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."

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Who Vernor Vinge is

[porslap]

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.

Amazing

[SiliconEntity]

I've been fascinated by the concept of sensor networks ever since reading Vinge's earlier short story Fast Times at Fairmont High. From a review of that story:

So what is life like in Vinge's 2020?

The biggest technological change involves ubiquitous computing,
wearables, and augmented reality (although none of those terms are used).
Everyone wears contacts or glasses which mediate their view of the world.
This allows computer graphics to be superimposed on what they see.
The computers themselves are actually built into the clothing (apparently
because that is the cheapest way to do it) and everything communicates
wirelessly. Scientific American had an article about this in the April
issue, http://www.sciam.com/techbiz/0402feiner.html.

In Vinge's hands this is an astonishingly powerful technology.
Remember the mediatrons from Diamond Age, where any surface could be
turned into a display? You have the same thing here, except it's all in
the eye of the beholder, so to speak. If you want a computer display,
it can appear in thin air, or be attached to a wall or any other surface.
If people want to watch TV together they can agree on where the screen
should appear and what show they watch. When doing your work, you can
have screens on all your walls, menus attached here and there, however
you want to organize things. But none of it is "really" there.

It goes beyond this. Does your house need a new coat of paint? Don't
bother, just enter it into your public database and you have a nice
new mint green paint job that everyone will see. Want to redecorate?
Do it with computer graphics. You can have a birdbath in the front yard
inhabited by Disneyesque animals who frolic and play. Even indoors,
don't buy artwork, just download it from the net and have it appear
where you want. You can change your decor theme instantly.

These kids are teenagers. Got a zit? No need to cover up with Clearsil,
just erase it from your public face and people will see the improved
version. You can dress up your clothes and hairstyle as well.

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.

Augmented reality automatically produces sight-and-sound virtual reality.
Some of the kids attending Fairmont Junior High do so remotely. They
appear as "ghosts" indistinguishable from the other kids except that
you can walk through them. They go to classes and raise their hands to
ask questions just like everyone else. They see the school and everyone
at the school sees them. Instead of visiting friends the kids can all
instantly appear at one another's locations.

They even have tactile VR systems but you have to buy special clothes with
"gaming stripes", whatever those are.

A related technology is the localizer network. These are small,
inexpensive network relay nodes that are scattered about, solar and
battery powered. Each one sets up connections to the local nodes and
provides for network access. They also have some sensors, sight and
sound apparently, which can enhance the augmented reality system.

The computer synthesizing visual imagery is able to call on the localizer
network for views beyond what the person is seeing. In this way you can
have 360 degree vision, or even see through walls. This is a transparent
society with a vengeance!

The cumulative effect of all this technology was absolutely amazing and
completely believable. It's as far beyond our current communications
media as the net is beyond the telephone. It's very exciting to imagine
this technology coming into existence.

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.

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.

We haven't had real privacy for a while...

[TS020]

This article at least suggests that we'll be getting something back for it. The privacy and secrecy afforded to our government (US) is so ubiquitous that I would be able to accept my loss of privacy in order to get more information out of them.

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.

Can you say, "augmented reality?"

[ILL Clinton]

It's about time Vinge has a new novel coming out. I have had a lot of trouble (and believe me I've tried) finding a science fiction writer that comes close. "A Fire upon the deep" remains my favorite sci-fi novel, and I have been toying with the idea of reading it again.

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

Re:Can you say, "augmented reality?"

[strange_harlequin]

Alastair Reynolds.

Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap.

All of them good, hard sci-fi. Reynolds is an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency, and so you get some reasonable science behind the ideas a lot of the time. (Although some of it is extremely hypothetical stuff.)

He's my absolute favourite science fiction author and I can't recommend him enough. I read "A Fire Upon the Deep" for the first time about a week ago and liked it, but Alastair Reynolds completely amazed me.

Read them. Trust me.

And now we know...

[Mr. Neutron]

...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.

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.