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This time I am not simply posting a link to everything I read, only the interesting stuff or the things I have something to say about.
Ballastexistenz: What happens when you for the first time in your life are consistently treated like a person?
Charles Stross posts a transcript of a talk he gave in Munich last week. A trivial thought on the concept of lifelogs is the effect it could have on reading books - you would need only to quickly look at each page once, then it would be available to read at your leisure. But as I said this is trivial. More in-depth appreciation would want a novel written or the life lived. Saith Charlie:
Perhaps I should reassess how I set some of my stories. I tend to set aside consideration of how these trends will affect society as being 'too much', too alien for me to represent well. And that if I do make the attempt it will surely date as badly as mid-twentieth century science fiction dates now.
Without it, though whatever I write might appeal only to those from the rough present and be bizarrely alien - incomplete - to future readers. Oh, who am I kidding? Setting/Story dictates the interactions of society and technology beyond that I do not particularly care. From where I sit in the early 21st century I have a better understanding of how high technology works than someone writing sixty or a hundred years ago and a much worse one than someone writing sixty or a hundred years from now. This cannot be fixed and so I will try not to let it bother me.
A little less off-topic, what Stross says of lifelogs reminds me of the way they are used to monitor police activity in Greg Egan's short story The Caress, among others. At the time I found it distressing. With the longer view Stross takes in this talk I am not sure the idea is any less so. There are years to get used to the idea yet, though.
His aside at the end about driverless cars sounds nearly precisely as they were portrayed in Zelazny's 1965 novel The Dream Master, which is still (more?) worth reading although not by anyone who is feverish at the time.
Heh. The word 'lifelog' seems a natural one to be picked up.
Ballastexistenz: What happens when you for the first time in your life are consistently treated like a person?
Charles Stross posts a transcript of a talk he gave in Munich last week. A trivial thought on the concept of lifelogs is the effect it could have on reading books - you would need only to quickly look at each page once, then it would be available to read at your leisure. But as I said this is trivial. More in-depth appreciation would want a novel written or the life lived. Saith Charlie:
"One of the biggest risks we face is that of sleep-walking into a policeHe has a perspective I do not often see, taking into account the near certainty that we are seeing the mere beginnings of the way current, recent and near-future technologies are going to change society. Despite the way I often feel, this is not a rumbling to wait out but something more like a change of phase.
state, simply by mistaking the ability to monitor everyone for even
minute legal infractions for the imperative to do so."
Perhaps I should reassess how I set some of my stories. I tend to set aside consideration of how these trends will affect society as being 'too much', too alien for me to represent well. And that if I do make the attempt it will surely date as badly as mid-twentieth century science fiction dates now.
Without it, though whatever I write might appeal only to those from the rough present and be bizarrely alien - incomplete - to future readers. Oh, who am I kidding? Setting/Story dictates the interactions of society and technology beyond that I do not particularly care. From where I sit in the early 21st century I have a better understanding of how high technology works than someone writing sixty or a hundred years ago and a much worse one than someone writing sixty or a hundred years from now. This cannot be fixed and so I will try not to let it bother me.
A little less off-topic, what Stross says of lifelogs reminds me of the way they are used to monitor police activity in Greg Egan's short story The Caress, among others. At the time I found it distressing. With the longer view Stross takes in this talk I am not sure the idea is any less so. There are years to get used to the idea yet, though.
His aside at the end about driverless cars sounds nearly precisely as they were portrayed in Zelazny's 1965 novel The Dream Master, which is still (more?) worth reading although not by anyone who is feverish at the time.
Heh. The word 'lifelog' seems a natural one to be picked up.
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Date: 2007-05-14 10:16 (UTC)From:It is a kinda slippery slope tho, b/c it's gradual and each generation that gets used to it, will pave the way for another generation to think "oh, it's basically the same as when I was growing up" >.>;;
I want to be treated like a person.. like a person of my gender :(
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Date: 2007-05-14 10:37 (UTC)From:You ought to be. :-) Like I said, the thought of being humoured bothers me greatly.
Slippery slope, yes. David Brin wrote something on the topic I had meant to read too. I suppose the direction things move depends largely on the ideas predominant in society at the time. I'm not thinking clearly right now.
Seldom am. It doesn't just happen. There's an effort involved. So people seldom do.