Slashdot Mirror
Charles Stross Interview
An anonymous reader writes "I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet: a very interesting interview with author Charles Stross, whose current cycle of singularity-based stories Accelerando (featuring character Manfred Macx) is as tightly-packed with cutting-edge speculations as Bruce Sterling's work. An excerpt from the first of those stories is currently available on the Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine website."
For some background on the coming technological singularity, and some general good reading, see The Meaning Of Life
For a while this was the link Jeeves gave you if you asked him the meaning of life, it was the only useful thing I ever found using that search engine.
Man, with his flaming pyre, has conquered the wayward breezes.
"He is also a mind-bogglingly talented science fiction and fantasy author. "
I doubt it. But one thing I do know is this- the guy is a prick, a prick with a massive ego. Don't take my word for it, cruise on over to alt.peeves, it's impossible to make a first post over there without Stross and his entourage mauling your newbie ass. His main profession is nit-picking grammatical errors, followed by pandering to his prick alt.peeves friends.
his cutting-edge speculation. Sci-Fi writers with cutting-edge speculation and interesting futurist ideas are a dime a dozen. Sterling's strength is in making it fun to read! And creating a very detailed and believable context for the ideas to be presented in.
Why, he's my favorite author!!!!
Joseph?
earth to moderators, it can't be redundant if its the only post with that content..
I don't think its getting slashdotted, this story is a dud. Check out the S/N ratio 5 of 65 comments when viewing at +1...
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
Wasn't it Vernor Vinge who coined the term Singularity in relation to exponential technologic growth which overwhelms our ability to predict and comprehend?
His writings are suffused with it. It is a key theme in A Fire Upon the Deep and Marooned in Realtime. It also weighs heavily in the background of A Deepness in the Sky. All IMO are brilliant pieces of SF.
still, its stupid to mod something as redundant thats not redundant.. it would be better modded as a troll or something else.. redundant implies that its been posted here already or is very similar to something thats been posted already.. but yeh.. this story sucks..
A singularity is a feature of a graph. Now, I'm as rational-reductionist as the next geek, but reducing all of human progress to a graph reduces reductionism to the riduclous!
Now, as to the political old guard approaching obsolescence, for a microcosmic view of what I'm talking about, look at the music and film industries. I could write a book--or at least a chapter--describing the insanities of the studio system, but, in a nutshell, the situation is that big music or movie distributors find it easier to distribute a homogeneous product. It's cheaper to sell a billion copies of one record than a million copies each of a thousand discs. So they're squeezing the variety, thinking that they're selling a physical product--but they're not: they're trying to sell ideas. There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the term "intellectual property," because information isn't transferred between brains: it's copied. The music and film industries are finally waking up to the fact that as they squeeze their product range down, people lose interest in the range and look outside it for independent productions. So they're panicking, blaming the new business model, fighting a zero-sum rear-guard action, and trying to ban progress.
They may succeed. If so, I fear we're doomed to live in a world not unlike that of Rebecca Ore's Outlaw School (Tor, 2000). And I really don't want to go there.
An surprised anonymous wrote: I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet...
And now, are you surprised nobody's commenting on this story? Perhaps there's a pattern, here.
Worst S/N ratio ever!
</CBG>
Just to stay on-topic to some extent, here's his story in Asimov's . Definitely worth a read! Has a sense of humor that reminds me of Stephenson.
Steven N. Severinghaus
duh,
i can't believe that people are saying that this story is dead, based on it's alleged "low" numbers.
based on the interview that i read i would have to say the dude sounds pretty intersesting and well read. that and his experience as a writer lead me to believe that this could be a kewl read.
it sounds to me as if the above posts, in the majority, have not read the actual story.
what gives. i thought we were supposed to be smart.
...in both the interview and the Lobster story, which was enjoyable enough to make me want to find more of his work.
Personally, I don't care if the guy is an asshole or a saint, it's his ideas and the mixing of ideas which is interesting and fun.
Comparing authors is pointless to me in that no two are alike even if they're writing on similar subjects. This Lobster story is still fresh and to say it's just more cyberpunk is both unfair and untrue. It's like saying the punk rock of the early 80's left no room for anything else and all the new punk stuff is therefore just rehashed trash (which is obviously not true.)
"Lobster" was a good, if challenging, read and the author proves interesting in the interview. I'll be looking for more of his work to read and I'm sure -- I do mean positive - that many of the readers of Slashdot would enjoy both the lobster story and the interview.
Is there a troll-fest happening tonight? I must 'ave lost me invite!
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
A singularity is a feature of a graph. Now, I'm as rational-reductionist as the next geek, but reducing all of human progress to a graph reduces reductionism to the riduclous!
You have obviously never had to give a presentation to upper management. They are a peculiar species, unable to understand words. They can only be communicated to in a very limiting fashion via colored 3d graphs and charts. Unfortunately most of the important information is lost in the translation...
Coincidentally, I saw this /. item just as I had finished reading Stross's "Antibodies", a short story, in a collection of the best science fiction of 2000. I'd never heard of the guy before, but his writing is wonderfully close to my experience and that of most /.'ers - I guess he's a bit new as a recognized author so not many of us know much about him. What I've read so far seems very promising though!
Energy: time to change the picture.
The parent is offtopic, not a troll. This on the other hand is a troll.
This article is dead; use your mod points where they might matter.
104th goddamn post, luzers!
that's sickening.. .. but funny
And, if you haven't yet read his short story, "A Colder War", do so now.
Goddammit, can't you even fuckin' quote Prince accurately?
Well, what do I expect from a site that modded fuckin' HanzoSan up a cumulative like fifteen points yesterday. YOU ARE ALL RETARDS. FUCK YOU.
It has lots of Linux, Perl and SF - what more could you want?
I do most of the system administration on Charlie's web server (which also serves my website). I wish he'd warn me when we were in danger of being slashdotted...
:-)
Watching the logs it looks like we're OK at the moment, but we don't have all the bandwidth in the world.
Oh and he just signed my emergency passport application, so I'm not going to say anything else rude about him
Xenu loves you!
As chance wants it, I came across Charlie's writing just a couple of weeks ago - and concur with all the positive comments. He also has a unreleased novel called Scratch Monkey on his website (right at the bottom), for which you need to request the "keys" before being able to access it.
Scratch Monkey is definitely worth reading.
PS: hi Charlie! This article is the equivalent of being on the cover of the Rolling Stone, yea?
yes, we have no bananas
from the interview
CS: I wrote "Lobsters" and showed it to a friend. He said "that's really cool, but you'll never sell it--the audience would have to overdose on Slashdot for six months before they got it." He was completely right--he just underestimated the number of people out there who overdose on Slashdot!
Possibly more noise, however I was curious that the interview involves discussions on cyberpunk and free software, it is a topic which I attempted to research and write about for an undergrad postmodernism class. Taking artificial intelligence networks as a metaphor for ownership of information I tried to argue that history should be openly intact in "code" and that literature is interpreted through collaboration, a groove between writers and readers like a customisable interface. I've uploaded my article , if it is interesting at all please e-mail me, I haven't found much on this topic so far.
Is that japanese, or just a coincidence? (Ai = love, neko = cat) (Of course, in the best /. tradition I haven't read the whole thing, or looked to closely at earlier coments..)
The most significant factor in singularity is determining what is actually possible under the constraints of physical laws. In all likelihood the universe is not infinitely maliable to our will. Eventually, what is technically possible will reach a plateau, where nothing more advanced can be made.
The most straightforward example is faster than light travel. The universe seems to have a set limit for allowing an object from going from point A to point B. There may be ways around this by warping space. But there are limits on how much space you can warp. Eventually we will reach a point where we cannot travel faster from point A to B.
There are probably some people out there saying "But we don't know what the limits are. People used to say it was impossible to go faster than the speed of sound." That's true, we don't know what the limits are, therefore we should act like there are no limits ... yet. But someday we will figure this universe out and then we'll know the limits. We'll know the fastest speed. We'll know the bountries of what is possible, and we will build to those bountries. We'll travel as fast as possible. We'll make ourselves as intelligent as beings can be under the constraints of the universe. We'll live as long as possible. And technology will be at a plateau from which it cannot grow any higher.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
There are ways of effectively travelling faster than light, depending on what your purposes are.
If you want to build an interworld empire, then you appear to have problems, but if you want to shorten the trip, then several approaches are plausible.
The simplest one is frozen sleep.
The fanciest one is to upload yourself into a computer, put yourself on pause, until you reach the destination, and then download yourself into a new body.
The best one is MacroLife. Redesigning things so that you live in a mobile space colony that roams from star to star, grazing on the cometary belts, and occasionally mining from the moons or asteroids (usually only needed for major repairs, or to fission the colony into two).
The physical vessel that will contain the MacroLife should be buildable before the singularity. The design of the society is more dubious. It would need to be quite stable. And if it were too aggressive, then it would be dangerous to create, whereas if it were too passive, then it would be subject to hostile takeovers. Not an easy problem.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
An interstellar empire would be feasible if there existed sentient beings with a lifespan that was measured in the millions of years. Then the trips between stars at about 10% c wouldn't seem all that long, and there would be enough continuity to maintain an interstellar culture.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Aha! So Vernor Vinge stories are all written for the pointy-haired bozos! That explains a great deal.
Any questions?
If special relativity is correct, you don't have to work to survive long trips at speeds near c.
.9c, then the factor is (1/(1-.9^2)) = 1/.81 =~ 12. So a 4 light year trip at .9c would take only about 4 months in ship time, while it would take about 4 years from the point of view of those who didn't undergo the acceleration of the trip.
.99c, then the time factor is (1/(1-.99^2)) =~ 50, so the same trip would take about a month ship time, while still taking about 4 years from the planet-bound point of view.
The passage of time is relative, with a ratio of (1/(1-(v/c)^2). If your v is small compared to c, then the factor is near 1. If your v is, say,
If you can go
It should take about a year to get up to near light speed at acceleration of 1 gravity. Of course, you have to get all that energy from somewhere, but I'm sure you can pull together some kind of Bussard Ramjetty thing to do it with, since we're assuming that we're at the singularity.
http://everything2.org/?node=your+radical+ideas+ab out+radical+ideas+have+already+occurred+to+others
That url takes care of responding to most of your post.
Now to comment on the first part of your first sentence:
'The most significant factor in singularity' - that wordset is polysemous. Do you mean 'the most significant factor in the character of what life will feel like beyond singularity', 'the most significant factor in whether (and when) there will be a singularity', 'the most significant factor in the present day discussion of what it will feel like/whether there will be a singularity', I could go on, I'm just getting started, 'the most significant factor in where the present day discussion of singularity *should be at or should go*', etc. etc.
You have given us a post with almost infinite interpretations. Polysemy is a good thing, as long as the number of potential interpretations doesn't get out of hand. You have given us a post with *too many* interpretations. Please more sharply specify what you are saying so that we can attack or praise it specifically.
- kaidaejin@NoSpam@hotmailcom
You might want to look at the energy requirements of what you are proposing. Even with total conversion (100% efficient), I feel you would find it of dubious practicality.
Now it you could tap the vacuum point energy... but that one's probably a fantasy. That's probably one that the universe doesn't permit.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
With total conversion, reaching .99c should take only (only ;) 100 times the mass of the object you are accelerating.
I agree the energy requirements are ludicrous, but we are talking about the capabilities of entities capable of whatever is physically possible.
Check out freesfonline for links to a bunch of his stories. Two of them made it into last year's The Years Best Science Fiction 18 (Gardner Dozois, ed.), and while one poster mentioned that Antibodies was good (it reminded me of The One for some reason), A Colder War is far better.
I occasionally review technical papers, and people are increasingly using URLs as references. Trouble is, in a large number of cases the URLs are dead links by the time I do the review; by the time of publication it's completely dead.
At least dead trees don't have the habit of disappearing from existence without warning.