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."
shameless karma whoring
Vinge is the author of two Hugo award winning novels: A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep, as well as numerous short stories including True Names, which envisioned an avatar-based Internet in 1981, years before Gibson's cyberspace or more appropriately, Stephenson's Street of Snowcrash. He's also a former computer science professor at San Diego State, and someone who both knows the details of the technology he writes about, including pervasive sensors, search tools, game design, and wearable computers, and has the writing chops to make you care about his characters.
I'm very much looking forward to the new novel.
And by the way for those interested in security issues in sensor networks, see the work by Adrian Perrig, he's got a book and a number of papers on the topic.
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.
The article suggests that this information will be available in the future and that we all will be willing to absolutely forgo anonymity to have information about anything at any given time. I do have to admit that I forsee one small problem here: if the government, your boss, your neighbor, know what you are reading through, then you will be more selective about what you study, and thus, it really isn't free access to information.
It's like the government knowing what you are checking out of the library. It makes you think again about trying to get a copy of the Anarchists Cookbook, you know, even if you feel that you have the right to read it. Even so, as I said, we no longer have privacy, so if we can end our governments' monopoly on privacy, then I believe that we will be better off for it.
It's the spelling nazi that will get you in the rear. SNEAK, not SNEEK.
We trust you have learned your lesson this time, no? Just be grateful that the "Lose, not Loose" guy is out of town.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
I've read a lot of good sci-fi writers, but so few are as good at character development AND hard core science fiction writing.
If Vinge didn't spend so much time teaching, he'd probably have time to write more novels.
Anyone have some suggestions of writers who come close to Vinge for great sci-fi? (I've already read most of Gibson, Stephenson, Simmons, Bear, Sagan, Haldeman)
ILL Clinton
The ILL Clan - Machinima Pioneers
...the origins of the Borg.
Step one: Everything described in parent.
Step two: Neural interfaces, getting around all of those pesky "physical" operations (finger waving, eyeball cues, etc). One can participate in society completely as a "ghost," without lifting a single finger.
Step three: Network the neural interfaces. "Shared brainstorming" will be considered the fast-track method of advancing science and technology.
Step four: Reassign the "physical substrate" to menial tasks. If I can participate fully in society WITH MY MIND, why not rent out my body to work in the factories or operate the machinery? It's not like I actually need my body for anything else - might as well let it be a "drone."
Step five: Shared neural experience of human society slowly breaks down the boundaries between one human and another; a "hive mind" emerges.
Resistance is futile.
dinner: it's what's for beer
. . . called Rainbows End (and for the grammar nazis, that's right, there's no apostrophe at the end of 'Rainbows.')
That should be "Nazi", not "nazi".
Sincerely,
A capitalization Nazi.
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If everyone was really out to see that everyone does well, if everyone was really basically
:)
decent, then it could work.
But if only 90% of people are like that, then "total information" could make your life annoying
as heck, one of the reasons why "total sharing" (communism) always fails so abysmally.
Which means that such a system has to find and harshly punish (reform, exile, or kill) anyone who
doesn't cooperate (assuming the enforcers are not corrupt), with near 100% effectiveness (i.e,
become totalitarian).
Even if you do that, natural inclinations are for the corrupt to seek power, and become the enforcers.
Any large-scale society needs significant privacy (even if not officially protected) simply so that
people can live near each other without constantly fighting. Small, relatively isolated communities
can do without much privacy because then can effectively exile or control the 10% or whatever
that don't fit in.
Ultimately we'll probably settle in at some level of surveillance that is survivable (I hope), with
more or less in various communities and individual or community measures to have some control (like
"community associations" that don't allow surveillance (or limit it), or EMP grenades for
that matter).
Unless of course someone develops really effective subliminal or broadcast mind control, in which
case it's pretty much over (for practical purposes). The advantage to that being that you
won't care if you have privacy (or anything else).
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...
Vinge is an auther of the technological singularity concept. 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. For example transfer to usage of languadge instead of basic system of signal could be considered as a technological singularity for proto-human, though drawn in time.
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."
If only they were "illegals" where I live. Unfortunatly, here, they are red-neck nuts. Check it out: Freedom County. These people are the tin-foil hat and automatic weapon crowd.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
And yet ... his technology/science is first rate, as already mentioned. But more than that, I find his vision of future history and culture to be quite compelling. And I would disagree that he has pacing problems, I find them to be very tightly plotted and exciting to read. And, as John Clute said about Revelation Space, he is good at evoking "the thrilled melancholy of the abyss" which I would agree is part of the appeal of space opera.
All in all though, having just read Absolution Gap I am disappointed that Reynolds hasn't overcome these sorts of problems after four novels. Perhaps he is just better at the short forms of fiction (Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days was excellent). His next novel is not tied to his previous ones, and he has also taken the plunge into writing full-time, so maybe he will take this opportunity to became the great writer that he easily could be.
Oh, and my other suggestions for where to go after Vinge: Greg Egan, Iain M. Banks, Ken MacLeod, Gregory Benford (especially the Galactic Center books), David Brin (Uplift).
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.