Isaac Asimov and the current world

The Foundation series is a science fiction book series written by American author Isaac Asimov First collected in 1951, for thirty years the series was a trilogy:Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. It won the one-time Hugo Award for “Best All-Time Series” in 1966. Asimov began adding new volumes in 1981, with two sequels: Foundations Edge and Foundation and Earth and two prequels: Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation. The additions made reference to events in Asimov’s Robot and Empire Series, indicating that they were also set in the same fictional universe.

The premise of the stories is that, in the waning days of a future Galactic Empire the mathematician Hari Seldon spends his life developing a theory of psychohistory a new and effective Mathematical Sociology. Using statistical laws of mass action it can predict the future of large populations. Seldon foresees the imminent fall of the Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way and a dark age lasting 30,000 years before a second empire arises. Although the inertia of the Empire’s fall is too great to stop, Seldon devises a plan by which “the onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little” to eventually limit this interregnum to just one thousand years. To implement his plan, Seldon creates the Foundations – two groups of scientists and engineers settled at opposite ends of the galaxy – to preserve the spirit of science and civilisation in the process become the cornerstones of the new galactic empire.

A key feature of Seldon’s theory, which has proved influential in real-world social science, is an uncertainty or incompleteness principle: if a population gains knowledge of its predicted behaviour, its self-aware collective actions become unpredictable. Meaning once a prediction is known to the population about whom it is made, then it will not come true.

Foundation series is a series of Science fiction novels written by Isaac Asimov in the last century. The first novel of this series Foundation appeared in 1951. And Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation followed in quick succession. After writing the trilogy Asimov then didn’t further add to the series. But after persuasion by his fans and publishers in 1980 he added to this trilogy and published Foundations Edge, Forward the Foundation and Foundation and Earth.

The series is set in a future world where humanity has spread all over the galaxy and inhabited all the habitable planets in the Milky way. The story revolves around a large galactic empire which controls the milky way. The protagonist of the story is a social scientist Hari Seldon who after painstaking research develops a theory of psychohistory. Broadly meaning combining sociology and psychology together to understand the behaviour of large groups of populations. This theory of psychohistory along with Hari Seldon’s another theory of effective mathematical sociology could be used to predict the future of large societies. This theory cannot be used for prediction about a single individual but large societies that are almost interplanetary and galactic.

Based on his theories Hari Seldon realises that the great galactic empire which encompasses the entire galaxy is about to fall and will lead to a dark age lasting 30,000 years. As this future is difficult to prevent Hari Seldon devises a plan to reduce the dark age duration from 30,000 years to 1000 years. For this he devises the creation of two foundations. The First Foundation and The Second Foundation constituted primarily with scientists and engineers. They are supposed to act as the fonts of knowledge and civilisation and aid in the return of the humanity from dark ages to a civilised world in 1000 years. Along with this, sequential cataclysmic sociological events with only two possible alternatives of action are planned to occur in the life of the Foundations. The decision makers will be forced too choose one path for survival. The choices exercised will lead the foundation to further path.

Now if this sounds like a bit of mumbo jumbo it means that a sociology which is primarily an observational subject is converted into interventional science. The society is manipulated delicately so that it never understands that it has been manipulated. This whole series is about societal or population manipulation. Though society is manipulated by religion, class, elections, leaders, etc., the sphere of influence of these is limited. Limited to a group of a population in region or a country. The foundation series talked about manipulation of not only human but other races as well in totality. That was a thinking way ahead of its times. Nobody would have believed that this could come to reality in one millennium . Many would have believed that this is an impossibility. Not feasible. A flight of fantasy.

But, but looking at the last 10-15 years most of the things that Isaac Asimov has stated in his foundation series have come true.

Societal monitoring and manipulation has become easier. With the advent of mobile telephony a digital signature of every individual is created. And it is a unique signature with which that individual can be identified with and tracked.

The social media, mail apps, banking apps, shopping apps, travel booking apps, Map apps, etc., are repositories of huge information about any individual. This apps access and store every single time any purchase for a booking is made on that app. Sometimes even when the app is not used it will collect information about the location of the phone. A person’s day to travel, his/hers interactions on social media, his/her email communications, food dislikes and likes, type of clothes bought, favourite shopping malls, places visited, international travel, tourism, vacations, etc,. Every data is available.

Now think of all this data stored on a single server. Now mining this data and creating statistics from this data and analysing this statistics is not a very difficult job. We have the computing power which can do this. With the use of this data and computing power it is easy to stratify or categorise different people into different commercial, social or political groups. Websites commonly do this and bombard you with advertisements related to your previous searches.

Various agencies have been identified who have mined the data of Facebook and created analysis which was sold in the market to be utilised by unscrupulous people meaning politicians.

So using this data analytics and targeted propaganda the mood of voters can be changed in an election. The mood in a civil society can be changed. Which has been seen in the Arab Spring revolutions. Governments have fallen, countries have broken, autocrats have risen all with the shrewd and cunning use of these digital techniques.

What are we seeing now is what Asimov had visualised 100 years back. Manipulation of societies and their collective actions is a reality now. Limited initially for commerce these manipulation techniques are pervading into every sphere now. Democracy was the cornerstone of civilisation in the last century. But in this century democracy has become a tool to be used and utilised. Because the outcome of any democratic elections can be predicted, pre-decided and manipulated. We are exposed to a dystopian world where people will vote but for whom will not be decided by the individual voter. But by the social manipulations.

Dangerous situations.

But again there is one hope. This psychohistory mumbo jumbo does work on collective basis. But it cannot predict individual actions of any driven or gifted individual. And neither can it control or manipulate actions of an individual. So we can hope for rise of a great leader like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln who with their sheer will and strength of personality, changed the destinies of their countries.

©️ShashikantDudhgaonkar