vision

The Cybertruck Tells Us What We Want

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Yes, I’m going to blog on Elon Musk’s Cybertruck and how it teaches us what people want. Buckle up, but avoid a crash because the doors will probably stick.

Now if you expect me to praise Elon Musk or the Cybertruck, then you’re new here. The Cybertruck is an ugly mess, a renegade PS1 asset turned into an overdesigned and overhyped dysfunctional chunk of metal. Even if Elon Musk hadn’t worked hard the last few years to ruin his reputation, the Cybertruck would be a joke (and indeed it didn’t help his image). There’s a reason it’s so hated – and ironically the reason the Cybertruck is so hated is a lesson in what people actually want.

See, the Cybertruck, for all its flaws, is the realization of a vision.

It is a bad vision. It’s got an ugly retro-futuristic design with no appeal. Its control system sounds horribly inconvenient. The design makes visibility questionable, to the point I’m nervous to drive near one.. Even the unintentional flaws like the rusting or the dangerous hood, are things that seemed to be ignored in pursuit of the vision. That vision, apparently, is being a prop from a 1980s direct-to-video film.

But it is clearly a vision made by a person, there is an idea here.

Even if people had not, soured on Musk, the Cybertruck would still be the fulfillment of a vision. This truck is designed by someone with a plan, it is an expression of a human voice and human intent. Therefore because we know there is a person behind it, the dislike becomes personal, passionate. We get why it is the way it is and we don’t like it.

To hate something truly, is to have a personal connection to that hate. There’s someone and some decision to understand and dislike.

The hatred for the Cybertruck also tells us why we like things. A vision that speaks to us, that tells us about the intent and the creator and what it means, is one we can love. Through a book, a movie, or a vehicle, we can feel the intent, the human agency behind it. The love of something is also personal, because we know there is a person there and we get it.

Why we hate the Cybertruck is why we can love things – the human factor.

This is also why we really hate everything soulless, personality-less, from AI to corporate bureaucracy. There’s no one there, no one home, no moral actor. Even in hating something, knowing there’s someone there to hate is enlivening, dare I say, human. The Cybertruck may be awful, but it’s awful in a human way.

So before you entirely write off the Cybertruck, take it as a lesson. Not in hubris or questionable design decisions (since we’ve already had that lesson), but in why we hate and love things. It is a personal statement, and humans gravitate to those.

Even if just to complain.

Steven Savage

SF, Vision, And Beyond

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Space Station

Some time ago I mentioned the role of SF in having a vision, how our culture’s attitude made “visionary” SF harder, and the virtue of incrementalization. Serdar further examined how we might examine progress inappropriate.

But something kept kicking around in my head. There is some good SF out there, challenging SF, outrageous SF out there.  But I didn’t see anything that was really inspiring to me, that felt like it’d build the future.  Certainly little of it inspires me (especially as you’ve heard talking to me about my editing experience).

Then I realized that if we’re looking to SF to provide visions and growth and direction, to inspire us to more, it doesn’t matter if the SF is good (in some ways), challenging, or outrageous.

The thing is we need SF that really inspires us to do more. That means it has to have two traits.

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Science Fiction As Vision

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Astronaut

Over at the Atlantic (and later in Mashable), Robinson Meyer made the interesting – indeed challenging statement – that the idea of making things in Science Fiction a reality was limiting. He was specifically discussing the Google X lab, which was profiled by John Gertner of Fast Company – and there they want every project to have a a component that resembled Science Fiction.

Which frankly, sounds pretty cool, but Robinson had issues with this idea:

  • SF means we tend think in whole, complete systems as opposed to the assembled work of many actors and influences.
  • We miss that some change – such as social – is incremental, and SF’s inheritance includes some limited and reactionary elements.
  • There is virtue in incrementalization.

So this got me thinking about the role of SF in envisioning and building the future. I think he has a point in that thinking about things “Science Fictionally” can be limiting. But I don’t think the problem is Science Fictional thinking per se – it’s the state of SF today and in our culture.

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