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."

Comments

I remain: Unafraid, Undeterred.

[Exmet Paff Daxx]

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.

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.

/pre-emptive rant against every knee-jerk EPIC-spouting idiot who will soapbox this thread.

Re:I remain: Unafraid, Undeterred.

[gilroy]

I refuse to believe that the only options are to "drop off the grid" or to surrender my privacy absolutely. I have seen nothing that says that modern life has place the sort of demands that have in fact been placed upon our personal data and life habits. Just because this is the way it is, does not mean this is the way it should be.

And I for one am grateful for the people who are trying to deflect the steam engine before it runs right off the rails.

Re:I remain: Unafraid, Undeterred.

[greg_barton]

You can give it all up, check out of the system, dissapear. If you have balls.

Right. Let's say that happens. Everyone who dislikes the system drops out. Then the only people left in the system are those who either A) want to spy on and/or control others, B) don't mind being spyed on or controlled, or C) are unaware.

So what happens? The system becomes stronger, better able to control it's populace. But now there's this annoying group of "off the grid" people. What does the system do? What it's made to do, of course, it tries to control them! But now, having been left to perfect it's methods of control (remember, all of the rebels left) it's developed some rather effective ways to control and track a populace. There's not much those poor lotechs can do to stop it. Welcome to the new low cost labor force, boys!

The moral of the story? You can never hide from the world. It will always intrude on you. And if you ignore a problem it will only become worse.

Re:"If you have the balls"

[WinterSolstice]

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

Taking the easy way out, or...

[JaredOfEuropa]

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.

Excuse me for saying so, but what a cop-out! You're just accepting the way the world works, and walk away from the system. But guess what: you can have reasonable privacy and a car, a house and the other luxuries. It's not an either-or deal: the recent intrusion upon our privacy in the name of fighting terrorism or whatnot, is not a requirement to provide us with luxuries. Don't accept the system and live in it, nor accept the system and opt out. Try and make a change, instead.

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.

Mediated Reality Requires No Hardware

[4of12]

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.

Re:Can you say, "augmented reality?"

[Scarblac]

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_.

Re:technological singularity

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>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".