Accelerando
A scary family-dynasty epic told at that point in history where generational gaps grow unbridgeably vast on the spume of telescoping technological progression. First book is a wonderful freewheel through the near-future, with his technolibertarian booster protagonist – Sam Altman meets Richard Stallman meets Ventakesh Rao – running around as midwife to the future. Includes a nepotistic jaunt through Edinburgh because why not (it's a tech town after all). It is funny and prescient about our dependence on feeds and open-source expansion.
The confusing part is that the first third of it is among my favourite books and I recommend it often. But the later books work less well; they become less and less convincing as we reach the singularity (his grasp of the physics and the economics of computers and space is characteristically excellent, and it's all hard enough) - more and more of that omniscient voiceover guy is needed.
I agree with Kahneman, though, that it's wrong to put as much weight on a weak ending as people tend to; the experiencing self, who was deeply impressed most of the time, should not be relegated so.
As always, many incredible thoughts embodied in very vivid scenes – it deserves the technical glossary supplied by fans here - and you've no regrets about spending time with him. But again I've the patronising sense that he fluffed it.
Book I 5/5, Book II 3/5, Book III 2/5.
[Free! here.]
Welcome to the early twenty-first century, human.
It’s night in Milton Keynes, sunrise in Hong Kong. Moore’s Law rolls inexorably on, dragging humanity toward the uncertain future. The planets of the solar system have a combined mass of approximately 2 x 1027 kilograms. Around the world, laboring women produce forty-five thousand babies a day, representing 1023 MIPS of processing power. Also around the world, fab lines casually churn out thirty million microprocessors a day, representing 1023 MIPS. In another ten months, most of the MIPS being added to the solar system will be machine-hosted for the first time.
The confusing part is that the first third of it is among my favourite books and I recommend it often. But the later books work less well; they become less and less convincing as we reach the singularity (his grasp of the physics and the economics of computers and space is characteristically excellent, and it's all hard enough) - more and more of that omniscient voiceover guy is needed.
Not everyone is concerned with the deep future. But it’s important! If we live or die, that doesn’t matter—that’s not the big picture. The big question is whether information originating in our light cone is preserved, or whether we’re stuck in a lossy medium where our very existence counts for nothing. It’s downright embarrassing to be a member of a species with such a profound lack of curiosity about its own future, especially when it affects us all personally!
I agree with Kahneman, though, that it's wrong to put as much weight on a weak ending as people tend to; the experiencing self, who was deeply impressed most of the time, should not be relegated so.
In the distance, the cat hears the sound of lobster minds singing in the void, a distant feed streaming from their cometary home as it drifts silently out through the asteroid belt, en route to a chilly encounter beyond Neptune. The lobsters sing of alienation and obsolescence, of intelligence too slow and tenuous to support the vicious pace of change that has sandblasted the human world until all the edges people cling to are jagged and brittle.
As always, many incredible thoughts embodied in very vivid scenes – it deserves the technical glossary supplied by fans here - and you've no regrets about spending time with him. But again I've the patronising sense that he fluffed it.
Book I 5/5, Book II 3/5, Book III 2/5.
[Free! here.]