Writing Blog Number 2

20241020 The Problems With Technology (In Stories)

The Problems With Technology (In Stories)

This is NOT about technology you might use to assist your writing. I will not be slagging off AI in all its myriad forms here, as much as it deserves it. Yes, I know it is a tool, but it steals and gives no recompense… and then people pay for a programme like Grammarly that gets grammar wrong, and yet because people rely on it, they do not bother to learn the rules for themselves and so don’t realise Grammarly is (essentially) useless for a fiction writer. [/rant]
         No, this is about utilising the technology f the time in a story.
         This came up in a conversation on Discord recently. Here’s the context: When we read a story from the 1970s through 1990s, most of the time it does not matter the year. Car models might be named, maybe a famous person or scandal, stuff like that, but rarely did people use things like computers and the old-styled technology was still in use. More to the point, those technologies are still used in a lot of cases today. For those years, stories became timeless. But now, if we mention a technology, there is a chance that in 5 years many people are not going to know what we mean… or using the technology makes little sense. The examples we came up with were PDAs (personal digital assistants) and car-phones. We also looked at some technologies that might become obsolete, like autonomous cars and photocopiers. But that was our discussion.
         So, the point of this is – how much technology should you include in a story?
         Now, too much technology of the time could well date a story, and leave future readers confused. Not enough technology could make a story seem unrealistic. It is a fine balancing act, and is becoming harder and harder as things evolve and develop.
         So, this is my opinion: use generic terms. Don’t talk about your Apple iPhone 17B; talk about your SmartPhone. I can’t see SmartPhones of all stripes disappearing in the foreseeable future, so that’s safe. Don’t talk about an iPad, just a Tablet or Tablet Computer. I am sure you can think of other examples.
         This leads to another aspect of this – computer programmes and applications (“apps”). If I talked about Napster in a story, or even MySpace, people under a certain age would be all, “What? Okay, boomer!” (I’m actually Gen-X, not a boomer, but that’s by the by.) Even talking Pirate Bay and Tout (sticking with downloads and social media) would confuse many. Then, let’s go to functional programmes: WordPerfect and MS Works. Who remembers them? We nearly all use Word/Office (or free variations) at the moment. But… Word is also killing itself with its subscription model, and other alternatives (Open office) are coming to the fore, so would Word even be there in 10 years?
         So, again, using generic terms will make sure your story isn’t dated. Pirate sites, social media, word processing programmes – generic terms.
         Now! Having said all that, if you want your story to be set in a particular year or year period (say, your story is an alternate history story about Boris Johnson losing his mind and talking only in Latin before losing his leadership to a lettuce dressed as Liz Truss), then these details can help add colour to your tale, and help immerse the reader into that particular time. But if the time period does not really matter, and you just want it to be vaguely “today” in time period, then maybe consider generics instead of exactitudes.
         In. My. Opinion.
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