The first three shorts, when initialy published, had a real "15 minutes into the future" vibe. Substantial ideas just thrown away as quick asides gave it that "acceleration" vibe - a society with its finger mashed on the fast forward button. William Gibson is positively static by comparison.
Some of those throwaway ideas seem quaint now (there's some stuff about body modems I think?), but one of the interesting things about the book, to me, is the further away from "the present" it gets, the more like traditional SF it becomes: it slows down, gets more spaceopera-y. But those first three shorts were something special, and for me might be the best thing cstross has ever done. Right place right time I guess, like that album you first heard when you were fourteen.
Do I remember correctly that one of the major characters in what we would now call an influencer with always-on video glasses? I think his spectacles get slashdotted at one point.
I’m not sure which is the greater anachronism got me. That I didn’t find the idea of endless surveillance creep glasses bothersome at the time I read the book or that slashdotting is in itself a once current, now newly archaic term.
The difference between Manfred and the influencers we have now was that he actually invented things, built things, and brokered huge deals while streaming everything.
I read this book a few years ago and it was just chock full of interesting ideas. I think I didn't really "get" it, or enjoy the story that much but I definitely was impressed by the imagination. Every once in a while I think of random things in it. IIRC, it was this book where corporations become kind of important, central entities at some point, and that resonates more and more these days.
Anyone have recommendations on books that can rival the first part of Accelerando in number of prescient ideas about how the near future, pre singularity might look?
My own list is:
Starmaker by Olaf Stapledon
Counting Heads by David Marusek
Nexus by Ramez Naam
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
But I'm always on the look out for more! The more predictive the better!
I love this book! The part about the implication of digitized minds and long distance space travel was really eye-opening. It really makes you understand that, no, aliens are not visiting earth.
Is it? Literally nothing even remotely similar from the book is happening in reality beyond the lobsters’ broken command of language being similar to early GPTs, but even they seem to have had a better world model than our current SOTA.
Not sure but one section of the book relates to the establishment of a polity where compute was the underpinnings of the society.
Given the current build out of compute in the real world, there is discussion / speculation about the effects of the rush to an economy heavily based on AI and the costs / benefits of that end state society.
If AI isn’t an bubble based on grift and hype that fizzles out
Some of those throwaway ideas seem quaint now (there's some stuff about body modems I think?), but one of the interesting things about the book, to me, is the further away from "the present" it gets, the more like traditional SF it becomes: it slows down, gets more spaceopera-y. But those first three shorts were something special, and for me might be the best thing cstross has ever done. Right place right time I guess, like that album you first heard when you were fourteen.
I’m not sure which is the greater anachronism got me. That I didn’t find the idea of endless surveillance creep glasses bothersome at the time I read the book or that slashdotting is in itself a once current, now newly archaic term.
My own list is:
But I'm always on the look out for more! The more predictive the better!The notion of the inner solar system being converted into computronium sounds less and less far-fetched with each passing month.
I was 17 in 2005 and discovered it by chance, and I’ve been binging on hard sf since then. Matrix and this were really transformative for me.
Also, for the longest of times I thought lobste.rs was a reference to this book :-)
Charles has very interesting takes on the modern world on his blog. I still read it with great passion.
Given the current build out of compute in the real world, there is discussion / speculation about the effects of the rush to an economy heavily based on AI and the costs / benefits of that end state society.
If AI isn’t an bubble based on grift and hype that fizzles out