The foundation comment

I started reading the Foundation by middle February with no other preview than some Youtube videos of Asimov's speeches.

I don't really believe much in science fiction as a future vision; I rather see it a form of telling stories of what's already happened, but in a fantastic scenario.
Truth be told, the virtue of this novel lies in the fact that Asimov was a pioneer in letting go his imagination into galactic worlds and the origins of a universal empire (which is a little scary). But other than that, with all the respect for the great Isaac, he was telling nothing more than the story of this planet in a galactic context; and its only a story on economical and political bases. You can support this argument with Asimov's enthusiasm with nuclear power in the novel. Today we know that this technology is one of many other options in our social and technological postmodern environment, and that its usage might be more harmful than beneficial. Either ways, throughout the story, the author constantly cheers for this source of energy and the majority of his fantastic futuristic gadgets are nuclear powered.


Asimov's point of view is the one of a pure rationalist, because, as you can read along in the foundation, there are no feelings evoked by the main characters. The only people that show emotions in the foundation are the ones that play a secondary roll. The three protagonists: Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow are all knowing, cold blooded and always prepared for everything characters.

These men are under control all the time and nothing ever seems to bother them at all. They have an answer for everything and they are never caught of guard, because somehow, they can foresee any situation. As ridiculous as it may appear, they are the rationalist's fantasy.

The plot is the next: The galactic empire is falling and the only one who knows it is Hari Seldon, the last and greatest of the psycho-historians. Because of this, he sets to create a foundation, so that after the fall of the empire, the chaotic period of the galaxy would be reduced from 30,000 years to a scarce 1,000.

In its context, Psycho-history is a science focused on the analysis and foresight of human history and destiny, based in historic and social psychology related data.

Long story short, The Foundation was supposedly created to write a huge encyclopedia with all of the human knowledge gotten through the ages. This turned out to be just a pretext for founding a society around which the new empire would emerge. This society would grow in the galaxy through three stages of social control:
Knowledge: As established by Hari Seldon
Religion: As established by Salvor Hardin
Trade: As established by Mallow

The first founders (the encyclopedists) were threatened by the barbarian societies around them, which the foundation controlled by providing their technology equally to all of them. That way, the surrounding menace dissipated, as the source of knowledge for the developing societies couldn't be destroyed. No barbarian could attack the foundation without other barbarians stepping up to defend it.

The second stage took effect as a result of how the Foundation passed on the technology they had. They gave it religiously, meaning that they didn't pass any of their knowledge, but just the tools for the advantage of the ruling class of each barbarian society. When the ruling class tried to rebel against the foundation, they were removed from the technology, causing their loss of power over the masses, which was transfered to the priests of the foundation.

After the religious source of control was all used up, the foundation had more and more trouble of getting inside new societies, which rejected the foundation theology. This was changed by Hober Mallow and his trading abilities. When introducing technology, independently of any speech by which you might defend it, it is necessary to know how it works. This is where the foundation and Mallow based its third movement. Apparently they gave away technology in exchange of nothing but raw material. The foundation was very aware that the people they were trading with knew nothing of the technology they were working with. When you don't know how something is done, you cannot repair it. Technological devices are not forever and need repairs; when the foundation became the only repairer of their products, which had become a necessity overtime, It gained total control.

This is where we are now in our own world, in the trade era.
We've been through the religious stage and not far from now, the next paradigm shift will happen.

How and when? Its irrelevant.

The only thing I know is that since long ago now, not only the material world has had economic value, but the abstract world of ideas is being priced more and more accurately.

I guess this is the next thing: The media era, where more than having shit to brag about, the most priced thing will be the connection with a source of knowledge, entertainment and communications. This is called the Internet and its been around just for 30 years, but believe you me, is moving faster than any religion or trade mechanism ever made.

Humanity is segregating more and more, but not by race nor nationality, but by information consumption. With more discoveries and tendencies uncovered, more diverse knowledge is generating constantly.

The thing is that from all this millions and billions and gazillions of roads to choose, you can always walk back to the source, which is not economic, nor social, nor technological, nor philosophical, nor religious, nor mathematical; or it is all... it just is... forever... since ever.

Cheers and help us dear God