What will the future look like? The 21st century has been a time of much technological advancement, so it is not difficult to imagine a technological nirvana in the future. Canadian author Hal Niedzviecki’s Trees on Mars: Our Obsession with the Future explores people’s understanding of the future and how people have embraced technology in order to get there. On Nov. 25, Niedzviecki will be in Vancouver for the Jewish Book Festival at the Jewish Community Centre.
Niedzviecki started his career as a writer while attending the University of Toronto, and helped to launch various campus newspapers. As a fiction and non-fiction writer, Niedzviecki describes himself as a public thinker who shares meaningful ideas to foster debate.
“What are the accepted stories of what we’re telling and is there a different story, a truer story? That’s how I see my projects,” says Niedzviecki.
His latest book, Trees on Mars, was derived from his previous book, The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors. Niedzviecki explains that The Peep Diaries looks at how people expose their lives on social media and generally embrace new technology without much thought as to why they are doing it.
“That got me thinking about how we adopt technology; do we generally think it’s great? Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing it,” says Niedzviecki.
Niedzviecki’s central argument is that people are telling a story about the future and how technology can be used to own the future. In order to write his book, Niedzviecki visited Cornell Tech, a new technology based university in New York, and also talked to various people in the technology industry to understand what they thought they were doing with technology. Following this, he began charting the consequences of a future owned by technology through the eyes of different people and institutions.
Spanish philosopher, Daniel Innerarity, also influenced Niedzviecki’s book. Innerarity’s ideas about people’s need to maintain social cohesion pointed Niedzviecki in the right direction. He explains that most of what people do with technology is intended to keep the world the same for as long as possible.
“What happens today will happen tomorrow: the sun will rise, we’ll have children, die and life will go on,” says Niedzviecki. “We want technology to reassure us that the future doesn’t have to change.”
Changing perceptions of technology
Hal Niedzviecki, author of Trees on Mars. | Photo by Angelina Coccimiglio
As a storyteller, Niedzviecki wanted to broach the subject of a technologically obsessed generation through telling the story of someone else in a way that does not preach or impose his ideas upon his readers.
“The title is a metaphor,” says Niedzviecki. “The trees on Mars idea is like a lot of other ideas in the book: technological solutions to cultural and social problems. Colonizing Mars and making it another Earth is another silly idea that won’t help our planet at all.”
Although the material is thought-provoking and difficult to face, Niedzviecki says the book itself is very readable and has received positive feedback so far.
“It’s a little more true than they would want,” says Niedzviecki.
In his spare time, Niedzviecki works as the publisher of Broken Pencil, a magazine and guide to underground and independent culture. Generally, he enjoys sitting around and having deep thoughts.
For more information, please visit www.alongcametomorrow.com
