Technocracy
Entry updated 12 June 2025. Tagged: Theme.
Technocracy as it commonly understood is a government controlled solely by qualified experts, especially Scientists – a system that one might imagine would be popular in the sf community. Yet the literature of sf offers both positive and negative visions of the benefits and drawbacks of such a government (see Politics). There is similar diversity in sf's treatments of a related idea, Eugenics, which involves deliberate breeding practices to produce more and more superior people who would then dominate society.
Technocracy by that name was first popularized in the 1930s by Howard Scott, whose primary concern was solving the Economic crisis of the Great Depression. He argued that the problem was caused by an arbitrary and irrational pricing system, and his solution was to value products based solely on the amount of energy needed to produce them, to be purchased with "energy credits" that would replace Money. A corollary was that societies would have to be governed by highly educated people to capably set up and manage the transformed economy. To capitalize on Scott's brief prominence, Hugo Gernsback launched a short-lived magazine, Technocracy Review (February-March 1933), with articles that were generally supportive; but Gernsback himself, wishing people to keep their hands off his money, expressed considerable skepticism. Scott's crackpot economic theories were quickly forgotten, but his term endured to describe the subsidiary idea of governments of the best and brightest.
The concept of technocracy can be traced back to Plato, who maintained that governments should be headed by "philosopher-kings" ("philosophers" then meaning any learned person); such a system later surfaced in Tommaso Campanella's Utopia Città del Sole ["The City of the Sun"] (written 1602; 1904). Plato also influenced H G Wells's A Modern Utopia (1905), which describes an ideal society controlled by a group of elite "Samurai", mostly consisting of a class of people he called "The Poietic", whose talents could be either artistic or scientific. During the last two centuries, there have been three basic types of technocracy in sf: technocracies run by superior humans; technocracies imposed by advanced Aliens; and technocracies controlled by Robots or Computers.
Several works before the 1930s involve forms of technocracy. Merlin Nostradamus's The Age of Science: A Newspaper of the Twentieth Century (1877) describes a future Dystopia dominated by doctors, an idea that later resurfaced in Ward Moore's and Robert Bradford's Caduceus Wild (January-May 1959 Science Fiction Stories; rev 1978). Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889; vt A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur 1889) describes a modern visitor's efforts to establish a technocracy of sorts in Arthurian times. In Wirt Gerrare's The Warstock: A Tale of To-Morrow (1898), a technocratic city-state, while facing opposition, eventually comes to dominate the world. Berenice V Dell's A Silent Voice (1925) is about a future technocracy in the Americas battling against by a nation of "mongrel women". And Charlotte Haldane's Man's World (1926) depicts a future science-dominated society which is both racist and sexist and inspires rebellion.
Stories in the SF Magazines of the 1930s, unlike earlier or later works, regularly employ the term "technocracy" since it was then commonly discussed. Miles J Breuer's "A Problem in Communication" (September 1930 Astounding) describes a cult that worships science and seeks to take over New York. In Eando Binder's Enslaved Brains (July-September 1934 Wonder Stories; 1965), a ruinous world war has inspired the establishment of a government dominated by scientists that initially has only beneficial effects; however, it later becomes corrupt and totalitarian, provoking a revolt. In Victor Endersby's "When the Top Wobbled" (February 1936 Amazing Stories), a group attempts to establish a technocracy following a global Disaster but is defeated. A man in Suspended Animation in Abner J Gelula's "Hibernation" (July 1933 Amazing Stories) awakens in the future to find an apparently utopian technocracy that is actually oppressive, and works to overthrow it. Joslyn Maxwell's The Outpost on the Moon (December 1930-February 1931 Wonder Stories) features the discovery of a technocratic government on Ganymede that seeks Earth's help in opposing a coalition of unruly workers. In three stories by Nat Schachner – "The Revolt of the Scientists" (April 1933 Wonder Stories), "The Revolt of the Scientists II – The Great Oil War" (May 1933 Wonder Stories), and "The Revolt of the Scientists III – The Final Triumph" (June 1933 Wonder Stories) – a group of scientists gradually establishes a technocracy while opposing corporate barons. And in Schachner's "The Robot Technocrat" (March 1933 Wonder Stories), an advanced computer that can predict the future assists in setting up a technocracy.
In C M Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons" (April 1951 Galaxy) an intelligent minority secretly governs a future civilisation of stupid people. The title of Lino Aldani's "Tecnocrazia integrale" ["Integral Technocracy"] (1961) references technocracy with its critical view of life in a technological environment. William Gibson's and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine (1990) is an Alternate History in which Lord Byron has established a Victorian technocracy using computers. Shirley Bogart's 1997 "adaptation" of Wells's The Time Machine (1895) adds an episode in which the Time Traveller stops in the near future to discover a society governed by scientists, asked to rule in order to address various crises, who are now being opposed by rebels. In Comic books, the government of Superman's home planet Krypton was depicted in various ways, but it was usually envisioned as being under the control of a Council of Scientists, though they did not distinguish themselves with their sound judgement when they ridiculed the accurate claim – by Superman's father, Jor-El – that Krypton was about to explode, dooming the planet to destruction.
In Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End (1953), alien Overlords impose a global utopia on Earth to prepare humans to advance to the stage of becoming a Hive Mind. The original film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) reveals that the aliens of the solar system have collectively established a system in which robots automatically destroy any species that becomes threatening, and Earth is now being scrutinized. Ursula K Le Guin's City of Illusions (1967) depicts a future Earth being ruled by the alien Shing who are seemingly benevolent. Superior aliens who take over Earth are generally regarded as villains who must be defeated, as is many works such as Daniel F Galouye's "The City of Force" (April 1959 Galaxy), expanded and extensively revised as Lords of the Psychon (1963), and L Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth (1982). More broadly, in Green Lantern comics, the universe has long been overseen by the wise and ancient Guardians, who distribute power rings to virtuous individuals on various worlds to enable them to correct injustices. And the confusing and constantly shifting back story of the series Doctor Who (1963-current) suggests that the universe was long dominated by superior aliens, the Time Lords, who eventually became decadent and possibly extinct.
E M Forster, appalled by Wells's A Modern Utopia, provided an early vision of a civilisation controlled by a robot in his response, "The Machine Stops" (1909; 1911), wherein an almighty "Machine" monitors and tends to the needs of individuals living in isolated underground chambers (see Underground) until it breaks down, forcing people to again take control of their own lives. But Isaac Asimov's later robot stories offer a benign vision of gently governing robots as they gradually take over the world while striving to conceal their power over people – a situation that seems to endure into the universe of his Foundation saga when Asimov linked the two series. Iain M Banks's Culture series also involves a future universe benevolently dominated by AI. In contrast, there are countless stories featuring maniacal Computers that seek to become, or actually become, the inimical masters of humanity, as in D F Jones's Colossus (1966), filmed as Colossus: The Forbin Project (1969), and the film The Terminator (1984) and its many sequels. In the thirtieth century, the Legion of Super-Heroes also battled against a computer called Computo intent upon the conquest of humanity, created by one of its members, Brainiac 5. (The villain Brainiac, originally said to be Brainiac 5's ancestor, was later refashioned as a malevolent computer eventually reported to have originated on Krypton.) A domineering computer obsessed with maintaining people's health at all costs bedevils citizens in John T Sladek's "The Happy Breed" (in Dangerous Visions, ed Harlan Ellison, anth 1967). A common theme is that, despite their intellectual superiority, these computers lack the human qualities that are required to make good decisions, a point driven home in the Star Trek episode "The Ultimate Computer" (1967).
The opposite of a technocracy is a kakistocracy, a government ruled by the worst and least qualified citizens, although the term "idiocracy" coined in the film Idiocracy (2006) might be a better choice. And today, American people influenced by the Internet, with its torrents of misinformation, are increasingly voting for politicians who seem ideally suited to serve in a kakistocracy. [GW]
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