"Stanislaw Lem - One Human Minute" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

says that he himself, as a reader, was "bullied" by One Human Minute. In his opinion,
"Everything has always happened at once," because the ineffable sum of all humanity's
experience is, for every historical instant -- for every minute or second -- a quantity that is
constant. The reasons for the cares, joys, and sorrows may change radically, but they do not
affect that existential sum. That is the Constant. And even if it shows historical fluctuation, there
is no way to discover when an increase in misery takes place and a decrease in pleasure, or vice
versa. But the book is valuable as a background enabling us to understand what the mass media
are telling us as they advance technologically and carry more and more trivia. The image of the
book's "ideal reader" is ridiculous; according to the author of the Introduction, such a reader
would study it bit by bit, to the exclusion of all else, attempting to glimpse the human reality
behind the numbers. The example the author uses to illustrate his ideal reader is ironic; the
manipulating of figures almost caricatures the method that gave rise to the whole volume. This
ideal reader, having the best of intentions, will power, imagination, and loads of free time, does
nothing his whole life long (apart from catching a few hours' sleep) except study what is taking
place, at that moment, among his fellow creatures. Devoting thirty seconds to each living person
for eighteen hours a day for fifty years, he will be able to contemplate thirty-six million people,
but that is not even one two-hundredth of his contemporaries. He will not have time to consider
the remaining 199/200 of humanity even if he does nothing else until his dying breath, even if he
considers while he eats, drinks, and undresses for bed. This example demonstrates that in reality
we can know almost nothing of human fortunes beyond what is given by the statistical data.
The editors, I'm sure, allowed such a skeptical and agnostic introduction, knowing that
they had a best seller, because with best sellers condemnation as well as praise increases sales. A
cynical observation, perhaps, but true.
Naturally, pirate editions and imitations of One Human Minute have appeared. It will be
amusing and fitting if the next edition includes phenomena of this sort under the headings
"Intellectual Theft" and "Counterfeiting of Information"; the once-innocent appearance of a best
seller now produces a train of imitators -- a pack of jackals and hyenas following a lion.
Meanwhile, computer crime has moved from fantasy into reality. A bank can indeed be robbed
by remote control, with electronic impulses that break or fool security codes, much as a
safecracker uses a skeleton key, crowbar, or carborundum saw. Presumably, banks suffer serious
losses in this way, but here One Human Minute is silent, because -- again, presumably -- the
world of High Finance does not want to make such losses public, fearing to expose this new
Achilles' heel: the electronic sabotage of automated bookkeeping. Therefore there is no heading
in the book for computer crime, but it is bound to show up sooner or later, in a future edition.
Since the copyright covers the title of the book but not the idea that gave birth to it, one
can now find, in the bookstores, The World Now, What's Happening, Fantastic Reality/Real
Fantasy -- which have slightly modified figures in the decimal places, so that the publisher of
One Human Minute would have difficulty in court in the event of a plagiarism suit. All these
imitations, of course, are cut from the same cloth; only once, as I was turning the pages of one of
them, did I come upon an introduction that was rather original. The mass media, it said, are never
completely objective. In fact, the pattern is like this: the worse the news in the local press, the
more freedom there is and the better conditions are in the society that prints it. If journalists are
wringing their hands, tearing their hair, predicting the end, and bewailing imminent ruin, then the
streets are rivers of glistening cars, the store windows are packed with delicacies, everyone walks
around tanned and rosy-cheeked, and a handcuffed wretch brought to prison at gunpoint is harder
to find than a diamond in the gutter. And vice versa: where prisons are overcrowded, where
gloom and fear prevail, where poverty is terrible, one usually reads -- in the papers -- news that is
cheerful, uplifting, determinedly joyous (telling you that you had better participate in the general
happiness), and syrupy press releases paint life in rainbow colors (except that it is a rainbow that
will shine -- but not just yet). This introduction claims an important role for One Human Minute