Slashdot Mirror
Sneak Preview Of Vernor Vinge's Next Book
orac2 writes "The current issue of IEEE Spectrum Magazine is running a special report titled Sensor Nation, about the technology and social issues involved with the rising tide of ubiquitous surveillance and analysis. One of the articles is a short story by Vernor Vinge about what kind of future we could end up living in, titled Synthetic Serendipity. The story is actually adapted from the book Vinge is currently working on, called Rainbows End (and for the grammar nazis, that's right, there's no apostrophe at the end of 'Rainbows.') ObPlug: I'll be talking at The 5th HOPE in New York on Saturday at 4pm in Area B, and I'll bring along a few issues for any interested slashdotters."
Well, it's probably supposed to mean that even rainbows end.
Fleur de Sel
And for the spelling pedants, it's spelled "Sneak Preview". (I haven't made up my mind whether the use of "nazi" for "pedant" is more or less offensive than the morons who compare the US of 2004 to Nazi Germany, but I really could do without either.)
Mod me down as troll, but I'm about to speak the truth. Ubiquitous surveillance? There are cameras covering every inch of the city I walk in. Massive government analysis? A huge database called MATRIX contains all my financial and medical records, searchable by federal agents. I have to give my SSN, despite the law, to every two-bit huckster who asks for it, to buy a house, a car, a plane ticket, you name it.
/pre-emptive rant against every knee-jerk EPIC-spouting idiot who will soapbox this thread.
And you know what? I don't care. Because I've made a choice to deal with this stuff. If you don't want to live with modern society's "privacy invasion", then don't bitch that you can't take part in all the luxuries and services it provides for you. Don't own a house. Don't own a car. Don't have a credit card. You know there are millions of people living in America who are completely in the Black, off the radar, invisible. I know people who call them "illegals" but they're just good people, most of them Mexican, making a decent living. If privacy is important to you, get off your god damned yuppie ass, stop bitching, and go get a real education from someone who actually knows something about privacy: the "illegals" who mop your shit off the linoleum floor. You want to know what their "social security number" is? 123-Fuck-You-Charlie-Bravo.
You can give it all up, check out of the system, dissapear. If you have balls. On the other hand, if you're a coward and you want your cake: the house, the car, the job, the credit rating, the phone number and static IP address - but you don't want to accept the "privacy invasion" that comes part and parcel with modern society - do us all a favor and drink up a nice cup of Shut The Fuck Up.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
Posted as AC, no less. There will always be some balance between the two. We don't live in a "Truman Show" environment, nor do we have absolute privacy. Society will never be either. Deal. -WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
I don't mind a credit card company to keep track of my purchases, or my car ownership being registered in some government database. What I do mind is for corporations and governments to do god knows what with that data, and use it for purposes other than the ones it was collected for. One way to ensure this is to accept the system and cop out, hide, disappear like you suggest. Another way is to try and change the system, making sure that there are proper laws to govern what can be done with your data, and to make sure that the government collects only the data it needs to do its job. Our country (the Netherlands) has very strict rules about this: you can ask any company to disclose what data they have stored about you, and the data is not allowed to be used for anything other than its stated purpose. Sure... it's misused sometimes, but at least you'll have a nice legal stick to beat them with if you catch them. Not foolproof, but good enough if you want the nice house, car and other luxuries of our modern society.
People 'bitch and moan', as you call it because they want the system changed, rather than just give up.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Of course, anyone can turn off their enhancements and see the plain old reality, but most people don't bother most of the time because things are ugly that way.
There's less need for optical sensor feeds to change reality than you might think.
In my experience, most people have moved the alteration of perception part back deeper into their brains.
They already live in a mediated reality here and now in 2004.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Greg Egan is one of my absolute favourites (and I have read and like all the authors you list).
Character development is perhaps not his best side, but he cannot be beaten ideas-wise. If you're into SF that focuses on the logical implications of AI and VR technologies taken to the extreme, this guy is the best. I particularly recommend _Permutation City_ and _Diaspora_.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
>Technological singularity is a situation then pace of technological change increasing to such a degree that our ability to predict its consequences will diminish virtually to zero and a person who doesn't keep pace with it will rapidly find civilization to have become completely incomprehensible.
Just for fun I've been known to argue that this has already happened.
We're still adapting to the effects of a good information network. Remember what happened when Gorbachev legalized information flow in the old Soviet Union? The largest empire in human history evaporated like a bad dream. Nobody(*) predicted that. Now we have Google. What's coming next?
(*) Almost nobody. Poul Anderson had a story in 1953 called "The Last Deliverer" in which a far-future character asked whatever happened to the Communists. The answer was something like "They didn't understand the implications of the new technology. They weren't so much overthrown as everyone started ignoring them".
In the future we will have to realise that it can be our business if we care, but no matter how weird it is, it's all right and if we don't like it, we don't have to watch.
Four words: Not Going To Happen.
There has always been and will always be people who think that "my way is the only right way", "what I don't think is right is sinful" or "anyone who does not believe/behave/talk the same way as me is Evil and Should Be Re-educated Or Killed". Intolerance is part of how human societies operate, it isn't going anywhere.
I'll reply to this one, since all ACs look alike :)
You can call me "un-american", whatever the hell that means, all you like. Especially since "America" is composed of quite a few different countries...
Personally, I am not socialist. I am not marxist, communist, capitalist, anarchist or most other 'ists'. I happen to believe that the government is a form of organization designed (deliberately) to protect our food, our land, our posessions, our lives, and our values. If it does these things for a majority of citizens, it is succeeding. If it does not, it is failing and will be replaced.
By your comments, I infer that you believe that it is failing. Great. Do something about it. AS A CITIZEN YOU HAVE THAT RIGHT IN THE US. Go write your congressman. Go hold up a sign someplace. VOTE.
If nobody else goes your way, then you are the minority. You should be thankful that the US is not a complete tyranny of the majority, but offers protections for the minority as well.
You want to be totally anonymous? Pay cash, avoid having an address by being homeless, and escape the system. If you think that even that minor infringement of your supposed privacy is an issue and must be stopped, you can opt out. Go be a monk or a vagrant in some other country. Go get lost in some former Soviet nation. I suspect you will have lots of privacy.
All I said was that we will never reach the point where "Big Brother" has complete control, and we never had a point where "Big Brother" had no control. It has always been a balance.
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Brin is a particularly appropriate suggestion here, as his recent work has been influenced by precisely this issue, which he calls the Transparent Society. Several of his short stories (sorry, names have slipped my mind), Kiln People, and even Earth (in which one of the subplots involves elderly people who have become busybodies, spending all their time doing surveillance on anybody whom they suspect of being up to no good).
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
If you were talking about the history, I would agree. Things like witch-burnings worked exactly that way. She studies something suspicious, we must kill her. But I have a firm belief that this won't work in the future. As more and more things become possible, the more and more tolerant we must become. I would argue that any society today becomes more tolerant over time, the bursts of intolerance are just anomalies. Most people will not forget their personal kinks simply because someone may be watching. Of course, the illegal stuff (rape, murder, tax evasion) will not be tolerated (although some of what is now illegal will be decriminalised), but everything legal will not be frowned upon for long.
A simple example. When you were a kid/teen, you probably wanted to masturbate. You did it in secret, hoping that noone will catch you. What would change if your house was wired with security cameras, motion detectors, etc. and everyone would be notified when you start jerking off and see a live feed from your room? One possible outcome is that everyone will start carefully monitor every step, every breath, every eye movement, in order not to make others suspect you did or wanted to do anything bad. That's possible, but everyone would end with neurosis in a few months of that. There is no chance such system can be sustainable for the whole society. Another potential outcome, of course, is that after a few weeks of abstinence you would finally think "what the heck?" and start spanking the monkey. Your parents (or vice police) would either have to severely punish you (possible, but unworkable on a national scale, especially in the future when you see everything and must act on every minor illegal act) or make this acceptable. That's exactly what is done in normal families with healthy psychological climate. That's exactly what I expect to happen in our future.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.