which the technological present and possible futures can be comprehended. Specifically, the Buribunks who confidently archive the self, present as a cypher for informational existence. Through learning about the Buribunks’ institutional organisation and deep motivations the various ways that the self becomes recorded in the digital can be mapped. However, the present is not Buribunkian, the self and its data-doubles are fragmented and conflicted, generated by surveillance, the data serfdom of worker-nodes, curatorial social media practices and ‘dark’ activities that try to hide personal responsibility. Nevertheless, the Buribunks drive to master the archive, encapsulates a tendency in the digital towards correspondence and unity within data repositories of the self.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Kieran Tranter, is chair of Law, Technology and Future at the School of Law, Queensland University of Technology. He writes on the cultural imagery that intertwines law and technology. His most recent book is Living in Technical Legality (EUP 2018).

Notes

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2 Schmitt (1918).

3 Schmitt (2019), p 102.

4 Schmitt (2019), p 110.

5 Tranter (2011), p 818.

6 Asimov (1981), p 12.

7 Parrinder (2003), pp xvi-xvii.

8 Suvin (1979), p 4 italic in original.

9 Suvin (1979), p 14.

10 Knight (1967), p 1.

11 Kincaid (2003), p 417.

12 Broderick (1995), p 155.

13 Csicsery-Ronay (2008), pp 2-3.

14 It could been suggested that Die Buribunken is more speculative fiction than science fiction because of its lack of an obvious fantastic technological object. The relation between the more recent term ‘speculative fiction’ and the older science fiction is loose; more a booksellers categorisation to bundle together paperback of science fiction, fantasy and horror genres. That science fiction involves speculation is inherent in the definitions canvassed. What this postulating of a broader speculative fiction genre is a narrowing of the scope of science fiction to hard technological object orientated fictions, like Asimov's robot stories. This would disqualify much of the recognised twentieth century canon of science fiction from the definition; including Asimov's foundation stories, Frank Herbert's Dune and most of Philip K Dick's novels. These novels do engage with speculation around technologies but more broadly about techno-social relations and the soft-technologies of human knowledge and disciplining. Die Buribunken with its presenting a future human and social system organised around the technologies of diary production and dissemination is not a stranger in a strange land in the company of these core science fiction classics. On Asimov's foundation as a parody of historical materialism see Elkins (1976). On the speculation about ‘soft technologies’ in of Dune see Ben-Tov (1995), 115. On Dick's brilliance at science fiction see Stanislaw Lem's equally brilliant exploration of Dick and science fiction as a genre, Lem and Abernathy (1975).

15 The term ‘Future History’ was coined by science fiction editor John W Campbell in 1941 in the editorial of a volume of Astounding Science Fiction. That issue published Robert A Heinlein's short story ‘Universe’ and the associated timeline by Heinlein on how that story fit within other stories and events of future consequence from the 20th to 23rd centuries. See Canary (1974).

16 Schmitt (2019), pp 106–107 footnotes 8 and 9.

17 Herbert (1981), pp 1-3; 452-454.

18 Kennedy (2004), p 44.

19 Schmitt (2019), p 101.

20 Schmitt (2019), p 108.

21 Schmitt (2019), p 110.

22 Schmitt (2019), p 109.

23 Hesse (2000); Roberts (2007).

24 Forster (1909).

25 Caporaletti (1997); Seabury (1997).

26 Schmitt (2019), p 109.

27 Schmitt (2019), p 101.

28 Schmitt (2019), p 102.

29 Schmitt (2019), p 102.

30 Schmitt (2019), p 102.

31 Watt (1996), pp 90-119.

32 Schmitt (2019), p 103.

33 Schmitt (2019), p 103.

34 Schmitt (2019), p 103–104.

35 Schmitt (2019), p 103.

36 Schmitt (2019), p 103.

37 Schmitt (2019), p 100.

38 Piccini (2016), pp 58-68.

39 Schmitt (2019), p 105.

40 Schmitt (2019) p 105.

41 Schmitt (2019) p 107.

42 Schmitt (2019), p 107–108.

43 Schmitt (2019), p 105.

44 Schmitt (2019), pp 107–108.

45 Schmitt (2019), p 107.

46 Schmitt (2019), p 108.

47 Schmitt (2019), p 108.

48 Schmitt (2019), p 110.

49 Schmitt (2019), p 110.

50 Schmitt (2019), p 111.

51 Schmitt (2019), p 110.

52 Schmitt (2019), p 111.

53 Schmitt (2019), p 111.

54 Schmitt (2019), p 111

55 Schmitt (2019), p 112.

56 Schmitt (2019), p 111.

57 Schmitt (2019), p 111.

58 Hobbes (2008), p 44.

59 Tranter (2018), pp 71-72.

60 Shum and Tranter (2017), p 485.

61 Csicsery-Ronay (2008), pp 2-3.

62 Kittler (1999), pp 198-260.

63 Tranter (2011), p 832.

64 Csicsery-Ronay (1988).

65 Cline (2011). Made into a 2018 film directed by Steven Spielberg. Spielberg, Ready Player One, (Warner Bros. Pictures, United States of America, 29 March 2018).

66 Condis (2016).

67 Haraway (1985).

68 On the opposition and possible re-inscription of the liberal man within Haraway's cyborg, see Hayles (2006).

69 Haraway (1985).

70 Braidotti (2006), p 78.

71 Schmitt (2019), pp 111, 112.

72 Kitchin and Dodge (2011); Lyons (2010).

73 Guzik (2013).

74 King (2016).

75 Wadmann and Hoeyer (2018); Klugman et al (2018b); Klugman et al (2018a)

76 Cozine (2013), p 84.

77 Domo ‘Data Never Sleeps 6.0’ (2018) https://www.domo.com/learn/data-never-sleeps-6.

78 The unreadability of data from the 1970s and 1980s is already being noted as a problem for biographers. See for example Menéndez (2016).

79 Cook et al (2014).

80 Iraci (2017).

81 Casey (2014), p 62.

82 Shore and Wright (1999); Wright and Shore (2003).

83 Strathern (2003), pp 2-3.

84 Vismann (2008), pp 88-101.

85 Mehring (2014), p 82.

86 Shore and Wright (2015a), pp 423-426.

87 Fortney (2000).

88 Shore and Wright (2015b).

89 Wagner et al (2006), pp 286-288.

90 Saxena and McDonagh (2017), p 1.

91 Petelin (2008).

92 Skoumpopoulou and Waring (2017), pp 821-825.

93 Prassl (2018), pp 2-7.

94 Petriglieri et al (2019).

95 Wood et al (2019).

96 Pearson and Tranter (2015).

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98 Van Dijck (2013), pp 29-44.

99 Houston et al (2015); Yates and Paquette (2011).

100 Linders (2012); Oliveira and Welch (2013).

101 Tippett (2018); Lăzăroiu et al (2018).

102 Howard et al (2011).

103 Sunstein (2018); Allcott and Gentzkow (2017); Quandt (2018). This is not phenomena restricted to Western nations see Lim (2017).

104 Braun (2017).

105 Siapera (2017), pp 39-59.

106 Chambers (2013); Hooghe and Oser (2015); Cornejo et al (2013).

107 Poletti (2011); Morrison (2011).

108 Ellison et al (2007).

109 Sidani et al (2016); Woods and Scott (2016).

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111 Hogan (2010).

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113 Kang and Wei (2019); Page (2011); Fox and Rooney (2015).

114 Pitcan et al (2018).

115 Pitcan et al (2018), p 170.

116 Dobson (2016).

117 Lambert (2016); Trottier (2012); Bararova and Choi (2014); Duguay (2016).

118 Schmitt (2019), p 112.

119 Braidotti (2006), p 78.

120 Schmitt (2019), p 18.

121 Buckels et al (2014); Dynel (2016).

122 Humphrey (2017).

123 Phillips (2011).

124 Gehl (2016), pp 1225-1226.

125 Lindsköld (2018); Ziccardi (2019).

126 Humphrey (2017).

127 Braidotti (2006), pp 77-79.

128 Lyons (2018), p 835.