Eastern Standard Tribe's topics - tribe.net

Cory rants on the FuturePresent

2004-08-23T23:52:54Z

[this was previously posted on Social.Software.Intellectuals, who are too dumb to have a short tribe URL]

(in two locations. one has a photo.)
http://www.diepunyhumans.com/archives/006847.html
http://boingboing.net/2003_12_01_archive.html#107215324306229904

primarily relevant excerpt:

'On that note: I have a special request to the toolmakers of 2004: stop making tools that magnify and multilply awkward social situations ("A total stranger asserts that he is your friend: click here to tell a reassuring lie; click here to break his heart!") ("Someone you don't know very well has invited you to a party: click here to advertise whether or not you'll be there!") ("A 'friend' has exposed your location, down to the meter, on a map of people in his social network, using this keen new location-description protocol -- on the same day that you announced that you were leaving town for a week!"). I don't need more "tools" like that, thank you very much.'

Well, I agree with the "friends" thing (cf. too-long-to-post-here link to thread over in Tribe Ideas viz. terminology). It's an awkward construction. Some of the rest of these ideas is useful for me, some has no bearing on me, some I agree with.

posted in Eastern Standard Tribe - 3 replies

Singularity Science Fiction

2004-08-15T17:34:40Z

"Awed at the pace of technological advances, a faction of geeky writers believes our world is about to change so radically that envisioning what comes next is nearly impossible."

What is the Singularity?

“The idea was conceived by Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist and science-fiction writer who’s now a professor emeritus at San Diego State University. We’re living through a period of unprecedented technological and scientific advances, Vinge says, and sometime soon the convergence of fields such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology will push humanity past a tipping point, ushering in a period of wrenching change. After that moment—the Singularity—the world will be as different from today’s world as this one is from the Stone Age.”

“A new kind of future requires a new breed of guide—someone like Stross, whose first novel, Singularity Sky, was recently nominated for a prestigious Hugo Award, or his frequent collaborator Cory Doctorow, who in 2000 won the Campbell Award for best new science-fiction writer. Both are former computer programmers. They are computer geeks and gadget freaks. They follow engineering and materials science and biotech, not to mention politics and economics. And they have latched on to the Singularity as the idea that symbolizes our era’s rush of new discoveries.”

”Vinge expects the Singularity to occur when machine intelligence surpasses that of humans. Life on Earth has always advanced by running simulations and adapting, he points out. Animal life does this through evolution. Humans are the one animal that has learned to do it faster, through problem solving. Sapient machines would do it faster still. Once our computers start to think, Vinge says, we will be “entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals.” The second trigger for the Singularity, according to Vinge, will be so-called intelligence amplification. Humans will apply their engineering skills to their own bodies, crossing the brain/machine interface threshold to merge with their technological creations. Implants, genetic modifications and other changes will make people smarter and give them Superman-like abilities. “It’s all about transcending human limitation,” Doctorow says.”

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,12543,676265,00.html

See also:
http://divedi.blogspot.com/2004/08/singularity-science-fiction.html

posted in Eastern Standard Tribe - 0 replies

EST sale

2004-08-06T14:04:15Z

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/08/03/est_for_60_off.html

I finally bought a copy. And then I went ahead and got "Singularity Sky", and "Frek and the Elixer".

I am _weak_.

posted in Eastern Standard Tribe - 0 replies

WAKE UP!

2004-08-03T15:32:20Z

just sending a shout out to my east-coast homies...

um, whoop?

posted in Eastern Standard Tribe - 0 replies

pastiche

2004-06-16T19:29:04Z

from the compendium & addditions of LOTR pastiches thread at MakingLight: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005353.html#005353

I lived long enough to see the Elves depart for the Undying Lands; to see the rise of the Age of Men; to learn ten languages; to realize my mission given me by the Valar to aid Middle Earth in its wars with Sauron; to see the end of the Council of the Wise and of wisdom.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when Keep A-Stridin' Aragorn would decide to become King Elessar until the end of his days.

Aragorn was in his second or third blush of youth when I first met him, sometime late-A3. He was a rangy cowpoke, apparent 40 or so, all rawhide squint-lines and sunburned neck, boots worn thin and infinitely comfortable. He was taking a break from Saving the World, chilling in Bree and bouncing for some poor innkeeper. We hooked up at the Prancing Pony---the PraPo for those who knew---on a busy Friday night, spring-ish. I was fighting an Ent-slow battle for a stool at the scratched bar, inching my way closer every time the press of bodies shifted, and he had one of the few seats, surrounded by a litter of pipeweed junk and empties, clearly encamped.

Some duration into my foray, he cocked his head at me and raised a sun-bleached eyebrow. "You get any closer, son, and they're going to have to write a lay about us."

posted in Eastern Standard Tribe - 0 replies

"Down and Out" question

2004-02-17T02:33:03Z

I just finished "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" and something doesn't quite make sense to me.

Spoilers ahead.
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Debra decides to take out Julius as part of her plan to take over the Haunted Mansion. Dan tells her he'll do it in exchange for getting a lot of Whuffie.

Dan contacts Jeanine, who whacks Julius for love of Dan, not money. The inference is that, since there was no Whuffie transaction between Dan and Jeanine, it couldn't be traced. This makes sense, and ties into the theme of love and friendship versus the Whuffie economy.

However, there was a Whuffie transaction between Debra and Dan. Wouldn't somebody look at Debra's tranactions (and Dan's too) and see a big transfer "For services rendered" to Dan, and be suspicious?

I had the impression that if you pinged somebody's Whuffie, you wouldn't just get the raw numbers, you could get an itemized list of what that person had done to get that Whuffie. If a person can accumulate Whuffie without anybody knowing _why_ he got it, doesn't that undermine the whole concept that a reputation/esteem-based economy is supposed to keep people honest?

posted in Eastern Standard Tribe - 1 reply

A Place so Foreign and 8 More

2004-01-02T13:53:24Z

I got the Citadel Press PKD short-story collection "Paycheck" from my girlfriend. That would've been great, except that I have Citadels "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" sitting on my sehelf, which is the exact same book, save for title, cover, and a lower price 12 years ago when it came out.

And she no longer had the recepit.

Nevertheless, the friendly, distracted people at the mega-Borders (or was it Barns & Noble? Does it make a difference?) told me to pick out something else and bring 'em both up to the counter.

After a half-hour of wandering about--irritated that the "graphic novel" section now consisted solely of "Sandman" complilations and "Ranma 1 1/2" volumes--I was sorely tempted by Stoss' hardcover of "Singularity Sky", but considering that I'd have to shell out another $10 for that, I "settled" for APSFa8M. And I got $1.06 (American!), to boot.

Bastard that I am, I read the whole damn thing yesterday, except for 0wnz0red, which I read twice on Salon, anyway.

:::sigh:::

posted in Eastern Standard Tribe - 4 replies

Join the crew!

2003-12-06T19:19:05Z

I created this tribe for the purpose of discussing the many thought-provoking short stories and novel(s; soon) that Cory has written for YOU, the science fiction fan. It would, to some degree, be unfair to his fellow boingboingers to discuss Cory's fiction in that tribe. So, bring all the wonderful speculation, interpretation, and argument here. I love science fiction, but arguing on the Internet perhaps my one true passions in life. I look forward to heated disputes over the finer subtexts of Craphound, et al.

posted in Eastern Standard Tribe - 0 replies