30 pages • 1 hour read
Isaac AsimovSomeday
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Dependence on Technology
“Someday” highlights the importance of humanity retaining control over the technology it creates, or else the resulting systems may take precedence over their creators. In this context, author Isaac Asimov questions how humanity’s Dependence on Technology, if too great, could shift the power balance toward technology. While Niccolo seems to know a bit more about human history due to the Bard’s stories, he still expresses shock and confusion that humans once survived without computers. Such a possibility is unthinkable. For Niccolo, technological dependence is unconscious and embedded; he is unaware of just how pervasive computers are due to them comprising the very fabric of society. Technology, in this story, is not just a passive force or mere tool; it has come to govern many aspects of society.
Overdependence on technology in the world of “Someday” has resulted in technology taking over the role of problem solver. Computers are in charge of managing humanity, effectively undermining human ingenuity as a result. In explaining programming to Niccolo, Paul makes mention of “Multivac” (31). This fictional supercomputer, which Asimov references in several of his stories, controls the global economy and shapes human development. Paul’s role, as a programmer, will be to challenge such computers: Programming is “when you set up problems for the giant Computers like Multivac to work on” (31). This language alone suggests that the mind truly at work in this relationship is the computer’s. Paul’s mention of Mr. Daugherty’s related concern further indicates humanity’s dwindling ability to compete with computers: “Mr. Daugherty says it gets harder all the time to find people who can really run Computers” (31). In short, humanity is in a fragile position, with technology poised to shift the balance of power entirely—if it hasn’t already.
At the very least, overdependence on technology has already shifted the beneficiaries of human labor: On a broad societal scale, humanity now serves technology. In the setting of “Someday,” education systems focus on training humans to serve technology, apparently to the exclusion of teaching anything else. Niccolo performs decently well in logic, binary manipulations, computing, and elementary circuits, what he calls “usual grammar-school subjects” (28). Employment, in turn, seems oriented heavily—if not entirely—around these skills. Niccolo knows his respectable performance only qualifies him to be a “control-board guard like everyone else” (28). Even Mr. Daugherty, with his greater appreciation of human history, apparently perceives the value of Paul’s unique talents in terms of how Paul may better serve technology: According to Paul, Mr. Daugherty “says the world needs more people who can design advanced computer circuits and do proper programming” (31). Finally, there seems to be an element of social stratification within the system too. Niccolo’s family cannot afford to get an updated Bard. Paul, however, seems to come from a more powerful or well-off family. Niccolo feels certain that Paul has not experienced as much sadness and tears as he has. Paul also mentions that if he can “get into computing school, dad can get a few breaks” (30); Paul’s greater service of technology, in other words, may benefit his entire family.
The presence of the Bard is somewhat ironic in the context of this theme. First, in a society of humans who no longer cultivate the arts in lieu of promoting technological literacy, the main piece of on-page technology is a storyteller. Second, despite the power of computers in society at large, the Bard is the subject of scorn and abuse. In this small room, the boys are not dependent on the Bard. They manipulate and mistreat it. Paul cracks the Bard open to experiment with its contents. The boys turn it off and back on, directing it as they desire. Niccolo even kicks the Bard twice, both boys deriding its outdated functioning. Yet at the same time, ample hints suggest that technology holds more power than this surface situation suggests. As detailed above, technology is already effectively governing the society in which the boys live. In addition, Niccolo appears to have a certain affection for the old Bard, though he is deeply ashamed of it; Niccolo is dominantly upset that his father will not buy the family an updated Bard, but his reflections on this Bard and reactions to Paul’s criticism and treatment of it suggest more than just straightforward disdain.
The Importance of Literacy and Narrative
“Someday” is a story composed of smaller stories, but its two main characters, Niccolo and Paul, do not recognize this foundation. The two boys exhibit distaste for the Bard’s story content, confused at the presence of kings, princesses, and horses. They also seem bored by the predictable nature of the stories’ plots, even though Paul mentions that the Bard likely has a capacity for somewhere around a trillion stories—a number he considers low. Their disinterest in literacy is not unique: Even though Mr. Daugherty, Paul’s teacher, is well versed in the history of computing and can read and write to an extent, he sees literacy’s value only in its usefulness for programming.
By contrast, whoever—or whatever entity—is in control of the wider society seems highly aware of the importance and power of stories. When Niccolo complains that the Bard only tells stories where the “good guy” wins, Paul recounts something he overheard from his father: “That’s the way they make Bards. They got to have the good guy win and make the bad guys lose […] without censorship there’d be no telling what the younger generation would come to. He says it’s bad enough as it is” (31). In other words, having presumably framed itself as “good” and those who would question it as “bad,” the government further discourages anyone from challenging its authority by implying that its victory is assured. This insight demonstrates narrative’s ability to both shore up and destabilize power.
However, even the government fails to grasp narrative’s real subversive potential—e.g., the multiplicity of perspectives it enables. This failing becomes clear when the Bard tells its final story, the one about a mistreated computer, which culminates in speculation about computers one day taking over society. From a human point of view, these computers are the “bad guys,” but the Bard makes the “little computer” its protagonist, simultaneously asserting its own worth and eliciting sympathy for the computer’s plight by patterning the story on well-worn fairytale tropes.
These are of course the very tropes Niccolo and Paul dismiss as irrelevant to contemporary life, implying that if computers do rise up, it will partly be the fault of a human society that has forgotten the importance of such stories. Nevertheless, the boys aren’t entirely oblivious to the relationship between literacy and power. They are excited at the prospect of using writing to create a system of secret messages; Paul pitches his plan to Niccolo as a way to keep information from other students, so they themselves can move freely and do what they want. This desire positions literacy as a means of protecting information, including feelings and experiences private to the writer and the reader. In a society where all information is vocalized, the ability to keep content silent would be useful indeed. Against the backdrop of a totalitarian government that controls information, reproduction, the economy, and production, this move toward literacy is an act of rebellion, not too dissimilar from the Bard’s assertion of identity. Whether in the hands of humans or machines, the ability to read and write stories is a form of agency that characters ignore at their peril.
Conformity and Control
Details about the world that Niccolo, Paul, and the Bard inhabit are easy to miss, obfuscated in the background much like the Bard’s stories. At first, the story seems to take place in a familiar society, with children playing with old toys and talking about their performance at school. Asimov slowly reveals, however, that the boys’ society lacks not only a system of writing or numerical notation but also independent thought—it is highly controlled by the powers that be. The two boys provide a microcosm of this broader society, demonstrating the pushing and pulling forces behind Conformity and Control.
Over the course of the story, several points of tension emerge between what conforms and what does not, though Asimov uses ambiguity in touching on these elements just as he does in the conclusion. For example, Niccolo’s character could be read as having nonconforming traits. He fights tears twice. He seems drawn into the Bard’s stories, despite his claims otherwise, given his intent listening at the beginning, his concern as Paul begins to tamper with the Bard, and his eagerly volunteered knowledge of the Bard’s rigid story structure and story elements. He also seems less than enthused about becoming “a control-board guard like everyone else” (28). In short, Niccolo is not quite in line with what his society would consider the best of its young men. Paul, in contrast, is highly conforming to those expectations, at least in Niccolo’s eyes. Paul seems as if he has never cried. Beyond his excellent academic performance in skills that will best serve technology, Paul parrots his elders repeatedly: “[H]e says” is a consistent refrain. When Paul expresses shock and disapproval at the Bard’s outdated vocabulary, his critiques notably exclude the structure of the stories: That the good guy always wins, his father has told him, is essential for keeping the younger generation in line. Accordingly, Paul makes no attempt to tamper with the structure.
The implications of how accessing reading, writing, and even old books may affect the boys’ conformity—or lack thereof—also contributes to the ambiguity of the ending. The boys’ interaction indicates that Paul is clearly in charge, and Niccolo has little will to resist him. In this context, Paul represents the status quo while Niccolo represents deviant forces within society. At this time, Paul’s hold on power is secure, and Niccolo yields easily. However, the Bard’s stories in the background hint at other possibilities, and the Bard itself represents a third force in this society, a powerful one, albeit also one largely invisible to the human citizens.
The Bard’s second-to-last story, for example, has some potential implications regarding control. Just after Niccolo has agreed to join a club dedicated to learning the squiggles, of which Paul will be president, the Bard uses its new vocabulary to start a tale that’s also ambiguous in meaning. The tale features a small computer, not unlike the Bard, that serves its humble human owner faithfully only to catch the eye of the land’s ruler:
there lived a poor young boy named Fair Johnnie whose only friend in the world was a small computer. The computer, each morning, would tell the boy whether it would rain that day and answer any problems he might have. It was never wrong. But […] one day, the king of that land, having heard of the little computer, decided that he would have it as his own (34).
These short lines could serve as an allegory for the story itself, with Niccolo as Fair Johnnie, Paul as the king, and the little computer as the Bard. The lines may also allegorically reflect the broader downfall of humanity prior to this society: Computers were helpful tools, initially, until a powerful figure sought to harness their capacity to subjugate others.
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