Sages & Prophets, Part 2 - Ted Sturgeon

Theodore Sturgeon, besides being the author of some of my favorite science fiction works, is also famous for giving us the "law" which bears his name.

You may encounter various versions of it, but it all started with a speech he gave at a con way back when, in which he said -

"People come up to me and complain that ninety percent of science fiction is crud. To which I reply that ninety percent of everything is crud. It is the remaining 10 percent which is important."

The word "crud" is often changed to "crap" when cited, and the percentage seems to vary in relation to one's pessimism - I have heard it stated as anywhere from 80% to 98%. And Sturgeon's Law is sometimes referred to as Sturgeon's Revelation.

But whatever you call it and whatever percentage you assign (I usually hover around 85%, myself), it is hard to push the Law out of your mind once you have heard it.

Remember, when Sturgeon came up with this revelation science fiction was often being criticized as not being "real literature", and both writers and fans of the genre were often faintly on the defensive. Sturgeon was reminding us that, as a subset of the popular culture, the merits of SF were no lesser than in the culture as a whole. If 85% of SF is crap, so are 85% of TV offerings, 85% of mass market publishing, etc.

But in the Internet era, the Law takes on a whole new power. And a big part of the reason for that is that digital information is infinitely and easily reproducible, which means that in a digital world, it is easier than ever to spread crap around.

It is easier to shovel crap than it used to be. (Trust me, I've moved tons.) Digital crap has no weight, no inertia to overcome. Digital crap does not require laboring over the typewriter/mimeo/photocopier/word processor (choose your era). Digital crap can be distributed (or, more pointedly, re-distributed) basically at no cost. In fact, digital crap has no real existence at all. Only stink. The stink remains, and is all too real.

One thing fostering the spreading of crap around the 'Net is the fact that there is very little original content in most Internet postings. Scrutinize web offerings with an objective eye and you will see that most things you receive or are directed to are multi-generational copies, far removed from what may be archaically called "the original" - we need a new term, since digital copies are essentially identical with no generational loss or accumulated noise. (Perhaps we should speak rather of the point of origin, rather than make any reference to some actual original "document".) You get forwards, chain letters, "check this out" alerts, quotes and excerpts - and that is just from people you know, even before the quintessential crap which we call spam.

I stated above that my particular version of Sturgeon's Law is:

"85% of everything is crap."

Some would call that generous, but I tend to the optimistic (while having my feet firmly anchored in realistic soil).

But that is for everything - talk about that subset of everything which we call the Internet and my assigned percentage boosts well above 90%. Far above ninety percent, and approaching 100% in some areas. Ease of reproduction and lack of originality has made the Internet the biggest repository of crap in human history. (Anonymity in throwing crap around is another large contributing factor - give someone a mask to hide behind, and their crap output triples.)

I remain optimistic. I believe that the Internet will mature, and by association mature its users. I support this belief by reminding myself yet again that the computer-facilitated communications which we utilize are in their infancy, and this infantile technology sees lots of infantile usage. And producing crap is one of the major things infants do. But infants are also busy absorbing, and learning, and growing toward adulthood.

And maybe someday the big crap-meter will creep back down toward 85% for the Internet.