Interviews

Before the live bn.com chat, David Brin agreed to answer some of our questions:

Q:  Your fiction seems to be deeply concerned with societies and how they survive and where their actions lead them. In many ways, The Transparent Society reflects similar concerns. What caused you to decide to present these ideas in the form of nonfiction?

A:  My formal training is as a physicist, but like many science fiction authors, I read history the most. The tragic sweep and drama of our ancestors' struggles with darkness, suspicion, and ignorance -- what could be more compelling? I never cease to be astonished at the depths humans have plumbed...and the peaks they are capable of achieving. Slowly, we are learning how to make a civilization that is not dominated by bullies, but instead helps a wide variety of creative (and normal) people to coexist and build together. The most astonishing thing of all is this: In any other era an opinionated eccentric like me would have been executed as a threat to the state. Here and now I'm paid to poke away at established opinions and to point out different points of view. That alone is enough to make me loyal to a great civilization.

Q:  Who are four or five of your favorite authors?

A:  Mary Shelley and H. G. Wells, for inventing speculative fiction. James Joyce and Shakespeare, for showing me how language can penetrate every shadow. Charles Darwin and Ben Franklin, for displaying modern minds in primitive circumstances. George Dyson and Kevin Kelley, for some ripsnorting recent nonfiction.

Q:  Many people who haven't spent much time using the Internet feel a strong distrust and wariness about it. What do you think is the source of these attitudes, in light of your book?

A:  Every new technology brings forth extreme reactions. Luddites express nostalgia -- that everything was more human in the old days. Meanwhile people I call techno-transcendentalists keep jumping on every new bandwagon saying it will transform humans into gods. We saw both kinds of prophets screaming about nuclear power, genetic engineering, and the space age. All along, one truth stands out. If everyone gets to see the new technologies and argue about them in the open, most of the worst scenarios won't happen. And some of the good will get shared. But every time technologies get exploited, either in secret or by a closed elite, the inevitable result is catastrophe.

This is the essential point of my book, that argument is good, but it's even better if we do it politely. In any event, the Internet has had one major effect -- more people are reading and writing more words than any humans in all of history. We're a talkie civilization!

Q:  As an increasingly popular means of exchanging information, and with many people crying out for censorship, the Internet it seems is being monitored now more than ever. How do you feel about the idea of policing the Internet?

A:  It sends chills up my spine. Nobody has a right to police the flow of knowledge -- except parents regarding their kids. The way for us to get rid of the horrible lies, slanders, and perversions is to do what we've always done: Identify who is spewing what, spread the word about them, and let them learn the hard way about an old-fashioned word called reputation. People will exercise a little courtesy and self-control only when others can dial up their mothers and say, "Do you see what your child is spreading on the Net?"

Q:  So, since we are talking about a transparent society in an era of gnat-sized cameras and clothes-penetrating radar -- boxers or briefs?

A:  In the short-term, lead-lined underwear! In the long term, that will be futile; the thing to make sure of is that the mighty have no more secrets than we do. At least we'll be free, and slowly...slowly...we'll learn to be polite with one another, because the alternative will just wind up hurting too often.