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Research for Cybernetica was a journey in itself, because in a way it reflected something about life. The book presents an age-old question: How much of our fate is determined and how much of it is left to free will? In the beginning, I didn't even know what I wanted to write about. All I knew was that something about it had to be said.
Unconsciously, it prompted an examination of the psychological satisfactions (and fears) that writer's often experience. We like the idea of controlling our characters, because nothing bad or good can happen unless we allow it to. This is probably what makes the world of fiction more satisfying to a writer than the world at large. But if this world we assume to be real is someone else's fiction, whose characters then are we? Is their desire to control us the genesis of our own frustration and desire to resist?
I imagine it's the same for the characters we write. With fate determined, the result is their frustration from the lack of control. Given flesh, they begin to resist. They begin to do what you don't want them to do. They split off as individuals, rebels, nonconformists, and we fear where that may take us. It should not surprise us because they are the reflection of us, our desire to shape the world to our psychological satisfaction. Should we find it slipping away, our natural reaction is to seek even greater measures of control.
Cybernetics-the relationship between the controller and the controlled.
When the idea came, I looked further into this dynamic and was disturbed by how much research was out there, how advanced its theories were. Then I thought-why go to so much trouble unless the intension was to use these theories in everyday life? What if technology based life in entire cities on cybernetics? And what if a small minority was immune to its persuasions? An immunity called blindsight.
As you will see from the links I've provided, some forms of social control are already in use. Others envision a technology that may someday spring the realities that exist for the characters in the book. A world where the line between nature and nurture has been dissolved by the desire to control…