sci-fi recs for stories iโve found useful for orienting to The Current Situation, feel free to reply or QT with more
- permutation city, greg egan
- accelerando, charles stross
- the quantum thief (and sequels), hannu rajaniemi
- blindsight, peter watts
- lena, qntm / sam hughes
- last and first men / star maker, olaf stapledon (i cannot convey how strongly i recommend stapledon in particular)
@bitcloud It may be convenient to pretend that the younger generations like AI, but that is simply not true outside of a few enclaves. Most people are still rather standoffish towards it, and feel as if it is being forced upon them. Accelerating without acknowledging that is shallow.
In the decades to come, whatever requests need to be made of a machine mind will take on a form more vividly resembling prayer. No wonder the church is spooked by something muscling into their turf.
I know itโs become pretty cliche and cringey to talk about at this point but if youโre under like 25 I cannot stress enough how one time Obama wore a tan suit and people spent a week arguing over whether or not it was demeaning to the Oval Office and they were serious about it.
If you turned on the TV in another country and saw the leader's daughter-in-law giving him a softball interview on a major "news" channel, you would rightfully assume that country is a tinpot dictatorship.