I think I'm reading TransistorPunk
Sep. 18th, 2013 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamsharkI'm listening to a very old Arthur C. Clark story, Rescue Party, ca 1946. I've found that classic sf tends to translate beautifully to audiobook format, and this one is no exception. It's set in a world where science has advanced to the point where huge mountain tops can be casually sheared off to make a flat place for a gigantic observatory, but computers are still the size of small houses. Cities have been abandoned for centuries because of a fantastic new technology making it possible for people to live wherever they want. This world-changing technology was, of course.... helicopters!
Just before this, I re-read the remarkable Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker (Software/Wetware/Freeware/Realware). These four books were written over a period of about 20 years: 1980-2000. The last three feel pretty modern, but the first one is still firmly rooted in the TransistorPunk era. In 1980 even Rucker's unfettered hallucinogenic imagination could not encompass the idea of a self-aware robot with a brain smaller than the size of a Mr. Frostee truck. By the 2nd book (1988), Rucker has realized how ridiculous this is and brutally dispatches all the mainframe-size AI's in one night with an infestation of "chipmold," an organism that quickly initiates the first of several Transhuman Singularities that power the rest of the series.
So there you have it - empirical evidence of where the dividing line lies between current science fiction (that still imagines a future completely unknown to us) and unintentional alternate-world TransistorPunk.
Just before this, I re-read the remarkable Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker (Software/Wetware/Freeware/Realware). These four books were written over a period of about 20 years: 1980-2000. The last three feel pretty modern, but the first one is still firmly rooted in the TransistorPunk era. In 1980 even Rucker's unfettered hallucinogenic imagination could not encompass the idea of a self-aware robot with a brain smaller than the size of a Mr. Frostee truck. By the 2nd book (1988), Rucker has realized how ridiculous this is and brutally dispatches all the mainframe-size AI's in one night with an infestation of "chipmold," an organism that quickly initiates the first of several Transhuman Singularities that power the rest of the series.
So there you have it - empirical evidence of where the dividing line lies between current science fiction (that still imagines a future completely unknown to us) and unintentional alternate-world TransistorPunk.
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Date: 2013-09-18 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-18 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-18 10:45 pm (UTC)Is that when people try to cash in their family and friends by harassing them to buy Amway products?
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Date: 2013-09-18 11:01 pm (UTC)Generally, I think that a low Social Capital rating is something to be, if not proud of, at least protective of. Once you have lost the joy of anonymity, I suspect you can never get it back. The NSA is the least of our privacy worries, really.
You probably have higher social capital than I do (hell, at least you're ON Facebook), but something tells me you're not going to be much help here.
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Date: 2013-09-18 11:16 pm (UTC)You've made me very happy to find out that I have no social capital. It's only because I never clicked the box to participate in "ratings."
I think you're very, very right about anonymity on the intertoobs.
Facebook tries to guess my home city and my workplace every day. How about Chicago? Do you live in Chicago? You have friends in Chicago. Maybe it's Minneapolis. Maybe it's Seattle...." I take pride in ignoring them.
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Date: 2013-09-20 06:04 am (UTC)