A Fairy Tale for The Computer Age

Once upon a time, there lived a sweet little prince on some distant planet. He was a nice kind boy, and he wanted to be a nice ruler to his people, so he decided to follow an advice he found in an old book, that was collecting dust in the royal library: a good ruler always listens to his subjects.

So the prince began to mingle with all sorts of people, sometimes leaving his palace disguised, all in order to listen to people’s stories. His mom, the Queen, got very disturbed. It is unbecoming for royalty to talk to commoners. Familiarity breeds contempt. It is you, who need listeners, not the common people. A good ruler needs an Echo Chamber. I will design a whole wing of our palace for that. If you like your commoners, you can give them titles, and they will come in as your courtiers, and will be your echoes. A prince can’t exist without echoes. Do you want some future Oscar Wilde or Hans Christian Andersen write a fairy tale about you, “The Prince Who’s Lost his Echo”? Or some future Hoffmann or Kafka pen some terrifying parable of the subject?

The Prince got scared, he didn’t want to be mocked by any future Oscar Wilde, and so he appointed his best friend, called Algorithm, to bring a dozen of his smartest friends into the Echo Chamber. So every day, Prince would go this Chamber and listen to the same group praising him and echo his opinions. Eventually he got bored. Furthermore, the Mother Queen, began to complain that it is too expensive to entertain these dozen guests every night, and maybe their number can be reduced to six or even three. Prince didn’t mind. Eventually, when their number got reduced to one, Prince got really bored and rebelled. I am tired of seeing this guy again and again. This plan is not working. I need some new ideas, I am going to conduct business as I used to do before this stupid Echo Chamber.

Mother Queen got worried, so she requested the help of some old computer wizard from Harvard, a royalty consultant firm that existed on Earth. This wizard build a wonderful computer with a beautiful screen. He called it New Wisdom Overnight. This NWO would have the faces of all sorts of people, and these people would tell their stories. So the Computer was installed in Echo Chambers, and for a while both the Prince and Mother Queen were happy. The prince was able to talk to people’s faces he saw on the screen, while Old Queen made sure that no commoner would enter into real contact with her son.

But soon, the Prince began to talk about revolution, and lizards that suck blood of common people, so the Old Queen got even more nervous. She called her courtier, and now lover, Algorithm, and asked his advise. Not to worry, he said. We’ll explore what faces he likes to see the most, or what scenery, and we’ll show him those, and with the help of the Harvard Wizard, we’ll make these faces echo the prince. He’d love it: sunset beach, nice girl in bikini echoing his thoughts. He’ll be glued to the screen for years.

And indeed, it worked for a while. Prince was very happy. He particularly liked one girl with big bright eyes and big red lips who was whispering to him about some suffering tribe on some distant planet and how good the Prince was to send the help to this tribe.

Eventually, however, Prince got tired of listening to the same stories, and he turned the computer off. When he approached the computer screen next day, he saw his reflection in it. Prince was a good-looking guy, and he loved what he saw. He thought: my face and my thoughts are more interesting than anything. Maybe the reflection of this sweet face will provoke me to some great ideas. It is better than arguing all the time with my mother and her friend, the nasty old Algorithm.

So he sat for hours on end, staring at his own reflection on the screen. Years past by, eventually the prince died. He was pulled away from the Echo Chamber by Old Queen and her secret lover, Algorithm, and buried in the royal garden. The computer, known as New Wisdom Overnight, was sold at the discount to Queen’s Sister, who ruled over another planet, and whose kingdom had been just blessed by the birth of a new prince.