The Year Was 1953
Or was it?
1953 - An Alternative History
A note before we get to 1953.
We are three “years” into the first decade of our Short Distance Ahead journey, and I have mixed feelings about the format I used for the first three weekly essays. So this week I’m changing gears and writing an alternate history of 1953.
As I mentioned in my introductory essay, I like to dwell in the gaps between the 1s and 0s—the digital spaces we have become conditioned to overlook. With the last three essays, I attempted to pull you (the reader) into these gaps, by making you notice how your attention is tugged toward wanting more information, wanting more 1s and 0s. While the first three essays may have done that, I am pretty sure they failed to trigger a sense of wonder for anyone.
Wonder is something I care deeply about and want to help us preserve. This quote from one of my favorite writers, George Saunders, gets to the heart of why I think wonder is important.
Writing a story is the process of not knowing for an extended period of time. Wandering in the wilderness. The intended effect is modest, but important.
It’s trying to remind a reader what a sense of wonder feels like. Trying to remind a reader of what not being sure feels like, and that they are actually pretty good at that.
Not to teach a reader anything, but rather lead them to an experience, that if you’re lucky ends with them thinking: “Huh. Whoa.”
Wonder is important to me when I think about generative AI and how it’s being integrated into our current culture. I worry that the more we embrace AI tools, especially for creative projects like this newsletter, the more we risk losing our “sense of wonder” and becoming less okay with “not being sure.” I believe losing our sense of wonder challenges our ability to imagine complexly, and “a culture capable of imagining complexly is a humble culture.” We are well on our way to losing our humility. And, in Saunders’ 2007 words1:
“A culture's ability to understand the world and itself is critical to its survival. But today we are led into the arena of public debate by seers whose main gift is their ability to compel people to continue to watch them.”
With all of that in mind, I decided to continue on my Dr. Strangelove Esque journey to ‘stop worrying and love the bomb’ - the bomb being AI. But I decided to try something different. Rather than attempt to call attention to our information-seeking behavior by writing vague facts, this week I elicited help from Barry-O’s friend, Claude of Anthropic2, and we are presenting you with an alternative history of what could have been. I hope you enjoy.
It was the year 1953. (Or was it?)
And Stalin didn’t die, but his inner circle said he did because they thought it would be easier to rule in his name than to admit he had become a drooling vegetable after a massive stroke. And for years afterward people would see glimpses of Stalin or someone who looked like Stalin on balconies or in passing cars and they would wonder if it was really him or if it was all a clever ruse. And some people said it didn't matter if Stalin was alive or dead because Stalinism would live on either way and the gulags still kept filling up and emptying out in regular cycles like the tides.3
And that same year some scientists thought they had figured out how inheritance worked and it had something to do with proteins not DNA and everyone was very excited because they thought this would explain evolution and cancer and maybe even the meaning of life. And for decades afterward scientists would try to make this protein theory fit all the evidence even when it didn't quite work and they would say that's just how science goes sometimes you have to force the pieces to fit. And some people said it was like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle in the dark with mittens on your hands.4
But then Rosalind Franklin, a woman scientist, discovered the true structure of DNA using X-ray crystallography, and she got all the credit for it. And suddenly everyone was talking about how women could be great scientists too and girls started dreaming of lab coats instead of wedding dresses. And universities and research labs started actively recruiting women and within a few decades there were as many women scientists as men. And some people said this changed everything because women thought about problems differently and asked different questions and made different discoveries. And others said it didn't change anything because science was science no matter who did it. But everyone agreed that Rosalind Franklin had changed the world and little girls dressed up as her for Halloween and carried around toy X-ray machines and microscopes.5
And a young scientist named Stanley Miller did an experiment where he tried to recreate the conditions of early Earth in a glass apparatus with sparks and gases and water. But instead of making the building blocks of life he made something else entirely. He made tiny crystals that could grow and replicate and change in ways that seemed almost alive but weren't quite. And people didn't know what to make of this because it wasn't life as they knew it but it wasn't not-life either. And some people said this proved that life on Earth came from outer space and others said it proved that what we think of as life is just a special case of a more general phenomenon. And philosophers had a field day with this and wrote long books about what it meant to be alive and whether crystals had souls.6
And in America children kept getting polio because Jonas Salk hadn't invented a vaccine yet or maybe he had but it didn't work very well. And parents were afraid to let their children go swimming or to birthday parties and every summer was the summer of fear. And iron lungs became as common as refrigerators and in every neighborhood you could hear the whoosh-whoosh of the machines keeping people alive. And some people said it was God's punishment and others said it was the government's fault and others just prayed for a miracle.7
And the Korean War didn't end in 1953 but kept going on and on like a longwinded story that never reaches its point. And American boys kept being sent to fight in a country they couldn't find on a map and Chinese soldiers kept pouring over the border like a human wave. And every year someone would say this is the year we'll end it and every year they would be wrong. And some people started calling Korea the meat grinder and others called it the forgotten war even though it was happening right then and no one had forgotten it yet.8
And Simone de Beauvoir's book about women being people too became very popular after it was translated into English by an actual woman, and all of a sudden and women started demanding to be treated like people. And they became presidents and generals and CEOs and some men felt very confused about this and others pretended they had supported it all along. And women started wearing pants more often and having fewer babies and getting divorces when they felt like it. And some people said this was the end of civilization and others said it was about time and the argument went on and on.9
And in Iran the Americans and British tried to overthrow the government because of oil but they failed and it was very embarrassing for everyone involved. And the Iranians kept their oil and used the money to build schools and hospitals and also to buy weapons just in case. And the Americans and British were very angry about this and said it wasn't fair for a small country to have so much oil and make its own decisions. And some people said this would lead to peace in the Middle East and others said it would lead to war and both were a little bit right and a little bit wrong.10
And Germany stayed divided into East and West like an apple cut in half but the two halves kept trying to grow back together. And sometimes people would tunnel under the wall or fly over it in homemade aircraft that looked like something Leonardo da Vinci might have drawn. And families would stand on either side of the wall and shout to each other or hold up babies so grandparents could see them. And some people said the wall would stand forever and others said it would fall tomorrow and both were wrong.11
And all of these things happened or didn't happen in 1953 or thereabouts and they all got tangled up together like strings on a cat's cradle. And the protein theory of inheritance led to strange new medicines that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't and people said that was just how science was. And Stanley Miller's crystals changed how people thought about life and death and the universe and some people started building temples to worship the crystals and others tried to ban them because they said the crystals were against God's plan.
And the ongoing Korean War meant that more and more American boys learned to speak Korean and eat kimchi and some of them stayed there and married Korean women and had children who were a little bit of both worlds. And the women who read Simone de Beauvoir and became powerful sometimes used that power to end wars and sometimes to start them and people said that proved women were just like men after all. And the iron lungs kept whooshing in the background of everyone's lives like the tide coming in and going out and children grew up thinking this was normal.
And Iran used its oil money to send students to study abroad and they came back with new ideas about democracy and Islam and how to combine the two. And Germany stayed divided but people kept finding ways around the division like water flowing around rocks in a stream. And sometimes the water would wear away at the rocks a little bit and sometimes the rocks would divert the water in new directions.
And all the while Stalin or someone who looked like Stalin would appear on balconies or in passing cars waving to crowds who weren't sure if they were seeing a man or a ghost or just an idea that wouldn't die. And scientists kept studying Miller's crystals and wondering if maybe that's what aliens would be like if we ever met them and if we'd even recognize them as being alive. And some people said the crystals were the key to immortality and others said they were a dead end and science should focus on real life instead.
And as the years went by people started to forget what the world was like before 1953 or they remembered it differently than it had actually been. And some people said that history was just a series of accidents and coincidences and others said it was all part of a grand plan but no one could agree on whose plan it was or what it was for. And somewhere in a lab a crystal was slowly growing and changing in ways that no one quite understood but everyone felt was important somehow. And life went on as it always does with people being born and dying and falling in love and out of love and wondering what it all meant if it meant anything at all.
But back in 1953, one thing was certain, and that of course was the fact that the year 1954 was just a short distance ahead.
Anthropic releases Claude 3.5 Sonnet — Footnote to a footnote: I have been utilizing Claude for 90% of the co-writing on the newsletter so far. I use Perplexity as the first research source for surfacing the historic milestones. And then Claude for the back and forth prompting about how to present and write the milestones. But, I’ve found Barry-O’s (ie: ChatGPT’s) output to be, well, lacking. I’ll say more on this in a future post.