All posts by Paul Raven

Blog

Singularity season – nerd rapture or inconvenient truth?

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array of computer screensNothing divides opinion like the future – it’s human nature, we all love to take a stab at predicting what will come. But it’s also human nature to disagree over what cannot yet be proven (which is something we can be sure of by looking at the past).

So, Vernor Vinge – the computer scientist and sf novelist who coined the term ‘Technological Singularity’ as used in this context during a presentation back in the eighties, and has talked about it ever since in his fiction and elsewhere – provides the capstone article to a special Singularity edition of IEEE Spectrum, defending the concept against the criticisms levelled at it by various scientists, economists and philosophers.

“The best answer to the question, “Will computers ever be as smart as humans?” is probably “Yes, but only briefly.””

For some odd reason IEEE neglected to solicit Warren Ellis‘s opinion, so he supplied it himself:

“When you read these essays and interviews, every time you see the word “Singularity,” I want you to replace it in your head with the term “Flying Spaghetti Monster.”“

As always, if you want the apogee of cynicism, Ellis is your man; he’s the bucket of cold water thrown over the mating dogs of enthusiasm.

But other opinions are available, as the adverts say – George Dvorsky’s response to Ellis, for example:

“The day is coming, my friends, when Singularity denial will seem as outrageous and irresponsible as the denial of anthropogenic global warming. And I think the comparison is fair; environmentalists are often chastised for their “religious-like” convictions and concern. It’s easy to mock the Chicken Littles of the world.”

What do Futurismic‘s readership think about the Singularity – awesome sf-nal literary metaphor, or looming technological likelihood? [image by binary koala]

Blog

Contemplating immortality, contemplating death

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ninjaThere’s a lengthy (but well worth the read) article at COSMOS Magazine about the prospect of functional human immortality, which – thanks to fairly recent scientific advances – now looks plausible as opposed to impossible. Unlike many articles of its kind, it looks at the psychosocial implications of such a change:

“Our relatively brief lives and our routine proximity to the deaths of ourselves and others are the foundations of everything we have ever thought or believed. Neither religion nor philosophy necessarily promises immortality, but each offers ways of coming to terms with or giving meaning to death and, therefore, life. If death is to be postponed indefinitely, then both religion and philosophy face fundamental crises.”

Well, at least we’ll have the leisure time to talk it all out! [image by brunkfordbraun]

On the flip-side, an article at Wired takes a look at a new computer game wherein the bodies of your slain opponents don’t disappear:

“Over the years, I’ve noticed that most of the seriously violent games I love deal with the corpses by simply whisking them away. […] After I’d killed my way through about seven battles, I experimentally backtracked all the way to the beginning, and sure enough – every body was still lying there, every blood fleck on the ceiling intact.

Now, did this change the emotional, or even moral, timbre of the game?

In some ways, yes. You really do get a better sense that you’re a sociopath when the evidence of your crimes is stacked around you.”

Perhaps, rather than being the training grounds for murderers that some might claim them as, violent games could actually encourage their players to think harder about the consequences of their actions in the real world? That could come in handy – especially if we ever find we can live forever.

Fiction

VERITAS NOS LIBERABIT by Kristin Janz

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This month’s story comes from Kristin Janz, who took a rather different approach to narrative structure; “Veritas Nos Liberabit” is a story told in emails about how emails can tell stories.

So read on, and don’t forget to leave Kristin some feedback in the comments at the bottom. Enjoy!

Veritas Nos Liberabit

by Kristin Janz

From: jess hentzchel <jessicahentzchel@gmail.com>
Sent: August 1, 20__ (12:42 a.m., EDT)
To: Amy Pearson <apearson@eslpharm.com>
Subject: Dancing bear – kind of funny (fwd)
Attachments: dancingbear.gif

Amy – Check out the dancing bear, it’s sort of cute.

#

From: Amy Pearson <apearson@eslpharm.com>
Sent: August 1, 20__ (9:23 a.m., EDT)
To: jess hentzchel <jessicahentzchel@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Dancing bear – kind of funny (fwd)

This isn’t like you, Jess. Forwarding cute animated graphics of anthropomorphic predators? What next, angel poetry penned by senile old ladies in the Midwest? Or – heaven forbid – “Footprints”?

So it’s official. David is getting divorced. I overheard him telling Vikram in the cafeteria this morning.

Amy

#

From: Jonathan Lu <jlu@eslpharm.com>
Sent: August 1, 20__ (9:31 a.m., EDT)
To: Amy Pearson <apearson@eslpharm.com>
CC: Medicinal Chemistry
Subject: Re: Dancing bear – kind of funny (fwd)

> Jonathan – Check out the dancing bear, it’s sort of cute.

Amy, why you send this to me? I don’t know what it means, Veritas Nos Liberabit. It is French?

#

Continue reading VERITAS NOS LIBERABIT by Kristin Janz →

Blog

Friday Free Fiction for 30th May

It’s that time of week again, when thoughts turn to leaving the office, not working for a few days … and reading some stories. Here’s a whole bunch of good stuff to get your eyeballs tucked into.

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The weekly selection from Manybooks.net, including a couple of early pieces from sf legend Robert Silverberg:

  • “Impact” by Irving Cox – “They were languorous, anarchic, shameless in their pleasures . . . were they lower than man . . . or higher?”
  • “The Nothing Equation” by Tom Godwin – “The space ships were miracles of power and precision; the men who manned them, rich in endurance and courage. Every detail had been checked and double checked; every detail except …”
  • “Postmark Ganymede” by Robert Silverberg – “Consider the poor mailman of the future. To “sleet and snow and dead of night”–things that must not keep him from his appointed rounds–will be added, sub-zero void, meteors, and planets that won’t stay put. Maybe he’ll decide that for six cents an ounce it just ain’t worth it.”
  • “The Hunted Heroes” by Robert Silverberg – “The planet itself was tough enough–barren, desolate, forbidding; enough to stop the most adventurous and dedicated. But they had to run head-on against a mad genius who had a motto: Death to all Terrans!” NOOOOO!
  • “The Man Who Hated Mars” by Gordon Randall Garrett – “To escape from Mars, all Clayton had to do was the impossible. Break out of a crack-proof exile camp–get onto a ship that couldn’t be boarded–smash through an impenetrable wall of steel. Perhaps he could do all these things, but he discovered that Mars did evil things to men; that he wasn’t even Clayton any more. He was only–THE MAN WHO HATED MARS.” NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!1

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Via SF Signal we discover another what seems to be some sort of alternative or addition to services like Manybooks.net that has a much slicker front-end, plus charts and all that web2.0 stuff.

The titles all look pretty familiar (lots of Doctorow and Stross) but you might want to go poke around the science fiction section of Feedbooks anyway. Just in case. 😉

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Via a number of places, but I think I spotted it at Scalzi‘s first (so that’s who I’m quoting):

“Australian science fiction writer Simon Hayes and Freemantle Publishing have posted the first of Hayes’s satirical Hal Spacejock novels online for you to download and try. Simon sends me copies of the series from time to time […] and they’re definitely fun, and (intentionally) humorous science fiction is hard enough to find as it is. Give it a look and if you like it, they’ll arrange to send you some actual books, at a discount of both the cover price and […] international postage.”

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Via Friday Flash Fictioneer Gareth D Jones:

“… a ‘Fiction Special’ issue of Wales-based ezine Estronomicon is now online for you to download, featuring ten short stories.”

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Missed this one last week: Captain Bruce Sterling recommends heading over to HarperCollins, where you can currently read the entirety of Invisible Armies by Jon Evans:

(((That’s a pretty good book, actually. It’s kind of a tough-as-nails technothriller from a leftie Seattle 99er perspective. People who aren’t morons and like thriller novels ought to read this.)))

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Elizabeth Bear and Emma Bull have released the “season finale” novel Refining Fire over at Shadow Unit this week in daily instalments; I think the whole thing should be there by the weekend. If you’ve not checked it out yet, there’s quarter of a million words of free fiction there now – and that’s just the first season.

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Via Lou Anders, there’s a neatly collated selection of free-to-read sample chapters over at Pyr Books.

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Michael Roberts slips in just behind the cut-off deadline with another Tale of the Singularity: “Lord Cthulhu Walks the Desert“.

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And finally, your selection from the Friday Flash Fictioneers:

  • Phred Serenissima‘s story from last week is “Garden Variety“; this week’s is called “Choices“.
  • Gareth D Jones decries the ravages of war (and drugs) in “The Hastening of Battle“.
  • Neil Beynon proves that you can get inspiration from blog posts here at Futurismic in “Touched“
  • Don’t worry; Shaun C Green‘s “Spaceman” isn’t a cover version of the old 4 Non Blondes track.
  • Gaie Sebold gets all po-mo with “Little Red Hoodie“

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That’s your dose for the week, folks – should be enough to keep you going. Don’t forget to feed us your tips, plugs and suggestions as always. Have a great weekend!

Blog

“If social media is your home, a phone is you”

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Android / Open Handset Alliance logoNo, it’s not the gibberish it might initially look like. It’s an observation by Jason Stoddard who, in addition to being a damn fine science fiction writer*, runs a futurist-minded publicity agency called Centric.

Jason had a major squee over the iPhone as a platform back in March, but it would appear Google’s recently unveiled Android mobile OS has impressed him even more:

“Combine two highly capable mobile platforms, each with a sales channel for applications and significant incentives for developers to, well, develop on, and you have the beginnings of the next computing revolution. You can hear Bruce Sterling outline all the devices the mobile phone has already eaten, but the number is only going to increase in coming months.”

I can hear your objection coming, because it’s the same one that leapt to my mind – “yeah, like I’ll be able to afford the data charges to make use of mobile computing“.

So what if – and I’m guessing it’s a big ‘if’, because there’ll be a lot of big companies who’ll object to the idea – there was a free-to-use wireless broadband spectrum?

Changes things a little, doesn’t it? [image by OpenHandsetAlliance]

* We’re unashamedly rather biased about Jason’s ideas and writing, as we’ve published him twice here at Futurismic.