This series focuses on stories that are both enjoyable and do something that I find interesting from a technical perspective. This week, let’s revisit a classic: “Superiority,” by Arthur C. Clarke, first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in August, 1951.*
Normally, I try to highlight new authors in these pieces, but this is one of those stories that cannot have too much attention. Written not long after the end of World War II, it’s a cautionary tale of the seduction of “the next big thing” in technology…that also builds up to a surprisingly funny final sentence. You also end up feeling a surprising amount of sympathy for the villain protagonist…or I did, at least. I’ve possibly been working in a bureaucracy too long, because his struggle against the perpetually over-promising and under-delivering technology division was all too familiar.**
One historical allusion I didn’t initially catch was that Clarke, who did aviation-related work during WWII, probably named the antagonist of the story after Carl Norden, inventor of the Norden Bombsight and proponent of the unnecessarily costly daytime bombing raids by the U.S. 8th Air Force on the Nazis. (Hat tip to Bill Sweetman.) In fact, that’s a story worth reading in itself, and one that will recognize when you’re reading Superiority. I think Clarke tells it in a livelier and more interesting way than the linked TED talk by Malcolm Gladwell, though, but I’m biased.
Reading this story won’t only give you a deeper understanding of the Norden Bombsight, though. The pace of technological change is unlikely to decelerate at this point in history, and every new development only makes this story more relevant. If you haven’t had to confront the fallout from the sort of managerial choices described in this story in your workplace yet, you’re either under 25 or Amish. I think this story explains an incredible amount of modern life, and you’ll be richer for reading it.
*You can easily find it in several places online, but I’m unsure about their legality so I’m loathe to link them directly.
**For the record, this isn’t your standard “LOL Bureaucracy is t3h sux!” sort of humor. It’s much more sophisticated. In fact, Wikipedia claims this story was used in MIT industrial design classes.