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mbarkerWriting Excuses 19.22: Technology and Identity (A Close Reading on Worldbuilding)
Key points: Technology of identity, how identity works in the story and in your work! What is your concept of you, and of other people as individuals? Imago technology, ancestral personal knowledge. The cloud hook. The city AI or algorithmic intelligence. Gee whiz, what a cool technology versus technology tied to and integrated with character and theme. Think about what you want to communicate in your book, what are the themes, and how does the technology tie into that. Remember that different characters will have different perspectives on the technology. Take an idea, and then push it, consider variations on it. What kind of complications, stories, problems, and recipes does it create? What happens when it goes wrong, when it fails, when it is abused, when the protections slip?
[Season 19, Episode 22]
[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.
[Season 19, Episode 22]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] A Close Reading on Worldbuilding, Technology and Identity
[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.
[Erin] Because you're in a hurry.
[Howard] And we're not that smart.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I'm DongWon.
[Erin] I'm Erin.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
[Howard] We are talking about A Memory Called Empire. During this close read, we're exploring the technology of identity and how identity enters into the story and how these things, most importantly, really, will enter into your own work. I would like to lead with one of my favorite moments in the book. Gonna paraphrase a little bit, and then read a line. They're talking about the imago technology on Lsel Station, where someone else's memories, multiple generations of someone else's, can be embedded in you. You have these people, these identities, as voices in your head, for lack of a better term. Someone asks the protagonist, Mahit, "Are you Yskandr or are you Mahit?" After a bit of navelgazing, Mahit says, "How wide is the Teixcalaanli concept of you?"
[Chuckles]
[Howard] I love that question. Ask yourself, fair listener, how wide is your concept of yourself? How wide is your concept of another person as an individual? Because when we start talking about technological modifications to our minds, and it is entirely possible that you are holding in early generation of one of those in the form of your smart phone, the question of what do we mean by you, what do I mean by me, becomes super fun to explore. Arkady Martine does a brilliant job of it.
[Mary Robinette] So, I'm going to just briefly pause, because I realize that we've been so embedded in this book that we actually are using imago as if it's an everyday term.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Imago is basically, it's a small machine that nestles in the base of a person's head and it carries the memory of their predecessors. The id… Some of that memory is personality, and they're matched with someone who has a similar personality. The idea is that you get… It's like having a mentor that just goes with you everywhere. One of the things that I love about this, and this idea of you, that you're talking about, is that they have very clear ideas of what an appropriate use of this technology is. That you are trying… The people who pick someone to be added to this imago line… So you may have, like, 14 generations of people giving you their advice and wisdom. But each one becomes… They integrate. So… They spend a year integrating so that they're working altogether. They're carefully selected so that they have similar personalities. There are also these very clear ideas of what is appropriate use for this and what is taboo or gross. It's… It is a lovely piece of worldbuilding. Because the other thing that happens is that then we see what the Teixcalaanli reaction to the imago is, that they find it quite appalling that you would modify yourself in any way, shape, or form. But then their ideas of what to do with it are, in turn, appalling to the L… The…
[DongWon] People of Lsel.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Lsel.
[DongWon] I think it's been pretty clear, my lens on reading this book has come up over the course of this close reading series, has been one where I'm really thinking about this in terms of Empire and immigration and assimilation. Right? One of the things I love about the idea of the imago is it is about generational knowledge. It's about a connection to your ancestors. On Lsel, that's literalized. Right?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] The things you learn from the people who came before you is literally embedded in your body. Right? What we see in this book is Mahit arrives at the heart of the Empire, immediately is severed from that ancestral knowledge through a traumatic event. Like, literally, we have generational trauma happen inside her head. Then she loses access to the knowledge of her forebears. It just is this really rich metaphor of the knowledge that we carry with us, the knowledge that comes from our predecessors, what happens when we don't have access to that inside the heart of an empire that wants to erase us, and is horrified by the idea that you would carry that with you. Right? It's a memory called Empire. But the thing is that, because the Empire wants to erase your memory, it wants to erase the memory that connects you to your own people, and to your own culture. All of that is embedded in the idea of this technology. So, how expansive is the definition of you? Does it include your ancestors? Or is it just you, the person who is here now? Boy, would Teixcalaan like to say that it's just you that's here now.
[Erin] Yeah. What I love about this is all of this has to… What Arkady Martine has to do is establish what this is really early on, before the trauma happens, before all the reaction to it happens. I think we need to feel sympathetic towards its existence, that imago is generally good, that we're sort of on the side of Mahit having this. I was thinking about sort of a line, someone's really early on. I'm going to read them… I'm not going to read them. But in the very beginning, she… They're making their way through the city and Three Seagrass starts, like, whispering a poem.
[DongWon] Right.
[Erin] Then, like in the back of Mahit's mind, Yskandr's also, like, the imago voice is also whispering the poem. She finds it really, really assuring. I think what is great about that is we've all been out of place at some point in our lives, right, so this is a completely, like, a world we don't know, but it centers us in an experience that we're familiar with. We are out of place, we're looking for something that will make us feel comfortable, and in this case, it's his voice in the back of our head, it's this memory, this generational memory, that makes Mahit feel comfortable. I think that makes us feel this is a comforting thing.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] Getting this ripped away is going to be bad, is going to be traumatic. The ability to do that worldbuilding really early on, I think, is just one of the great strengths of this.
[Howard] There are two other technologies that enter into this discussion. The first of those two is, for me, the obvious symmetry, the cloud hook that the Teixcalaanli use. When I think, from my other outsider standpoint, of how the Teixcalaanli react to the imago technology, I look at the cloud hook and think, "You hypocrites!"
[Chuckles]
[Howard] Because if the cloud hook is not a voice in your head, I don't know what else is. Like, if your smart phone had an AI in it and knew the kinds of things that you always needed to look for and presented you with that information… Oh, wait. That already happens.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Well, the AI is explicitly malfunctioning. Right? It's explicitly attacking people, or marking people as inappropriate who theoretically aren't.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Who haven't done anything that violates…
[Howard] That's the second piece of the technology, which is the fact that the city itself has AI, or at least algorithmic intelligence, mimicry, going on in it, which has biases, and as we find out in the story, some of those biases are perhaps a little more deliberate in a little more malicious than perhaps they should be. When I think of the cloud hook, I'm reminded of a change that I have seen in my lifetime, which I sum up in the question, "Who is that one guy in that one movie?"
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] We do not have that argument anymore. Any… Unless we explicitly lay down rules and say, "No, no, no. Don't pick up your phone. Where have we seen that actor before? Not the main actor, the other actor, yeah, the guy who just died. Him. Who's that? Uh…"
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Howard] But… Now, Sandra and I do this all the time. We'll pick up our phones. The moment we get the answer, the other movie comes flooding back to us.. Our phones have already changed who we are, in that they have changed the sorts of information that we have readily available to us. In this story, the way the cloud hook… We have people severed from their cloud hooks, people severed from their imagos. Looking at the way they cope is plot important. And it's handled much more effectively than all of those movie scenes where somebody holds their phone up and says, "Oh, no. I have no bars."
[DongWon] Right. Well, it's also the cloud hook is connected to citizenship. Right? The way that imago is Mahit's connection to her people, the cloud hook says you are or are not a citizen. Only citizens can have cloud hooks. You literally can't open doors without it. Right?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Like, you are so considered alien, so disregarded by Teixcalaanli's society, that without this thing that marks you, without this technology that connects you to the AI that runs the city and all of these different things, you aren't a person. Right? So identity and technology get so blurry in all these different directions at the same time. Which I think is such a fascinating way to build out this world.
[Mary Robinette] So, I just want to share with you the language that she uses the first time she introduces the cloud hook.
Over her left eye, she wore a cloud hook, a glass eyepiece full of the ceaseless obscuring flow of the Imperial information network.
That ceaseless obscuring flow does so much beautiful lifting. This is a really good example of using point of view for Mahit's… Mahit's experience of what that's like. Ceaseless. It's that going back to that ceaseless…
[DongWon] Right.
[Mary Robinette] At the beginning, that opening line. Ceaseless obscuring flow, and Imperial information network. It is an impersonal thing. It is something that is part of connecting you and making you even more of a cog in the Empire, versus what she carries, which is the imago, which is a person and their experience.
[Howard] Well, we are not ceaseless. We need a quick lacuna for a thing of the week.
[Erin] I love watching documentaries. Because I think they tell us so much about the world around us, that we can then use in the worldbuilding that we're doing when we're building new things. So I'm recommending the documentary series Rotten which is this deep dive into the food supply chain on Netflix. Each episode focuses on a different food. There's garlic, there's chocolate, there's avocado. Just in general, I always recommend watching documentaries and thinking about how does… How does their world work? How do their systems work? Then, how can you just basically steal from that for the thing that you're writing next. In particular, I love the avocado production episode of this particular series. It really made me think about how changing complexity or changing the demand for a technology or magic or food in one area can affect something somewhere completely across the world. So, check that out, it is Rotten on Netflix.
[Howard] Welcome back. Let's talk about how you as writers can use some of these concepts we've talked about as tools in your own work. Because who are you and what does technology mean are questions that have been at the root of science fiction since its very inception.
[DongWon] Well, there's such a big difference between geewhiz, what a cool technology, and introducing technology that is closely tied to and integrated with character and theme. Right? So, the imago ties so closely to who Mahit is as a person. Then, as Mary Robinette was talking about before the break, how the cloud hook connects to the thematic ideas of what makes up an empire. Right? So when you're thinking about what technologies do I want to introduce into my world, think not only about how do these affect material things in this space, but also, what are you trying to communicate with your book, what are the important thematics, and how does the technology speak to that?
[Erin] Yeah. I would… You took the words right out of my mouth.
[Chuckles]
[Erin] But I've got new ones. Which is that also I think it's about perspective on technology. Thinking about that ceaselessness, the voice in the head… The imago is also ceaseless, but Mahit would never see it that way. So one thing to think about is that not everyone in your story will have the same perspective on the same technology. Something that could be a cool exercise, for example, would be to look at one big piece of technology in your world, and have three different people from three different points in your story, or three different perspectives, view that technology. How would they describe it? That gives you a better sort of 360 view of what it is beyond just what it does.
[DongWon] Well, then we see the Empire's idea of what you could do with an imago, which is this sort of extractive and way of extending their power of, like, oh, this could be a way for us to live forever. It's not about honoring your heritage, not about connecting with your ancestors. It's about hijacking future generations. Right?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] So, again, we see this perversion of the technology. We've lived in Mahit's head long enough by the time we discover that that we understand how horrifying this concept is, and why. Also, what deals Yskandr made to get to the point, to protect his station, how far he was willing to go to protect his culture, but what does it mean if they forget the core thing that makes them them?
[Howard] We've talked a lot in… Over the last 15 years? How long have we been doing this?
[Chuckles]
[Howard] About the importance of extrapolation of whatever your cool idea is. One of the things that's really challenging for us, in many cases, is to accurately or at least effectively imagine what life would be like with a thing. As I was thinking about the imago, I realized that I had an analog in my own life. Every book that I have read and loved enough to reread has become a set of voices in my head that affect how I answer certain kinds of questions. It may shape the phrasing. It may shape the way I think about the problem. It may shape my… Just my opinion out right. Leaning me in one direction or another. Books, and this is why some people find them so scary, books create biases. So, for me as a writer, I am able to look at imago technology and say, "Hum. Maybe this is like reading the same book hundred times so that that is now a voice in my head." Now I have that in my toolbox as a way to think about this.
[DongWon] Every scene that we read last year… Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, I had this experience of I don't know whether I read it at such a formative age that that book imprinted on me so I now think the same things or if I loved that book because I thought this way and then I read the book. I don't know where I end and the book begins. That is such a wonderful experience to have with the work that means something to you. And how… Again, I don't know whether she shaped my worldview or I found something that just so perfectly matches how I see things. I think that's such a great experience that we can have with art in this way and with the stories that we live with and the cultures that we come up in. Again, like, the imago is a reflection of that in really interesting ways.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. One of the things that she says when she… Early in the book, "He behaved exactly like an imago ought to behave, a repository of instinctive and automatic skill that Mahit hadn't had time to acquire for herself." I'm like, yeah, I would love that.
[Laughter]
[Mary Robinette] Like, I would love having that in my life. I think that that's, again, one of the world building things that she's doing with this is that she is trying to make this comfortable for us. She is using familiar experiences that… Uncomfortable situations that we've been in. It's like, yeah, I would love to have that. That's one of the ways that she makes this technology feel familiar to us, is by tying it to familiar experiences that we have had. He knew when to duck through doorways that were built for people who were shorter than she was. It's like, that's… That kind of instinctiveness of which fork do I use? I don't know. Where you quietly watch the people around you. If you've just got someone in the back of your head who just… Will you take it right now? I don't know what's going on.
[Chuckles]
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] [garbled Ember loss] of that, I think.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] There's a phrase that I've been seeing more and more online, we're losing recipes. Which is the theory that, like cultural things are not being passed down to new generations, and the idea that you can, like, lose those recipes when you lose… If the imago's not working or if it's lost or…
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] Corrupted is… I think that's something. For me, that felt really resonant, and therefore, I felt… I was like, "Yes. This technology could prevent something that I see as something that could happen in the real world."
[Howard] One of the critical story points… Spoiler alert, but guys, you've had a month. Please. We can't say enough about how much you need to read this beautiful book. One of the critical story points is that Mahit's imago is 15 years out of date. So the person, the voice that she has in her head, is not the person who died on the job she's going out to replace. He is the person who might under one set of circumstances, become that person. Later in the story, she gets both of them in her head. I love that fulfillment of the promise in that this is not something that the… Lsel ever would have done. They would have seen this as just awful. No, don't do that. It's dangerous. It'll make you sick. Also, it's immoral. There are probably taboos against it. Of necessity, she does it and you have three people in one brain at once. A young version and an old version of the same person arguing with one another as arbitrated by the person whose body they're in.
[DongWon] On a technical level, I think one thing that Arkady does that is essential to the example is you can take one core idea. Right? What if you had connections to information? Then instantiate it in the imago, and then keep pushing on that idea over the course of the book. Finding new iterations. Okay, what if it's outside your body? The cloud hook. What if it breaks, and then you have the first issue with Yskandr. Right?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] What if you had two of them? Then, later in the book… Just… It really is one idea that carries through the whole book that she keeps fiddling with.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. There's also a point deeper in the book where she talks about imago technology as it appears in bad daytime drama.
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] Where someone is… Someone has taken the imago of their lover and carries it around with them, but their personalities aren't compatible, so that they fracture and then they're both lost. It's like, yeah, that's exactly what we as writers would do. She's like, yeah, this is an idea that a writer would have, but a society can't sustain that, so it's not the way society works. The imago who shows up to the widow… To their widow. It's like, oh, yeah, that's really messed up. We don't do that.
[Howard] Horribly inappropriate. No, we don't do that.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Totally inappropriate. So that's… That is, I think, something that can be fun for you when you're doing your writing is to think about how the storytellers in your world are thinking about the technology…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] That you have, or the geewhiz, the magic, whatever it is. Like, how do they… How do people who fundamentally don't understand how it works describe it to other people?
[Howard] The meta gets so thick when you begin considering that much science fiction is cautionary. We should avoid going down this route. But in your cautionary tale, you're talking about this technology, are there cautionary tales in that universe? That these people didn't pay attention to? Oh, no.
[Erin] I love that these are all facets, like DongWon was saying, of the same idea. I remember being cautioned once earlier in my sort of writing life about just throwing something new in, when you feel like you've run out of ideas, or you feel like you've run out of plot. You think, I'll add something even more to the world.
[Chuckles]
[Erin] Like, not only is there an imago, but there's zombies. I don't know, something that will…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] Add the drama. But, actually, the truer, more resonant drama, is often seeing how the same thing can be viewed differently, can cause new complications, can create its own stories, can create its own problems and recipes. I think that is really where worldbuilding becomes so rich.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] [garbled]
[DongWon] That's the difference between going wide and going deep. Right?
[Erin] Yeah.
[DongWon] But worldbuilding is wide because you get a sense of all these things, but she communicates that wideness primarily by digging really deep into certain specific channels. Right? This technology, the way the poetry works, the way names work. She picks these specific lanes and then just digs and digs and digs until oil is found there. Right?
[Chuckles]
[DongWon] Like… It's really thrilling to watch.
[Howard] One of the tools that… As we wrap up, one of the tools that you've got in your toolbox already is asking yourself, "And what happens when it goes wrong? What happens when the technology fails, when the technology is abused, when the protections slip?" One of the most terrifying movie moments for young me was Robocop, when Ed 209 says, "You have 15 seconds to comply." The guy drops the gun. And then Ed 209 says, "You have 10 seconds to comply." You realize, oh, that robots not working right. Oh, a very, very bad thing is going to happen.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Howard] Let's wrap this up with some homework for you. I want you to think about… Do some brainstorming, some spitballing. Come up with three technologies or magical approaches that would raise questions about what it means to be you. About what it means to be an individual. About… You can be talking about a soul or a whatever. Three examples. Then take one of those and have two characters write a scene where two characters argue about it.
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
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