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posted Tuesday August 26, 2008 10:24am EDT

Flee, Puny Humans

Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Oddly, on the same morning as Jo Walton put up her post below, there’s a piece about Vernor Vinge, the Singularity, intelligence amplification, and Rainbows End in today’s New York Times. A total coincidence...or is it?

The post-Singularity intelligences of tomorrow stir in their mediasphere cocoons.  And they will not be dissed.

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tags: the future soon

5 comments
molly moloney
1.  molly moloney
Wednesday August 27, 2008 07:58pm EDT
Oddly enough, my husband (who occasionally reads my books) started reading Rainbow's End on the 25th-- even though it's been in the house ever since I read it when it was first released. Something must be in the air!
Charlie Stross
2.  cstross
VIEW ALL BY · Thursday August 28, 2008 12:19pm EDT
I'm not doing that singularity stuff any more.

It is Old Hat.
Sandi Kallas
3.  Sandikal
VIEW ALL BY · Thursday August 28, 2008 04:02pm EDT
Am I to understand that the whole singularity thing has jumped the shark? If so, what's the next big thing?
Charlie Stross
4.  cstross
VIEW ALL BY · Thursday August 28, 2008 05:22pm EDT
It hasn't jumped the shark so much as it's gone mainstream within the genre. When this happens to a big idea these days, the consequences for serious exploration go down the tubes for a decade. For example: half-assed popularizations resulted in the early hard-SF based on Eric Drexler's ideas about nanotechnology being drowned out by a sprinkling of magic pixie dust do-anything nanites, that settled over the entire genre like technological dandruff (only more stubborn). See also: the internet (or computers in general) as depicted in Hollywood movies, and any number of other elephantine graveyards where ideas go to die of shame.

Personally, I think the next big thing is going to be talking cats. But then, talking cats are always the next big thing in SF.
Pablo Defendini
5.  pablodefendini
VIEW ALL BY · Thursday August 28, 2008 05:28pm EDT
Ah-ha! I knew Aineko was too crafty to go away entirely.
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