The Birth of Psychohistory

Science extracts ancient Before Space Flight sociological data through proton dating, circa 2016

The turning point for the survival of Homeplanet Earth has been discovered by painstaking scientific research conducted at an (until now) supersecret laboratory maintained by contemporary followers of the Seldon Plan. Seldonites continue to explore how to understand and apply the social sciences so well that the future of the entire species can be improved. Their core tool involves the concept of psychohistory.

Researchers have now announced that the original inspirations for psychohistory have been reconstructed through painstaking scientific trial and error (mostly error). Editors updating The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the Encylopaedia Galatica concur that new entries will have to be written, filling in the details for anthropocenic-era pre-historians fascinated with our genetic forebears, the human beings.

In BSF-42 (“2016” according to their calendar, a mere 42 years before the advent of general space flight), a software platform called Medium appears to have facilitated the emergence of co-intelligent processes in the public sphere. Details are emerging that the Fanzorian Corollary, which allows any user to trace the intersectionality of bonds and affiliations through linked interactions both historically and laterally in time, evolved from dialogue occurring in the Medium platform. The Fanzorian Corollary is significant because it was one of the tools used by Han Fastolfe when he conducted his robotics’ observations and built R. Daneel Olivaw — a culmination of AI technologies that contributed significantly to the fabled TurnAround period of Homeplanet Earth.

This astonishing evidence is being reconstructed through the Massive Proton Forensic Centrifuge built in the core of the sun in the solar system hosting the Restaurant at the End of the World. Since “it takes at least hundreds of millions of years for a typical proton to decay,” protons contain a reliable record of their activities: where they have been and what processes they have undergone. Find enough protons with shared and overlapping histories, and the interactions they were part of can be reconstructed. Known as the Siegal Effect, proton archaeologists are thrilled by this success. “Finally,” exclaimed Roger Dodger III, “we can put an end to speculation that the billionaire class of that era bribed the Vogons out of spite!” The Vogon Conspiracy involves the design for an interstellar superhighway to run through the Homeplanet solar system, destroying Earth. Speculation has long circulated that rather than change their ways, billionaires during the TurnAround period pooled their resources with suicidal intent to destroy the Homeplanet as fast as possible.

Medium became the first platform for co-intelligence by collating public discourse using a series of turn-taking tools starting with “highlighting” and “response.” Initially a writing platform, these tools (innovative in its time) enabled users’ ability to collect and return to intriguing ideas, leading to more thoughtful, engaged, and collective community-types of engagement. Eventually, Medium Staff incorporated other means of interlinking, especially “backward-facing” links from any copy-pasted quote, so that readers of the quoted phrase or section could click through precisely to the entire quote in its original context. Interaction maps traced what people were saying to each other, not just the fact of having had contact.

On the back-end, Medium combined advanced natural language processing with literal, time-stamped tracking of unfolding dialogue. Big data crunching allowed the centripetal and centrifugal features of language use to be categorized, allowing both the specificity and the entirety of utterances to be tracked and retraceable. In other words, Medium found a way to deal with individual heteroglossia and social plurilingualism in ways that converged toward intelligence rather than diverging into primitive competition. This categorization is where the math arose which would eventually become known as the Prime Radiant (the device designed by Hari Seldon and built by Yugo Amaryl which stores the psychohistorical equations that predict future developments of humanity).

Proton reconstruction suggests a heated debate was underway about whether to incorporate game-like elements designed by The Incomparable Legend Jane McGonigal and other creatives — but details on this are hazy. One possibility seemed to revolve around ways of earning points for demonstrating character through resilient, adaptive and persistent co-engagement. Scientists are optimistic that the missing protons will eventually be attracted to The Gargantuan Electron Pheromone Generator so this part of the puzzle can be sorted out.

Another thread being pieced together in the lab run by the Highly-Elevated Protonist Eva LaRapper appears to be an argument about merit residing in melatonin. A group or groups sometimes referred to as Those People engaged constructively with members ascribed to a more obscure group known as White People. It appears Medium became the site where a structural problem called whiteness was sorted out. It was on this crux that co-intelligence actually emerged in time to redesign the imbalance of power by redistributing goods and services in a revamped economy based on sustainable sources of energy, averting a premature destruction of Earth (due to incontrovertible climate shift) and creating a temporal rift such that the threatened Vogon spaceway was diverted to skirt the Homeplanet solar system.

Historians and archeologists of Homeplanet prehistory will already have recognized the year BSF-42 as notable. This was the year when fossil fuels were designated for the exclusive use of heavy manufacturing and to build and maintain the global internet.* Riding the momentum of the famed Paris Agreement, governments designed legislation and enforcement mechanisms compelling all residential, commercial (including light manufacturing and agriculture) and public sectors (including all military, government and transportation) to meet 100% of their power needs from renewables, regardless of the size of incorporation. Ultimately, space programs were the greatest beneficiaries of the fossil fuel diversion. Climate instability required the development and deployment of technologies for surviving on an inhospitable Homeplanet Earth as well as the means for mass exodus.

More details will follow, but it appears that a minor publication, Dark Allies, may have been one of several initial “Learning Labs” exploring the social resiliency of communication processes among human beings trying to untangle the bewildering array of violences perpetrated against and among themselves on multiple scales. Volunteers wishing to participate in the “action research” simply began adding a code to any contribution they wanted to include. Again, results from the proton-dating technique may change with refinements to the reconstruction methods and new discoveries, but the earliest coding appears to have been achieved via something they called a hashtag.

LaRapper was cautious to insist that the best candidate for this initial hashtag-code may be simply a revisionist longing for historical continuity. Nonetheless, she revealed that the evidence reconstructed to date indicates that the original organizing hashtag was #psychohistory.

*Temporary exceptions for some developing economies were allowed for the rapid development of schools and communication infrastructures.

BSF. Before Space Flight.

References and related entries:

Co-Intelligence Institute. Atlee, Tom. (Circa BSF-100).

Fanzorian Corollary. Brian Fanzo. Changes in Social Media and Digital Marketing. (Circa BSF-70).

Siegal Effect. Ethan Siegel. How Stable is Matter? Starts with a Bang. (Circa BSF-70).