How Would HPL Have Felt About the Internet?

[T. Kelly Lee]

Ray Bradbury's passing has reminded me of the fact that Bradbury himself rejected the idea that he was a "science fiction" writer.  Bradbury was a luddite who disliked technology.  He rejected the notion that Farenheit 451 was a book about state censorship and affirmed that what it was really about was the pernicious spread of television and mass media.  He also disallowed his writing from being published in electronic format stating that he believed we had "too many internets" and that we needed "to get rid of this technology."  If you read Bradbury closely you can see these themes in his writings - he was very Old Skool and his work is often a cautionary tale about tech. 

How do we think HPL would have approached this stuff had he lived today?  I maintain that Howie was a kind of ur-Geek who spent his time doing what most of us do - exchanging bollocksy correspondence with his other Geeky friends and earning a living in his spare time!  Except he did it with pen and paper instead of email, Facebook, and discussion forums.  Lovecraft was also a major force in amateur journalism - a movement to advance the "common person's" access to the press by allowing non-professionals to publish stories important to them.  It was the equivalent of a modern day news blog run by volunteers.  (Think DailyKos or Little Green Footballs). 

I think Howie would have loved this stuff!  I can see him sitting in his aunts' basement, running his Lord Dunsany podcast with his pals, blogging, Facebooking, and selling his stuff on Amazon featuring cover art by Clark Ashton Smith. 

Thoughts?   

[Graf von Altenberg Ehrenstein]

That `s a hard one. No one can know, WHO HPL would have been if he lived today. I know you `re aware of that, but you can `t  just transplant a person from one era to another and speculate on his possible reactions to an isolated phenomenon.
I´m not as convinced as you are and would expect his reactions to be more ambiguous. There would be things that he `d abominate a great deal and things he `d gladly embrace. One of them might just possibly have killed him even earlier.
Let me try it this way: If a timetraveller had told him about the internet, I `m sure he would have loved the idea. Unlimited access to information for everyone, thought exchange … Some of his visions pointed into that direction. But confronted with the actual thing face to interface he might have had a „Lovecraftian“ experience. The discovery that the utopia of  limitless information exchange creates a likewise unlimited amount of junk and a horrible insight into the depths ofs stupidity and perfidy. A thing like Facebook where most accounts are of people telling  about the last time they had a satisfactory bowel movement  he would hate to death. Or all of those „discussion threads“ consisting either of imbecile concpiracy theories or personal insult. The www would have been too much democracy for him and I see him as a part of the conservative „restrict the internet“ movement. Only to be turned off by ACTA of course.
I `m also sure he `d rather chop off his hand than hitting a „like-button“ or writing a twitter note.
As open minded he was towards progess he still was a traditionalist in many ways. He was never fond of the typwriter and e-mails he might have found simply uncultivated, although that would have saved him tons of money. 
On the other hand, we know how much he loved sharing his thoughts and ideas and he would have welcomed a device to facilitate and augment that.
I `m totally with you on the Blog-writing Lovecraft. Not only in the realm of fine arts. He might very well have grown to be a big player in the bloggosphere, where he `d rant about everything he hated about the www., politics, society and so on. And he `d be a respectable voice.
Maybe even more important: he `d have an opportunity to publish his fiction without going through that hateful process of submitting, possible rejection, rewriting and – horror of horrors – having his stuff edited by some „donkey boner“. He could just run his own fiction page! Wich would unfortunately also rid him of his only income. He had absolutely no talent for self-promotion or business sense. Him placing adds or flattr buttons on his blog, dealing with the annoying details of e-commerce? I doubt it. So that would make him starve quicker.

In so many words, what I expect would be an animated love-hate story with a tragic ending.

[fubarinpittsburgh]

Just by looking at how much he enjoyed writing letters to friends and sharing feedback about his own and other peoples writing I think he would dig it.

[Konrad Hartmann]

One factor worth considering might be, how would increased communication with the world have affected him? At this point, one can have almost unlimited communication with others. Would that have changed his worldview?

What I would love to see is how modern science would have impacted his work. As traditionalist as he was, HPL was deeply interested in such a variety of research fields. What would he say about recent findings in astronomy, genetics, evolution, and so forth?

But I agree that a time-traveling HPL plunged into the Internet and coming face to face with the adult entertainment industry might just kill him dead. Transitioning him to modern day realities would have to be performed delicately and in small increments. "Yes, well, Howard, there have been a few changes..."

But for someone who loved to travel and learn about new places, imagine how things like Google Earth would impact him?

[Joseph P.]

I think that Lovecraft would have actually loved the idea of the internet, what it meant for communication, and of course the implications in science.

I mean, if he was so incredibly open about collaboration and connecting with others it would have been right up his alley. However, I also think that he would have to be acclimated to it very slowly. Maybe introduce email as a concept first before exposing him to the wonderful world of the internet.

More importantly, he would be able to comment on HPPLP and the HPLHS movies. HPL commenting on Chris and Chad's commentary on his stories?

o_0

[Inner Prop]

I agree that he would have loved it.  He would not have liked the rif-raf, but I think the oppurtunity to share ideas on forums and to publish would have been very welcome.

I also think he would have written at least one story about it.  He may have written something about the singularity and Moore's Law.

[T. Kelly Lee]

I was reading some of HPL's published letters after posting this thread.  He was really fascinating in his attitude about technology - he loved science and geekery, but not what people were DOING with it.  He hated, for instance Henry Ford and the "machine age" he represented, precisely because he seemed to dislike the ugliness and baseness of the technology.  It strikes me that the communication age really would have been HPL's thing.  So much of his writing was in protest to the world around him - had he been born earlier or later I doubt he would have produced his body of work. 

[Bob Lovecraft]

Personally, I think the inernet would have thinned HPL's efforts out so thin that he would never have developed into anything more than some guy writing cheap fanfic. I think that the only way Lovecraft really florished was by having his quasi-insular, invitation-only circle of freinds and confidants. Exposing him to so much input from the general (and generaly moronic) public would have had a terrible effect on his writing in general, I think. Think of all the people out there with their blogs on any topic they think is either edgy or controversial or revolutionary. Now think of how few of those people actually have anything original or worthwhile to actually say. To my mind, the internet has evolved thus far into nothing more than a massive, faceless sounding board for the entire population, a kind of digital wailing wall or annonymous hive therapist, which we all throw our literary/emotional/religious garbage at in a kind of nehilistic effort at therapy. So much exposure would have destroyed Lovecraft's early work before he ever had the chance to develop.

To me, Lovecraft's work will always be like a bazare and wonderful fungus found in only one cave on earth. It needs darkness and very limited exposure to grow properly. The hyper-accessability of the internet would have burnt it up almost before it ever got a foot hold.

Bob

[Genus Unknown]

The question really strikes me as nonsensical. "If HPL lived in the Internet era..." well, then, he wouldn't be HPL. We're all products of our time and environment. Asking what HPL would have thought of the Internet is like asking "if Abe Lincoln were an Asian woman living in 1960s Detroit, would (s)he still have freed the slaves?"

[T. Kelly Lee]

The question really strikes me as nonsensical. "If HPL lived in the Internet era..." well, then, he wouldn't be HPL. We're all products of our time and environment. Asking what HPL would have thought of the Internet is like asking "if Abe Lincoln were an Asian woman living in 1960s Detroit, would (s)he still have freed the slaves?"

Well, of course if you get on that train of logic, then pretty much any discussion becomes mute.  Of course we acknowledge the man was a product of his time, just like we are. I prefer to play the game of "suppose you could take HPL on a trip to the future."  I'd really honestly like to know what he'd think about today, as I believe he's a man ahead of his time. 

Likewise I'd like to take John C. Calhoun on a visit to today to show him what a waste of time advocating for slavery turned out to be.  Some people are mired in their era and some can transcend it.  I think it's fun to imagine what my historical heroes would think about today.   

[Jape]

Asking what HPL would have thought of the Internet is like asking "if Abe Lincoln were an Asian woman living in 1960s Detroit, would (s)he still have freed the slaves?"

I agree with Kelly Lee but I'll give you a point for forcing hot coffee to spew out of my chuckling face.

[Newton Applefig]

There isn't enough info.

How would "HPL" react?  My reaction is "which HPL"?  Since we are doing a silver key on the fellow, is this the 12 year old HPL?  The HPL near his own demise?

It would also depend on how you introduced it to him, it's not too easy to explain the internet to someone who's never seen it.  Really hard.  Not to mention this is a guy who you would have to explain the Moon Landing to, never mind pr0n created on the wedding night of gay couples.

Let's face it, a large part of what is conjured up by the "internet" is actually what we, the people, have put up on the internets.

Since he came up in the thread, imagine a 9 year old Ray Bradbury, dropped today in the middle of one of the larger Best Buys with an explanation that this is the "future".  My guess, even though he was suspicious of TV / media as an adult, is "kid" Ray Bradbury would not stalk out with pursed lips muttering "No good will come of this, mark my words... ".  He would probably be jumping around doing Star Wars moves on the Xbox Kinnect demo and begging for an ipod touch.

HPL wrote about blessed islands of ignorance in vast gulfs of cosmic horror, but he didn't seem to follow that prescription in his waking life.  He embraced science, and I never heard of him exhibiting any luddite tendencies.  Even middle aged HPL would probably find the idea attractive.  He may have liked the idea of living in the enlightenment as a citizen in the British Colony of Rhode Island, but he didn't fear automobiles or radios.

At a guess for the tech of the internet, as opposed to the actual experience, I would say 1.  HPL would have a hard time understanding what the internet actually was and require a lot of very patient explanation, as even TVs were not common in his day 2.  He would have an even harder time understanding why Twitter is not dumb 3. he would definitely be curious, interested, and shocked by turns, and probably finally pleased with the idea, as it is a tool that allows you to project your personality through time and space at the speed of light. 

As for the social side ( pr0n, race mixing and race baiting, the Arab Spring ), we know he had some fairly conservative outlooks even for his own time.  I think he would have a hard time understanding "How did you get there from where we were?"  I think to explain the internet, you would have to explain almost all of the history in between to him, which would be the real trial.   

No one born in 1890 is even alive today in a rest home, and HPL was not your average person anyway.  He was, however, a curious guy who loved to learn about things and to speculate, so I'd say he'd be fascinated and non judgmental, and 122 years old.

[T. Kelly Lee]

I don't think we give our recent ancestors enough credit, here.  We talk about the Internet as if it magically appeared out of nowhere.  In fact, the communication revolution was a product of the 19th century.  Telegraph operators had already come up with a lot of the little quirks we consider peculiar to the net - right down to a Morse Code equivalent of smilies. 

In point of fact, Mark Twain was actually the first person to conceive of the concept of the net - in a piece written in 1898.  He called it the telelectroscope and it is described as a device, much like a laptop, that hooks into the telephone system and allows instant sharing of images, audio, and text.  The description is bang on. 

And, of course, HPL would have had no need of explantion of the moon landing.  Even in his youth, writers were already talking about humanity's visit to the moon as being inevitable.  HPL was raised on the writings of Verne and Wells.  The British Interplanetary Society was founded in 1933, and was already laying out the technical details of what it would take to make a moon landing. 

Had HPL not died so young of the cancer, he likely could have lived into the 70's.  I am fascinated by the fact that very late in life his fiction and his ponderings in his letters take a turn toward more hard science fiction.  He's clearly getting swept up in those possibilities. 

I find this question about his embrace of the net interesting because, to me, HPL had a lot of the traits I recognize in myself and other "Netizens" that seem to drag us to places like this to discuss things we're passionate about.  It's interesting to juxtapose those traits against a guy like Bradbury who lived long enough to directly experience all this wonderful tech, only to reject it.   

[Konrad Hartmann]

As Newton mentioned above, age of exposure can play a big part. By the time the internet and cell phones became user friendly and commonly used, Bradbury was in his 70s. We have a tendency to view as the Golden Age that age that existed when we were in our 20s. Many people measure the failure of the world as the extent to which things diverge from that Golden Age. Most Luddites aren't anti-technology. They are against new technology. Was Bradbury arguing against typewriters, landline telephones, or trains? Most Luddites do not advocate going back to lithic technologies, but just the ones they are comfortable with. (By the way, I don't mean to entirely disparage Bradbury's position. There are many drawbacks as well as benefits to our machines.)

But would Lovecraft have been more open to the Internet at a younger age? In some ways, it seems like he was stodgier as a younger man. I think that the access to science would be irresistible. We can watch images produced by telescopes in space. We can communicate with people in real time on the other side of the world. Instead of a news-clipping service, I can use Google alerts to get stories on any topic, around the world. In some ways, we are approaching Yithian status.

While the net allows for an endless stream of information kibble, it also allows for us to get a ton of quality information. About 20 years ago there was a fairly thriving zine culture. There were a number of good hardcopy zines, but also a glut of crap, stuff that makes you wonder why the creator thought it was important enough to go to Kinko's and print out a zine with articles about what kind of tea they like from the grocery store. And people like me would buy and read these crappy zines, because we were hungry for new sources of media. But now? I can quickly bypass those pieces of debris and read about things closer to my range of interest.

By the way, I am henceforth referring to laptops as telelectroscopes.

[T. Kelly Lee]

HPL had a strange personal arc that seems to run counter to most people.  In his early life he was a very conservative guy - almost a monarchist.  His racism was strongest in his youth and he seemed to reject the notion that 20th century life had anything to offer.  This is reflected in his early stories - those we call the Dream Cycle.  By the time he gets to his Science Fiction Phase, he's done a full 180.  He's professing socialism, the moral philosophy of Nietzsche, post-modern critique, and he seems to be enraptured by emerging tech.  Obviously, this seems to come from his fall from the life of the pampered New England rich kid to the level of the impoverished working stiff who just wanted to write.