Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

abroad that art should be difficult to produce; I have no idea why. There can be beauty and therefore art
even in random patterns. Why should a pile of bricks be excluded?).
Sometimes when change (of whatever type) is forced, kicking and screaming, into a lifestyle, it becomes
even harder to come to terms with. Again I have a perfect example, from my grandmother this time. In
the early 1970s Britain changed its currency and went decimal. To the day she died (about twenty years
later) my grandmother insisted that it was a mere fad and that one day soon "they" would have to
change it back again because it would never catch on. She never learned to be comfortable with the new
currency and always insisted on knowing what the various prices she saw in the shops were in "real
money". She was frozen in time, into patterns of familiarity and the familiar was ipso facto the one
correct way. With such attitudes change becomes anathema.
We can see this on a small scale with my grandmother and on a larger scale with totalitarian
governments which are also resistant to change and the threat of new ideas. They too are frozen into
patterns of familiarity and when the change takes place, as sooner or later it inevitably does, they break
and fall. They cannot live with change and so when change takes place they cease to live. We have seen
evidence for that in Soviet Russia and East Germany.
Things like this mean that modern generations no longer have the luxury of avoiding or denying change.
The accelerating rate of change positively requires us to acknowledge it and to keep up. If we fall behind
the juggernaut will roll over us and crush us. We need a mind set that accommodates the idea of
change. SF is the agency that cultivates that mind set. If science fiction tells us anything it tells us that
these things happen and prepares us psychologically for the certainty that whatever tomorrow will look
like it will definitely be different from today.
I suspect that science fiction fans come much more easily than most other people to change. As a direct
result of reading their favourite literature they cope with the whole idea better than the average person
or organisation. I have no direct evidence for this, but I do have some indirect, circumstantial evidence
that I have gathered from my job.
I work with computers -- the industry that more than any other is most closely associated with change.
My colleagues and I are responsible for a revolution in the way the world does business. Within the
space of a very few years, computers have ceased to be arcane machines attended by acolytes in airconditioned
rooms and used by very few people in the organisation. They have spread onto virtually
every office desktop and few people now can escape their insidious effect. Most people find this very
difficult to cope with and they struggle to keep up (yet another symptom of the reluctance of the
average person to accept change -- I often hear moans about "the computer system" and how things
have gone to pot since it was introduced). The pundits would have us believe that it all works quite
smoothly. They proclaim that there is an ever-increasing computer literacy in the work force, that
computers are becoming ever more simple to use. This is rubbish. Computer systems are increasing in
complexity almost daily. Ninety percent of the users do not use (and are not capable of using) ninety
percent of the features available to them.
And as for the myth of increased computer literacy, it is simply that -- a myth. Virtually nobody truly
understands the machines they use every day. I find vast amusement in watching self-important
businessmen on aeroplanes showing off with their laptops. Most of them don't have a clue. Sometimes
they explain what they are doing to their neighbours. That is usually hysterical and I often find it hard to
control myself as I listen to their mangled explanation of a technology that is obviously a total mystery to
them. They open their mouths and thrust their feet in right up to the ankles.
But even those who do begin to master the software (and there are some) experience difficulties when
someone comes along and installs a bigger and better version with more chrome, bells, whistles and
dancing girls. The whole thing starts to become a red queen's race, and even that doesn't always
succeed. Running very hard doesn't always keep you in the same place. Sometimes, despite all your best
efforts you start to slip behind.
However, extreme as it may seem to them, these end users are seeing only the tail end of a process