How a 1956 Science Fiction Novel Predicted Today's Tech Problems

The Verge recently reviewed Alfred Bester's 1956 science fiction novel "The Stars My Destination," pointing out that it imagined many of the technological fears we're talking about today — decades before the internet, smartphones, or artificial intelligence even existed.

What Bester Got Right About Technology and Power

The novel is set in the 25th century and follows a character named Gully Foyle. In Bester's imagined future, everyone has access to a technology called "jaunting" — essentially the ability to teleport anywhere instantly just by thinking about it. You might expect this would make society more equal. Instead, Bester imagined it would do the opposite.

He envisioned a world where the wealthy use advanced technologies to build defenses against others. They create complex mazes in their homes and use special architecture that prevents teleportation. Meanwhile, poor people can't afford the expensive enhancements needed to use these technologies fully. The result: technology that was supposed to help everyone actually deepens the gap between rich and poor.

Corporations in Bester's world run the show — more than governments do. They control who gets access to powerful technologies and who doesn't, keeping ordinary people dependent on them.

Why This Matters Now

If this sounds familiar, there's a reason. Today's biggest technology companies — think of Facebook, Google, or Amazon — collect massive amounts of personal data from millions of people. They offer useful services, but they control the information and decide who benefits most.

Bester also imagined that people in his future world would undergo body modifications and psychological changes. He explored how becoming "enhanced" through technology could change who you are as a person, sometimes in unsettling ways. This connects to debates happening right now: Should we use genetic engineering to make smarter or stronger humans? What about neural implants that let brains connect directly to computers?

The Literary Technique

Bester wasn't just speculating about future technology — he wrote the novel in a experimental way. He used fragmented, non-linear storytelling to show how technology was changing the human mind. He even played with typography on the page to show when characters were experiencing distorted perceptions.

This approach influenced how later science fiction authors would describe human brains interfacing with machines.

The Broader Picture

Worth flagging: Bester wrote this novel during the Cold War, when computers were still new and rare. Yet he understood something crucial: new technologies don't automatically make life better for everyone. They can concentrate power and create new types of inequality.

In this author's view, what makes Bester's novel still relevant today is its core insight. As we develop artificial intelligence, modify genes, and design brain-computer interfaces, we face the same question Bester posed: Will these technologies help everyone, or will they mainly benefit people who already have money and power?

The Verge's review notes that Bester's ideas about how enhancement technologies could create permanent separate classes of people — those who are enhanced and those who aren't — remain worth thinking about carefully.

What This Tells Us

Bester's fictional architecture of control — walls and mazes designed to keep out people with teleportation — works as a metaphor for how modern technology creates walls between groups of people. Digital walls on platforms that control what you see. Economic walls that only the wealthy can afford to cross.

The novel offers a useful framework for asking: How might new technologies reshape which people have power, and who gets left behind? As AI systems become more common, as genetic engineering becomes more possible, and as brain-computer interfaces move from science fiction to actual development, Bester's questions feel urgent rather than distant.

The book reminds us that the shape of tomorrow's society isn't determined by the technology itself. It's determined by the choices we make about who controls that technology and who benefits from it.