Vinge's _Rainbows End_ [Spoilers]
Phillip SanMiguel
ago.[0] Just thought I should mention that, in the interests of complete
disclosure...
I have been waiting a long time for a new novel by Vernor Vinge. While
very good, I don't think _Rainbows End_ lives up to the raw
world-building power of its previous, shorter, iterations: "Fast Times
at Fairmont High" and "Synthetic Serendipity". This perhaps isn't fair.
It could instead be the case that reading FTaFH and SS stole the thunder
of RE.
Vinge's last 3 novels (_The Peace War_/_Marooned in Real Time_, _A
Deepness in the Sky_ and _A Fire Upon the Deep_[1]) were each
revelatory for me. Whole new landscapes of tropes seemed to
emerge in each new work.
Same thing with _FTaFH_ and _SS_, where despite his previous claims of a
Singularity being impossible to portray, Vinge seemed to be drawing us
right to the knife's edge of one, if not beyond. But, for a number of
reasons, _RE_ actually seems to be drawing back from that edge and
training its vision on other, less interesting, vistas.
In _FTaFH_, Vinge managed to portray a pretty dystopian theme as a
young-adult fiction romp. A junior high school[2] student, Juan Orozco,
lives in a frightening world. A world that moves so fast that the skills
that these days one would develop and hone over a lifetime can become
obsolete overnight. That being a given Vinge managed to make Juan's use
of designer-drug pills to keep up with his class mates almost
reasonable. But it's a Red Queen scenario cast in a power-fantasy mold.
It is not uncommon, of course, for an author to expand a short story
into a novel. But a short story, rewritten as another short story?
"Synthetic Serendipity" is not a minor reworking of FTaFH. But it also
doesn't work as, say, a chapter two of a novel in progress. I'm not sure
what to make of it.
In any case, the story's second incarnation is closer to the form it
takes in_RE_. But it is stripped of the terrorist plot of _RE_ and
Juan's pill-popping in FTaRH and further capped off with a pro-teacher
moral. It is the most upbeat of the three works. Nevertheless all three
are unsettling. The whole idea of the retirement homes emptying out as
Alzheimer's is cured and retirees returning to junior high school to
try to regain their edge strikes the right balance between hope and
horror.
_Rainbows End_ is the third incarnation of the story. It tosses in the
dystopian issue of the day: terrorism. A digression on dystopias. There
are dystopias that are kewl and entertaining (eg. _Neuromancer_) and
thereare dystopias that are just plain bummers (eg, _1984_)[3]. But in
this case, the terrorist plot seems just to be some sort of framing
device. I would have preferred that less pages (or none) were devoted to
the Indo-European security administrators. Kewl stuff there (Vaz's
scanning his contingency tree), but it took the edge off the entire
plot, knowing what Vaz wanted to do. The other Indo-Europeans were too
sparsely drawn to be anything more than plot devices. Leaving them
completely out of the novel would have had scarcely any effect on it.
Vaz is the villain because he wants to control the minds of the human
race, adding, I suppose, a sort of Secure Neuronal Environment to the
Secure Hardware Environment the security officers have already succeeded
in imposing on humanity. Either offense is probably enough to enrage a
Cory Doctorow with its pure villainy. But other than that unfortunate
trait, Vaz seems like credible fellow. Nothing like monstrous Lord Steel
from _AFutD_. More like Pham Nuwen. The problem plot-wise is that I
didn't find Vaz's succeeding particularly menacing, nor did I find his
failure of any special interest.
There are a few mysterious issues surrounding this cycle. First, why
"Fast Times at Fairmont High" as a title? It's clearly a take-off on the
title of the 1982 movie, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". That will be
a movie that, what, maybe 10% of USians will have seen? Second, what is
up with the "Zones of Thought" label? I know James Nicoll dismisses this
as a simple error in another thread, but if it is not intended by Vinge
to be a Zones of Thought novel why is *still* labeled as such on Amazon?
(Er, or it was a month ago. Since then "Zones of Thought" has been
stripped from the Amazon advertisment.) And on isfdb! (Erg, this has
also been fixed in the last month.) Do the kids at Ridgemont High have
any technology that Pham Nuwen lacks in AFuTD? It fits with the
"Rainbows End" title. That's it, humanity has reached the apex of
technology it will be possible for them to develop in the Slow Zone.
After all: rainbows end.
Anyway, I'm a little lukewarm with my praise for _Rainbows End_ but
should it have a sequel, or even another incarnation, I'll buy it in
hardback. I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars, just like Harriet Klausner did
on Amazon (but, I swear, I actually read the book.) Actually, were RE to
be the first book of a series it would make a lot of sense. What was
Rabbit? Seems like the consensus is that he is/was an AI. But why
wouldn't Vinge mention that? Could be that "By the way, Rabbit is an AI"
just didn't fit anywhere. But maybe that revelation is being saved for
the second book?
Phillip
[0] I compounded the error by reading rec.arts.sf.science during the
intervening month, thinking I was reading rasfw. The order of magnitude
lower number of posts, almost all devoted to, well, sf science, might
have tipped me off to my error. But it did not. Instead I wondered if
universities were dropping USENET in such large numbers (as Indiana
University apparently has) that posting volume had dropped by a factor
of 20 or so. Remember the "September that never ended"? Well, I thought,
that's it, September *has* ended.
[1] Yes, ADitS and AFUtD were published in the opposite order, but I
read them in what is actually chronological order. I think I got an
extra level of enjoyment out of the books by reading them in that order.
[2] Junior High School is either 7th and 8th grade or 7th, 8th and 9th.
One is usually 13 years old when one enters 7th grade.
[3] My guess is that in critical circles the bummer-dystopias are more
highly regarded, the kewl-dystopias are seen as sophomoric. Since I'm
posting to an SF newsgroup, it will come as no surprise that I don't
share the latter viewpoint. Indeed, I'm embracing the Nicoll optimism
lately. Lots of indications that the world is not heading to
multiple-systems failures. But our lives seem so much more dramatic as
we soldier on towards the nearly certain destruction of humanity...
Aaron Bergman
Phillip SanMiguel <pmi...@purdue.edu> wrote:
[spoilers]
> Anyway, I'm a little lukewarm with my praise for _Rainbows End_ but
> should it have a sequel, or even another incarnation, I'll buy it in
> hardback. I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars, just like Harriet Klausner did
> on Amazon (but, I swear, I actually read the book.) Actually, were RE to
> be the first book of a series it would make a lot of sense. What was
> Rabbit? Seems like the consensus is that he is/was an AI. But why
> wouldn't Vinge mention that? Could be that "By the way, Rabbit is an AI"
> just didn't fit anywhere. But maybe that revelation is being saved for
> the second book?
I got the impression that Rabbit was a sort of emergent intelligence out
of the Secure Hardware Environment, although I can't point to any
particular details why.
My problem with this book is that I never really bought into this world.
Whether this was due to revulsion or disbelief, I'm not quite able to
disentangle. A striking aspect of the book was the lack of any real
scientists. For me, it undercut the whole apotheosis of synthesis theme.
Distribution can be effective for analysis and research, but discovery
is something else entirely. As for the revulsion, did Vinge intend this
to be a dystopia? I hope so. The conceit of Gu losing his poetic
ability, but becoming a genius engineer set up a dichotomy I found
unfortunate.
I think I'm getting tired of these unpleasant futures where technology
changes the nature of humanity or some such. How about some realistic
McDevitt futures where things end up a whole lot like they are today?
Not edgy enough?
Aaron
Mazaron
Aaron Bergman wrote:
> I got the impression that Rabbit was a sort of emergent intelligence out
> of the Secure Hardware Environment, although I can't point to any
> particular details why.
I agree. I never had any feeling he was the online person of a human,
but something in the software environment, particularly given how Vinge
depiced the people behind the other online personas.
>
> My problem with this book is that I never really bought into this world.
> Whether this was due to revulsion or disbelief, I'm not quite able to
> disentangle. A striking aspect of the book was the lack of any real
> scientists. For me, it undercut the whole apotheosis of synthesis theme.
> Distribution can be effective for analysis and research, but discovery
> is something else entirely. As for the revulsion, did Vinge intend this
> to be a dystopia? I hope so. The conceit of Gu losing his poetic
> ability, but becoming a genius engineer set up a dichotomy I found
> unfortunate.
True, no one invents anything, at least among the average person, they
just coordinate with others, though there *were* people in those labs.
>
> I think I'm getting tired of these unpleasant futures where technology
> changes the nature of humanity or some such. How about some realistic
> McDevitt futures where things end up a whole lot like they are today?
> Not edgy enough?
>
I didn't think of that future of being that unpleasant. I also failed
to see how many people in the developing world could have such tech,
nor how it could be so cheap that every town in America and every
person in America - including those who say work at the bottom rung of
the service industry - could afford such tech.
Tim
Mazaron
Phillip SanMiguel wrote:
> I mistakenly posted the following to rec.arts.sf.science about a month
> ago.[0] Just thought I should mention that, in the interests of complete
> disclosure...
>
>
> Same thing with _FTaFH_ and _SS_, where despite his previous claims of a
> Singularity being impossible to portray, Vinge seemed to be drawing us
> right to the knife's edge of one, if not beyond. But, for a number of
> reasons, _RE_ actually seems to be drawing back from that edge and
> training its vision on other, less interesting, vistas.
Vinge has always said he doesn't want to potray the Singularlity and
doesn't think that possible in any event. As far a drawing back, he is
portraying near future, particularly when compared to his Zones of
Thought series.
>
> In _FTaFH_, Vinge managed to portray a pretty dystopian theme as a
> young-adult fiction romp. A junior high school[2] student, Juan Orozco,
> lives in a frightening world. A world that moves so fast that the skills
> that these days one would develop and hone over a lifetime can become
> obsolete overnight. That being a given Vinge managed to make Juan's use
> of designer-drug pills to keep up with his class mates almost
> reasonable. But it's a Red Queen scenario cast in a power-fantasy mold.
Juan is suddenly the (relative at least) expert in Rainbows End.
Interesting, I had not thought of that comparison.
>
> It is not uncommon, of course, for an author to expand a short story
> into a novel. But a short story, rewritten as another short story?
> "Synthetic Serendipity" is not a minor reworking of FTaFH. But it also
> doesn't work as, say, a chapter two of a novel in progress. I'm not sure
> what to make of it.
Synthetic Serendipty? What is this?
>
> In any case, the story's second incarnation is closer to the form it
> takes in_RE_. But it is stripped of the terrorist plot of _RE_ and
> Juan's pill-popping in FTaRH and further capped off with a pro-teacher
> moral. It is the most upbeat of the three works. Nevertheless all three
> are unsettling. The whole idea of the retirement homes emptying out as
> Alzheimer's is cured and retirees returning to junior high school to
> try to regain their edge strikes the right balance between hope and
> horror.
Horror?
>
> _Rainbows End_ is the third incarnation of the story. It tosses in the
> dystopian issue of the day: terrorism. A digression on dystopias. There
> are dystopias that are kewl and entertaining (eg. _Neuromancer_) and
> thereare dystopias that are just plain bummers (eg, _1984_)[3]. But in
> this case, the terrorist plot seems just to be some sort of framing
> device. I would have preferred that less pages (or none) were devoted to
> the Indo-European security administrators. Kewl stuff there (Vaz's
> scanning his contingency tree), but it took the edge off the entire
> plot, knowing what Vaz wanted to do. The other Indo-Europeans were too
> sparsely drawn to be anything more than plot devices. Leaving them
> completely out of the novel would have had scarcely any effect on it.
Mmmm, maybe. Vaz wouldn't have had to work so hard to keep ahead of
them. But you are right, they were pretty minor characters, much more
minor than I was lead to believe they would become after reading the
first few pages.
>
> Vaz is the villain because he wants to control the minds of the human
> race, adding, I suppose, a sort of Secure Neuronal Environment to the
> Secure Hardware Environment the security officers have already succeeded
> in imposing on humanity. Either offense is probably enough to enrage a
> Cory Doctorow with its pure villainy. But other than that unfortunate
> trait, Vaz seems like credible fellow. Nothing like monstrous Lord Steel
> from _AFutD_. More like Pham Nuwen. The problem plot-wise is that I
> didn't find Vaz's succeeding particularly menacing, nor did I find his
> failure of any special interest.
That could have been developed perhaps, yes, but the concept is scary
enough for me. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that, plus
all we had was his notion that he would do it for the good of humanity.
How do we know that? I think one of Vinge's points in his terrorism
asides was the idea that small non-national groups and individuals can
in the near future easily come into the possession of weapons of mass
destruction and that that they use them, the authorities sometimes
several steps behind them in finding and stopping this. This plan of
Vaz's was just one more of that type of development.
>
> There are a few mysterious issues surrounding this cycle. First, why
> "Fast Times at Fairmont High" as a title? It's clearly a take-off on the
> title of the 1982 movie, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". That will be
> a movie that, what, maybe 10% of USians will have seen?
But many many more will have heard of.
Second, what is
> up with the "Zones of Thought" label? I know James Nicoll dismisses this
> as a simple error in another thread, but if it is not intended by Vinge
> to be a Zones of Thought novel why is *still* labeled as such on Amazon?
Who is to say this is not set in the very distant past of the Zones of
Thought series? Does only Amazon labe it as a Zone of Thought novel;
what about Barnes & Noble?
That's it, humanity has reached the apex of
> technology it will be possible for them to develop in the Slow Zone.
> After all: rainbows end.
Interesting take.
What was
> Rabbit? Seems like the consensus is that he is/was an AI. But why
> wouldn't Vinge mention that? Could be that "By the way, Rabbit is an AI"
> just didn't fit anywhere. But maybe that revelation is being saved for
> the second book?
>
Rabbit to me was sentient software or perhaps an example of the
post-Singularity intelligences that were coming into existence.
Tim
norrin
Phillip SanMiguel wrote:
> I mistakenly posted the following to rec.arts.sf.science about a month
> ago.[0] Just thought I should mention that, in the interests of complete
> disclosure...
>
>
> I have been waiting a long time for a new novel by Vernor Vinge. While
> very good, I don't think _Rainbows End_ lives up to the raw
> world-building power of its previous, shorter, iterations: "Fast Times
> at Fairmont High" and "Synthetic Serendipity". This perhaps isn't fair.
> It could instead be the case that reading FTaFH and SS stole the thunder
> of RE.
>
> Vinge's last 3 novels (_The Peace War_/_Marooned in Real Time_, _A
> Deepness in the Sky_ and _A Fire Upon the Deep_[1]) were each
> revelatory for me. Whole new landscapes of tropes seemed to
> emerge in each new work.
>
> Same thing with _FTaFH_ and _SS_, where despite his previous claims of a
> Singularity being impossible to portray, Vinge seemed to be drawing us
> right to the knife's edge of one, if not beyond. But, for a number of
> reasons, _RE_ actually seems to be drawing back from that edge and
> training its vision on other, less interesting, vistas.
I liked the last 3 novels, wasn't so excited with the short stories.
> In _FTaFH_, Vinge managed to portray a pretty dystopian theme as a
> young-adult fiction romp. A junior high school[2] student, Juan Orozco,
> lives in a frightening world. A world that moves so fast that the skills
> that these days one would develop and hone over a lifetime can become
> obsolete overnight. That being a given Vinge managed to make Juan's use
> of designer-drug pills to keep up with his class mates almost
> reasonable. But it's a Red Queen scenario cast in a power-fantasy mold.
I don't think _RE_ is a dystopia, in spite of some similarities. The
world
is too unstable, it's going to change into a new phase within twenty
years.
_RE_ is a world where (almost) anything is possible. For every
application there is a countermeasure, a killer ap is an easy way
to kill people (death is not reversible, Alzheimer's is).
> It is not uncommon, of course, for an author to expand a short story
> into a novel. But a short story, rewritten as another short story?
> "Synthetic Serendipity" is not a minor reworking of FTaFH. But it also
> doesn't work as, say, a chapter two of a novel in progress. I'm not sure
> what to make of it.
>
> In any case, the story's second incarnation is closer to the form it
> takes in_RE_. But it is stripped of the terrorist plot of _RE_ and
> Juan's pill-popping in FTaRH and further capped off with a pro-teacher
> moral. It is the most upbeat of the three works. Nevertheless all three
> are unsettling. The whole idea of the retirement homes emptying out as
> Alzheimer's is cured and retirees returning to junior high school to
> try to regain their edge strikes the right balance between hope and
> horror.
>
> _Rainbows End_ is the third incarnation of the story. It tosses in the
> dystopian issue of the day: terrorism. A digression on dystopias. There
> are dystopias that are kewl and entertaining (eg. _Neuromancer_) and
> thereare dystopias that are just plain bummers (eg, _1984_)[3]. But in
It's possible to call _Neuromancer_ a dystopia, but we don't know
enough about that world to say for sure.
> this case, the terrorist plot seems just to be some sort of framing
> device. I would have preferred that less pages (or none) were devoted to
> the Indo-European security administrators. Kewl stuff there (Vaz's
> scanning his contingency tree), but it took the edge off the entire
> plot, knowing what Vaz wanted to do. The other Indo-Europeans were too
> sparsely drawn to be anything more than plot devices. Leaving them
> completely out of the novel would have had scarcely any effect on it.
Vaz is the villain, a false friend of the good guys. His treachery is
known
to us but not to them. In a cyberpunk story, he would recruit the
heroes
from the underclass, use them, and betray them. In a Vinge story he
will try to become a tyrant and underestimate the heroes.
> Vaz is the villain because he wants to control the minds of the human
> race, adding, I suppose, a sort of Secure Neuronal Environment to the
> Secure Hardware Environment the security officers have already succeeded
> in imposing on humanity. Either offense is probably enough to enrage a
> Cory Doctorow with its pure villainy. But other than that unfortunate
> trait, Vaz seems like credible fellow. Nothing like monstrous Lord Steel
> from _AFutD_. More like Pham Nuwen. The problem plot-wise is that I
> didn't find Vaz's succeeding particularly menacing, nor did I find his
> failure of any special interest.
Vaz is not as cruel and not as oblivous as the typical villain.
> There are a few mysterious issues surrounding this cycle. First, why
> "Fast Times at Fairmont High" as a title? It's clearly a take-off on the
> title of the 1982 movie, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". That will be
> a movie that, what, maybe 10% of USians will have seen? Second, what is
"Fast Times" is also a reference to the Red Queen scenario.
> up with the "Zones of Thought" label? I know James Nicoll dismisses this
> as a simple error in another thread, but if it is not intended by Vinge
> to be a Zones of Thought novel why is *still* labeled as such on Amazon?
> (Er, or it was a month ago. Since then "Zones of Thought" has been
> stripped from the Amazon advertisment.) And on isfdb! (Erg, this has
> also been fixed in the last month.) Do the kids at Ridgemont High have
> any technology that Pham Nuwen lacks in AFuTD? It fits with the
> "Rainbows End" title. That's it, humanity has reached the apex of
> technology it will be possible for them to develop in the Slow Zone.
> After all: rainbows end.
Humanity has reached the apex of technology. Soon, they're going
to die off (most of them).
> Anyway, I'm a little lukewarm with my praise for _Rainbows End_ but
> should it have a sequel, or even another incarnation, I'll buy it in
> hardback. I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars, just like Harriet Klausner did
> on Amazon (but, I swear, I actually read the book.) Actually, were RE to
> be the first book of a series it would make a lot of sense. What was
> Rabbit? Seems like the consensus is that he is/was an AI. But why
> wouldn't Vinge mention that? Could be that "By the way, Rabbit is an AI"
> just didn't fit anywhere. But maybe that revelation is being saved for
> the second book?
>
> Phillip
There are revelations that would fit in a second book, but there's no
guarantee the second book will be written.
Aaron Bergman
"Mazaron" <tf_m...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> Aaron Bergman wrote:
> > My problem with this book is that I never really bought into this world.
> > Whether this was due to revulsion or disbelief, I'm not quite able to
> > disentangle. A striking aspect of the book was the lack of any real
> > scientists. For me, it undercut the whole apotheosis of synthesis theme.
> > Distribution can be effective for analysis and research, but discovery
> > is something else entirely. As for the revulsion, did Vinge intend this
> > to be a dystopia? I hope so. The conceit of Gu losing his poetic
> > ability, but becoming a genius engineer set up a dichotomy I found
> > unfortunate.
>
> True, no one invents anything, at least among the average person, they
> just coordinate with others, though there *were* people in those labs.
But we never meet them. They were, apparently, unimportant.
Aaron
Andrew Plotkin
>
> I got the impression that Rabbit was a sort of emergent intelligence out
> of the Secure Hardware Environment, although I can't point to any
> particular details why.
A friend pointed out that Rabbit seemed to compose a long, detailed
message (in PDF format) in about two realtime seconds. This would be
strong evidence for being an AI of some sort.
> I think I'm getting tired of these unpleasant futures where technology
> changes the nature of humanity or some such. How about some realistic
> McDevitt futures where things end up a whole lot like they are today?
> Not edgy enough?
Not realistic enough? Technology has a good solid history of changing
the nature of humanity -- over and over. (Or I'd be saying this to a
goat, about a story I heard from my uncle.)
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't shipped you to Syria for interrogation, it's
for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not because you're innocent.
Tapio Erola
> Phillip SanMiguel wrote:
> > I mistakenly posted the following to rec.arts.sf.science about a month
> > ago.[0] Just thought I should mention that, in the interests of complete
> > disclosure...
> >
>
> > It is not uncommon, of course, for an author to expand a short story
> > into a novel. But a short story, rewritten as another short story?
> > "Synthetic Serendipity" is not a minor reworking of FTaFH. But it also
> > doesn't work as, say, a chapter two of a novel in progress. I'm not sure
> > what to make of it.
>
> Synthetic Serendipty? What is this?
A Snippet from Rainbow's End that was published in slightly different form
in IEEE Spectrum. See: <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/nov05/1552>
I disagree with SanMiguel on it being originally a short story. It was
a snippet from a novel (Rainbows End) used as short story, IMHO.
> > Vaz is the villain because he wants to control the minds of the
> > human race, adding, I suppose, a sort of Secure Neuronal
> > Environment to the Secure Hardware Environment the security
> > officers have already succeeded in imposing on humanity. Either
> > offense is probably enough to enrage a Cory Doctorow with its pure
> > villainy. But other than that unfortunate trait, Vaz seems like
> > credible fellow. Nothing like monstrous Lord Steel from
> > _AFutD_. More like Pham Nuwen. The problem plot-wise is that I
> > didn't find Vaz's succeeding particularly menacing, nor did I find
> > his failure of any special interest.
>
> That could have been developed perhaps, yes, but the concept is scary
> enough for me.
A-f*cking-men. I'd prefer a city getting popped every few years any day.
Vinge's villains and his descriptions of the banality of evil are top-notch.
Vaz's villainy is one of the most pernicuous in nature and he genuinely
believes he's doing it for greater good.
> > What was Rabbit? Seems like the consensus is that he is/was an
> > AI. But why wouldn't Vinge mention that? Could be that "By the
> > way, Rabbit is an AI" just didn't fit anywhere. But maybe that
> > revelation is being saved for the second book?
>
> Rabbit to me was sentient software or perhaps an example of the
> post-Singularity intelligences that were coming into existence.
I think The Rabbit was an example of post-Singularity intelligence and
Vinge left it's nature and true capabilities deliberately vague due to
his well-documented reluctance to speculate on the natures and
capabilities of such entities.
--
Tapio Erola
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only
a fool trusts either of them. --P.J. O'Rourke
johnsnovak
aber...@physics.utexas.edu says...
> I got the impression that Rabbit was a sort of emergent intelligence out
> of the Secure Hardware Environment, although I can't point to any
> particular details why.
Probably because it's the only explanation that made any sense within
the story. Vaz' reactions to it were key, as well as the things
apparent death when they turned off the security certificates. For a
long while, I thought it was Alice playing them all for a fool, but
apparently not.
> My problem with this book is that I never really bought into this world.
> Whether this was due to revulsion or disbelief, I'm not quite able to
> disentangle. A striking aspect of the book was the lack of any real
> scientists. For me, it undercut the whole apotheosis of synthesis theme.
> Distribution can be effective for analysis and research, but discovery
> is something else entirely.
No kidding. And speaking as a practicing engineer, let me tell you that
design is just a wee bit harder than Vinge made it out to be. Stuff
only snaps together as easily as was shown, when it's specially designed
to snap together. And that design-for-snapping is in itself incredibly
non-trivial.
> As for the revulsion, did Vinge intend this
> to be a dystopia? I hope so. The conceit of Gu losing his poetic
> ability, but becoming a genius engineer set up a dichotomy I found
> unfortunate.
I don't think he intended it as a dystopia, and I refuse to read it as
such. That world is no more dystopic than the real world (the affluent
parts of it, anyway) would appear to someone from 1906. The culture
shown is, by our standards, incredibly wealthy, incredibly profilic, and
has extraordinary abilities to pool their creativity and liesure
activities. And occasionally, bad things happen, like Chicago getting
nuked.
I know where my distaste stems from. It's a direct result of Vinge's
strategy to get us to the razor's edge of the singularity, but still
maintain human-type characters. Simply put, most or all of the
characters are mental defectives, or just plain stupid, or extremely
young, so that we can understand just what it is they do on a day to day
basis.
Robert Gu, for example, is a recovering Alzheimer's patient who has no
grasp of the technology. Miri was young as a way of keeping her mostly
comprehensible, although I never got the sense of real youth from her.
The read I got from all of Fairmont High was that it was a sort of a
vocational school for slow but not quite retarded children, thus making
Juan, by implicaition, an idiot.
Winston Blount and his crew were just embarassing, as was whatshername,
the apparently world class physicist who couldn't work with the
kechnology, either. I kept seeing brilliant people staring at the VCRs
all blinking 12:00.
Alice and Bob were presumeably normal, but we saw little of their
viewpoints.
It was all very hard for me to empathize with. This was not the only
thing that irritated me, but it was a big part of it.
--
John S. Novak, III
The Humblest Man On The Net
Aaron Bergman
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> Here, Aaron Bergman <aber...@physics.utexas.edu> wrote:
> >
> > I got the impression that Rabbit was a sort of emergent intelligence out
> > of the Secure Hardware Environment, although I can't point to any
> > particular details why.
>
> A friend pointed out that Rabbit seemed to compose a long, detailed
> message (in PDF format) in about two realtime seconds. This would be
> strong evidence for being an AI of some sort.
>
> > I think I'm getting tired of these unpleasant futures where technology
> > changes the nature of humanity or some such. How about some realistic
> > McDevitt futures where things end up a whole lot like they are today?
> > Not edgy enough?
>
> Not realistic enough? Technology has a good solid history of changing
> the nature of humanity -- over and over. (Or I'd be saying this to a
> goat, about a story I heard from my uncle.)
I'm not sure that's true. Are people really all that different from 200
years ago? People do different things, sure, but the nature of humanity?
I don't think I see it.
Aaron
johnsnovak
tf_m...@bellsouth.net says...
> I didn't think of that future of being that unpleasant. I also failed
> to see how many people in the developing world could have such tech,
> nor how it could be so cheap that every town in America and every
> person in America - including those who say work at the bottom rung of
> the service industry - could afford such tech.
There is some pretty sophisticated manufacturing and assembly technology
in RE. There's a nearly throwaway mention of an incident somewhere in
SOuth America (I think) where either Bob or Alice needed to crush an
underground fabricator ring because it pumping out illegal (i.e., non
SHE) electronics. By inference, we're not talking about trivial
electronics, and by statement, it didn't take that many resources to get
going. Electronics, in RE, is mindblowingly cheap.
I say "nearly" throwaway because it *does* contribute nicely to the
overall background of the book, where the overriding geopolitical
concern of the day seems to be how to keep the world from accidentally
going boom.
Aaron Bergman
John S Novak, III <j...@panix.com> wrote:
> Robert Gu, for example, is a recovering Alzheimer's patient who has no
> grasp of the technology. Miri was young as a way of keeping her mostly
> comprehensible, although I never got the sense of real youth from her.
I never got much of a sense of anything from her. Super emergent
distributed intelligence Rabbit fools zillions of the best analysts in
the world and ends up having trouble Miri Gu? I can guess Vinge's point,
but I don't buy it.
Aaron
Damien Neil
> the apparently world class physicist who couldn't work with the
> kechnology, either. I kept seeing brilliant people staring at the VCRs
> all blinking 12:00.
It has been said that all science fiction is about the present.
One of the things that _Rainbows End_ is about is the elderly parent
sitting in front a computer, trying to figure out how this "mouse" thing
works, while a grandchild offers eager explanations of all the cool
things you can do with spreadsheets and web browsers.
- Damien
--
NewsGuy puts spam in my .sig when I forget to add one myself.
Michael Grosberg
Mazaron wrote:
> I didn't think of that future of being that unpleasant. I also failed
> to see how many people in the developing world could have such tech,
> nor how it could be so cheap that every town in America and every
> person in America - including those who say work at the bottom rung of
> the service industry - could afford such tech.
>
> Tim
People who live in straw huts (in Thailand, for example) and use canoes
daily now have cell phones. Vinge is on the spot regarding IT being
cheap enough so that anyone can have it.
Sean O'Hara
>
> I didn't think of that future of being that unpleasant. I also failed
> to see how many people in the developing world could have such tech,
> nor how it could be so cheap that every town in America and every
> person in America - including those who say work at the bottom rung of
> the service industry - could afford such tech.
>
In 1986, would you have believed a book that predicted that in 2005
service drones would be able to afford cell phones, CD and DVD
players, home computers with internet access, digital cameras and
digital music players? But today the first four are ubiquitous (cell
phones are so cheap people entrust children with them), and low-end
models of the last two are within the price range of most people.
And in Vinge's 2025, there's a lot more technology that's that
cheap. WiFi nodes can apparently be stuck in trees and replaced
regularly. Wearables are cheap enough that anyone who can use one
has one.
--
Sean O'Hara | http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com
Doctor: Don't tell anyone about this, because if you do you'll get
them killed. I'm the Doctor by the way. What's your name?
Rose: Rose.
Doctor: Nice to meet you Rose. Run for your life.
-Doctor Who
Andrew Plotkin
I was thinking 20 years (Internet), 100 (telephone/telegraph), 200
(industrialization), nation-states, writing, agriculture, language...
I see the people in _RE_ as being different from us to a degree
comparable to each of those stages.
McDevitt's books feel like I'm swallowing implausibly familiar
characters for the sake of a fun ride and some Giant Alien Megaliths.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
It's a nice distinction to tell American soldiers (and Iraqis) to die in
Iraq for the sake of democracy (ignoring the question of whether it's
*working*) and then whine that "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."
Sean O'Hara
declared:
> First, why
> "Fast Times at Fairmont High" as a title? It's clearly a take-off on the
> title of the 1982 movie, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". That will be
> a movie that, what, maybe 10% of USians will have seen?
I'd say considerably more than that, and even more will have heard
the title.
The point of Ridgemont High, book and movie, was that kids today
(for values of today equaling twenty seven years ago) are dealing
with adult problems a lot sooner than their parents. The point of
Fairmont High is pretty much the same, only with technology instead
of sex and relationships.
> Second, what is
> up with the "Zones of Thought" label? I know James Nicoll dismisses this
> as a simple error in another thread, but if it is not intended by Vinge
> to be a Zones of Thought novel why is *still* labeled as such on Amazon?
>
It's almost certainly a mistake since the physical book contains no
mention of the Zones of Thought.
--
Sean O'Hara | http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com
Professor Farnsworth: Vergon VI was once filled with he super dense
substance known as dark matter, each pound of which weighs over
10,000 pounds.
-Futurama
Phillip SanMiguel
> In the Year of the Dog, the Great and Powerful Phillip SanMiguel declared:
>> First, why
>> "Fast Times at Fairmont High" as a title? It's clearly a take-off on the
>> title of the 1982 movie, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". That will be
>> a movie that, what, maybe 10% of USians will have seen?
>
> I'd say considerably more than that, and even more will have heard the
> title.
>
> The point of Ridgemont High, book and movie, was that kids today (for
> values of today equaling twenty seven years ago) are dealing with adult
> problems a lot sooner than their parents. The point of Fairmont High is
> pretty much the same, only with technology instead of sex and
> relationships.
Thanks, I had never thought about the movie as anything other than a
mindless romp. Of course, when I first saw it, I was a teenager. So
Vinge, as an adult, possibly interpreted the movie on a more
sophisticated level.
>
>> Second, what is
>> up with the "Zones of Thought" label? I know James Nicoll dismisses this
>> as a simple error in another thread, but if it is not intended by Vinge
>> to be a Zones of Thought novel why is *still* labeled as such on
>> Amazon?
>
> It's almost certainly a mistake since the physical book contains no
> mention of the Zones of Thought.
>
>
Yes. Well it is mentioned but not in a way that suggests this an Earth
of the slow zone story. Actually, I don't think "Zones of Thought" are
mentioned in _A Deepness in the Sky_. If you are embedded in the Slow
Zone, you may not even know it.
Phillip SanMiguel
> Aaron Bergman wrote:
>
>> My problem with this book is that I never really bought into this world.
>> Whether this was due to revulsion or disbelief, I'm not quite able to
>> disentangle. A striking aspect of the book was the lack of any real
>> scientists. For me, it undercut the whole apotheosis of synthesis theme.
>> Distribution can be effective for analysis and research, but discovery
>> is something else entirely. As for the revulsion, did Vinge intend this
>> to be a dystopia? I hope so. The conceit of Gu losing his poetic
>> ability, but becoming a genius engineer set up a dichotomy I found
>> unfortunate.
>
> True, no one invents anything, at least among the average person, they
> just coordinate with others, though there *were* people in those labs.
>
>
> Tim
>
"real scientists"? What constitutes a "real scientist"? To my mind the
kids at Fairmont High, many of them anyway, *are* scientists. Their
training focuses more on facilitation and project management--but that
would be because for every raw "discovery" you need a hoard of wrappers
to either successfully embed the discovery in the current corpus of
knowledge or re-derive that portion of that corpus in light of the
discovery. You know, "standing on the shoulders of giants", etc.
What Vinge gets, I think, is that many of the obstacles to actually
getting up on those shoulders are technical: learning the idiolect,
getting down the parts of protocols that are mission-critical and, let's
face it, actually writing up your results in a way that makes it
attractive to your colleagues. But that is what these kids are all
about. The scene in "Fast Times at Fairmont High" that comes to mind is
where the kids get some old equipment from the Gu parents and nearly
their first response is to look for the manuals. They know how to
quickly index them in a way that makes the knowledge immediately available.
But perhaps this is de-emphasized in _Rainbows End_. It may not even be
that Vinge, seeing our heightened interest in security, now foresees the
singularity being pushed further into the future. He may have just
wanted to expand the story of a novel and been unable to extrapolate
beyond some boundary as the singularity is being approached. So he
invoked one of the two methods of suppressing the singularity:
government oppression. Suddenly that boundary is now some years further
into the future and a novel is possible.
But for my tastes I'd rather that Vinge had extended the original short
story, FTaFH, and taken it as far as he could. Because I was buying
everything as far as it went.
Dan Goodman
> John S Novak, III <j...@panix.com> wrote:
> > Winston Blount and his crew were just embarassing, as was
> > whatshername, the apparently world class physicist who couldn't
> > work with the kechnology, either. I kept seeing brilliant people
> > staring at the VCRs all blinking 12:00.
>
> It has been said that all science fiction is about the present.
Offhand, I'd say it's rather about the near past. And if the writer
hasn't kept up with the world, about the not-so-near past.
> One of the things that _Rainbows End_ is about is the elderly parent
> sitting in front a computer, trying to figure out how this "mouse"
> thing works, while a grandchild offers eager explanations of all the
> cool things you can do with spreadsheets and web browsers.
>
> - Damien
--
--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
Aaron Bergman
Phillip SanMiguel <pmi...@purdue.edu> wrote:
>
> What Vinge gets, I think, is that many of the obstacles to actually
> getting up on those shoulders are technical: learning the idiolect,
> getting down the parts of protocols that are mission-critical and, let's
> face it, actually writing up your results in a way that makes it
> attractive to your colleagues. But that is what these kids are all
> about.
I can't buy that at all. Effectively writing up research is *hard*. Some
marginally literate kid without any understanding of the fundamentals
just is not going to be able to do it, no matter how much multimedia
gets thrown into the presentation. Even something like effective
research is difficult and will become more so as a more open environment
allows more papers of marginal quality.
> The scene in "Fast Times at Fairmont High" that comes to mind is
> where the kids get some old equipment from the Gu parents and nearly
> their first response is to look for the manuals. They know how to
> quickly index them in a way that makes the knowledge immediately available.
But lots of knowledge just doesn't work that way. The average person
can't look in the "manual" and understand much of anything about, say,
quantum field theory. I can't imagine other fields of science are much
different.
Aaron
Alexander Kay
>[spoilers]
>I think I'm getting tired of these unpleasant futures where technology
>changes the nature of humanity or some such. How about some realistic
>McDevitt futures where things end up a whole lot like they are today?
>Not edgy enough?
I think I must insert here some excerpts from my blog of last month,
introducing a new term which I hope will catch on:
I recently read, for the first time, John Varley's _The Ophiuchi Hotline_.
It forms a third example of a kind of SF story that I now want a word for.
The other examples I'm thinking of are Charles Stross' _Accelerando_ and
Greg Egan's _Diaspora_ (all highy recommended by the way). The settings
for all of these stories (at least, by the *end* of all these stories)
share a lot of significant details.
On the dystopian side:
* Billions of humans are killed.
* Earth is no longer habitable by humans.
* Humanity finds that, far from being the pinnacle of evolution, they are,
to use Stross' metaphor (in his blog) barley able to outthink the
equivalent of gut bacteria when playing on the galactic scale. Humanity is
forced to find a viable ecological niche that is *way* down the food chain.
* Following from the above, humanity is in great risk of extinction at any
time.
On the utopian side, however:
* More humans are alive than at any previous point in history.
* Humans are more widely dispersed throughout space than ever before.
* Following from *that*, we see that, while humanity may be at great risk
of extinction, that risk is actually lower than ever before, and decreasing.
* Humans have more access to energy than ever before, and can manipulate
that energy in more ways than ever before. In physical terms, the ordinary
person haa a degree of luxury and leisure that a 20th century multi-
billionaire would envy.
Are there any more stories like these out there? And does anyone have a
suggestion for what one might call them, collectively?
Later, after reading RE, I posted (in part):
...this book seems to be in a line with the books that I was seeking to
classify a few days back. Although RE isn't as far along that path, it
shares the general quality of great threats mixed with great promises.
Indeed, the back cover quotes (which I avoided reading until done with
the book) put me on the track for a good word. Cory Doctorow uses a word
which is almost what I want "[dys|u]topia". That certainly looks good on
paper, but in casual speech would be hard to distinguish from simple
dystopia. Hence, I propose "udystopia" to describe these "mixed message"
futures.
Alexx
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers.
alexx@panixSPAMBL@CK.com http://www.panix.com/~alexx
"It is my belief that the termination of the Earth's biosphere could well
have undesirable economic effects." -- James Nicoll
Alexander Kay
>In the Year of the Dog, the Great and Powerful Mazaron declared:
>>
>> I didn't think of that future of being that unpleasant. I also failed
>> to see how many people in the developing world could have such tech,
>> nor how it could be so cheap that every town in America and every
>> person in America - including those who say work at the bottom rung of
>> the service industry - could afford such tech.
>>
>In 1986, would you have believed a book that predicted that in 2005
>service drones would be able to afford cell phones, CD and DVD
>players, home computers with internet access, digital cameras and
>digital music players? But today the first four are ubiquitous (cell
>phones are so cheap people entrust children with them), and low-end
>models of the last two are within the price range of most people.
Moreover, would anyone have predicted that so many of those "luxury"
items would have overlapping capabilities? Pretty much all new home
computers can play CDs and DVDs; almost all new cell phones have cameras
and many of them have digital music players as well; etc., etc.
Alexx
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers.
alexx@panixSPAMBL@CK.com http://www.panix.com/~alexx
Engaged in the passive overthrow of the U.S. government.
[Seen on a Nancy Button, www.nancybuttons.com]
Phillip SanMiguel
> In article <448C565B...@purdue.edu>,
> Phillip SanMiguel <pmi...@purdue.edu> wrote:
>
>> What Vinge gets, I think, is that many of the obstacles to actually
>> getting up on those shoulders are technical: learning the idiolect,
>> getting down the parts of protocols that are mission-critical and, let's
>> face it, actually writing up your results in a way that makes it
>> attractive to your colleagues. But that is what these kids are all
>> about.
>
> I can't buy that at all. Effectively writing up research is *hard*. Some
> marginally literate kid without any understanding of the fundamentals
> just is not going to be able to do it, no matter how much multimedia
> gets thrown into the presentation. Even something like effective
> research is difficult and will become more so as a more open environment
> allows more papers of marginal quality.
Yes, but why? Is it something intrinsic to research that makes
understanding the fundamentals hard? I can now read papers in my field
and find them trivially easy to understand. These same papers would have
been completely opaque to me during grad school.
Yet, I'd say my understanding of the "fundamentals" has withered
considerably during the intervening years. But I know the verbal argot
and I've generated data myself so I know the procedural argot as well.
But I don't see anything special about the blundering path I took to
knowledge in my area.
Some people can pick knowledge up with scarcely any work. Is that
ability some sort of undeconstructable entity, or is there just some
native or acquired set of skills that could be duplicated? Duplicated in
software.
>
>> The scene in "Fast Times at Fairmont High" that comes to mind is
>> where the kids get some old equipment from the Gu parents and nearly
>> their first response is to look for the manuals. They know how to
>> quickly index them in a way that makes the knowledge immediately available.
>
> But lots of knowledge just doesn't work that way. The average person
> can't look in the "manual" and understand much of anything about, say,
> quantum field theory. I can't imagine other fields of science are much
> different.
>
> Aaron
The average person doesn't read the manual at all. No point investing a
lot of time in learning all the functions of a cell phone if you will
just get a new one a few years hence. But if you can more-or-less absorb
a manual, why not?
And why can't the "average person" look in the manual and understand
much of anything about quantum field theory? Tell me the first few
obstacles the "average person" will trip over. You can't imagine any
software tool that would help the "average person" over those hurdles?
If not, I suspect we are just of divergent world views in this matter.
Ultimately I don't regard the lack of any intellectual ability as any
less amenable to replacement/amplification than lack of any physical
ability.
Aaron Bergman
Phillip SanMiguel <pmi...@purdue.edu> wrote:
> Aaron Bergman wrote:
> > In article <448C565B...@purdue.edu>,
> > Phillip SanMiguel <pmi...@purdue.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> What Vinge gets, I think, is that many of the obstacles to actually
> >> getting up on those shoulders are technical: learning the idiolect,
> >> getting down the parts of protocols that are mission-critical and, let's
> >> face it, actually writing up your results in a way that makes it
> >> attractive to your colleagues. But that is what these kids are all
> >> about.
> >
> > I can't buy that at all. Effectively writing up research is *hard*. Some
> > marginally literate kid without any understanding of the fundamentals
> > just is not going to be able to do it, no matter how much multimedia
> > gets thrown into the presentation. Even something like effective
> > research is difficult and will become more so as a more open environment
> > allows more papers of marginal quality.
>
> Yes, but why? Is it something intrinsic to research that makes
> understanding the fundamentals hard?
There's a reason that people go through undergrad and graduate school to
understand these things.
> I can now read papers in my field
> and find them trivially easy to understand. These same papers would have
> been completely opaque to me during grad school.
>
> Yet, I'd say my understanding of the "fundamentals" has withered
> considerably during the intervening years.
I think we're using fundamentals differently here. By fundamentals, I
mean precisely the things you need to understand a paper. As you say,
you can read things better than you could even in grad school. How could
some high school student without any particular interest in whatever it
is you do succeed?
[...]
> >> The scene in "Fast Times at Fairmont High" that comes to mind is
> >> where the kids get some old equipment from the Gu parents and nearly
> >> their first response is to look for the manuals. They know how to
> >> quickly index them in a way that makes the knowledge immediately available.
> >
> > But lots of knowledge just doesn't work that way. The average person
> > can't look in the "manual" and understand much of anything about, say,
> > quantum field theory. I can't imagine other fields of science are much
> > different.
>
> The average person doesn't read the manual at all. No point investing a
> lot of time in learning all the functions of a cell phone if you will
> just get a new one a few years hence. But if you can more-or-less absorb
> a manual, why not?
>
> And why can't the "average person" look in the manual and understand
> much of anything about quantum field theory?
Because it's hard, it's foreign, and it's built up on a significant
edifice of prior knowledge.
> Tell me the first few
> obstacles the "average person" will trip over.
Not knowing quantum mechanics is an obvious one. Not knowing classical
field theory is another. I'm reminded of a particular posted on another
newsgroup who, when a question was asked, would respond with a seemingly
intelligent list of papers related to the question. The only problem was
that it was clear that he or she had absolutely no idea what they were
talking about and had just done some searches of online papers. It was,
at best, a reasonable approximation of the jargon. That's what about
what I envision a high school student being able to do, even with all
sorts of software help. Plausible sounding, but ultimately useless and
occasionally laughable.
(I should say that, by high school student here, I mean someone as in
Vinge's book. In other words, someone with no particular interest in
physics, but interested in 'facilitating' as a school project or
whatever. Obviously, with a lot of narrow focus, a dedicated high school
can pass beyond the above characterization. For a few outstanding
individuals, more might even be possible, but they're few and far
between. Even someone like Ruth Lawrence was 18 when she finished
graduate school.)
Aaron
Andrew Plotkin
>
> And why can't the "average person" look in the manual and understand
> much of anything about quantum field theory? Tell me the first few
> obstacles the "average person" will trip over.
Everything is done with tensor math. That's first one.
> You can't imagine any software tool that would help the "average
> person" over those hurdles?
There are many software tools that help people with math. However,
they are not replacements for knowing the math.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't shipped you to Syria for interrogation, it's
for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not because of the Eighth Amendment.
Leslie Sanford
"Sean O'Hara" wrote:
> In the Year of the Dog, the Great and Powerful Phillip SanMiguel
> declared:
<snip>
>> Second, what is up with the "Zones of Thought" label? I know James
>> Nicoll dismisses this as a simple error in another thread, but if it
>> is not intended by Vinge to be a Zones of Thought novel why is
>> *still* labeled as such on Amazon?
>
> It's almost certainly a mistake since the physical book contains no
> mention of the Zones of Thought.
I think there's a throwaway line about one of the belief circles being
called the Zones of Thought.
I wasn't sure what to make out of that. Perhaps in the RE universe
Vernor Vinge's earlier books exist and from these a belief circle
evolved? I found contemplating that slightly jarring while reading that
part of the book.
Phillip SanMiguel
> In article <448C8BA3...@purdue.edu>,
> Phillip SanMiguel <pmi...@purdue.edu> wrote:
>
>> Aaron Bergman wrote:
>>> In article <448C565B...@purdue.edu>,
>>> Phillip SanMiguel <pmi...@purdue.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> What Vinge gets, I think, is that many of the obstacles to actually
>>>> getting up on those shoulders are technical: learning the idiolect,
>>>> getting down the parts of protocols that are mission-critical and, let's
>>>> face it, actually writing up your results in a way that makes it
>>>> attractive to your colleagues. But that is what these kids are all
>>>> about.
>>> I can't buy that at all. Effectively writing up research is *hard*. Some
>>> marginally literate kid without any understanding of the fundamentals
>>> just is not going to be able to do it, no matter how much multimedia
>>> gets thrown into the presentation. Even something like effective
>>> research is difficult and will become more so as a more open environment
>>> allows more papers of marginal quality.
>> Yes, but why? Is it something intrinsic to research that makes
>> understanding the fundamentals hard?
>
> There's a reason that people go through undergrad and graduate school to
> understand these things.
Really? Are you sure that undergrad/grad school aren't just
self-propagating institutions that continue to exist despite other
models of training that might be superior? Are you sure they are not
designed for the convenience of faculty who can afford to spend only so
much time with students if their research careers are not to suffer? Are
you sure that much of their design isn't actually designed to compensate
for poor K-12 education in the United States?
>
>> I can now read papers in my field
>> and find them trivially easy to understand. These same papers would have
>> been completely opaque to me during grad school.
>>
>> Yet, I'd say my understanding of the "fundamentals" has withered
>> considerably during the intervening years.
>
> I think we're using fundamentals differently here. By fundamentals, I
> mean precisely the things you need to understand a paper. As you say,
> you can read things better than you could even in grad school.
Okay, but most of that stuff was not picked up in "school" per se. And
the majority of the opacity would have been the result of my not knowing
the bizarre argot that seems to spring up around any sufficiently
studied area. The rest of the opacity would stem from minor details that
are barely even germane to the main topic. That would be a key to being
a quick study--seeing through the dross. Quickly ascertaining a skeletal
understanding of a subject upon which flesh can be added at leisure.
How could
> some high school student without any particular interest in whatever it
> is you do succeed?
>
Yeah, I know. I was hoping you would come up with the answer. Here is my
shot: there are some people who can pick this stuff up with no
difficulty. I had a room mate in college who could pick up math by
reading a text book. He didn't seem to sweat anything, it all just fell
into place for him. I doubt there would be any difference for him in
high school, probably not in Junior High either. No problem teaching him
this stuff. Just feed it to him in roughly the right order and he could
absorb any of it.
So just find people like him, record what it is that their brains are
doing when they learn the math then implement that in software. Then
hack up the appropriate API and you are set! Okay, a few orders of
magnitude too glib, but this is an SF group. One would think a little
hand-waving was permissible.
That's now. Give the system another 20 years...
> (I should say that, by high school student here, I mean someone as in
> Vinge's book. In other words, someone with no particular interest in
> physics, but interested in 'facilitating' as a school project or
> whatever. Obviously, with a lot of narrow focus, a dedicated high school
> can pass beyond the above characterization. For a few outstanding
> individuals, more might even be possible, but they're few and far
> between. Even someone like Ruth Lawrence was 18 when she finished
> graduate school.)
>
> Aaron
Aaron do you remember high school? How many hours a week would you have
needed to attend to get all the knowledge you graduated with? Would 10
hours have been sufficient? Back during my senior year in 1981, 20 hours
was deemed sufficient even by our Public School System. It was
traditional to schedule classes such that juniors and seniors only
attended about 1/2 days. I worked or hung out with my friends the rest
of the time. Later it was decided that all students really did need to
spend full days at high school. Because it was a rapidly changing world
and 1/2 days just didn't do it any longer? Think again. K-12 is a
publicly funded baby sitting service--at least that is the task they
actually do a fairly good of.
The whole system just needs to be discarded. I'm pretty sure I'll live
through exactly that. Once parents get to a point that they can keep an
eye on their kids while they are at work, a pervasive publicly funded
baby sitting service won't seem as attractive as it does now. I'll be
cheering. And really, my high school experience wasn't traumatic. It was
just such a terribly designed system, creaking along.
Aaron Bergman
Phillip SanMiguel <pmi...@purdue.edu> wrote:
Pretty sure, yeah.
> Are you sure they are not
> designed for the convenience of faculty who can afford to spend only so
> much time with students if their research careers are not to suffer? Are
> you sure that much of their design isn't actually designed to compensate
> for poor K-12 education in the United States?
It generally turns out that after the first two years of graduate
school, foreign and American students end up in equivalent positions as
far as I've seen. Regardless, if you look at rankings of undergraduate
and graduate institutions, you'll find that the upper echelon is
dominated by United States institutions.
[...]
> How could
> > some high school student without any particular interest in whatever it
> > is you do succeed?
> >
>
> Yeah, I know. I was hoping you would come up with the answer. Here is my
> shot: there are some people who can pick this stuff up with no
> difficulty. I had a room mate in college who could pick up math by
> reading a text book. He didn't seem to sweat anything, it all just fell
> into place for him. I doubt there would be any difference for him in
> high school, probably not in Junior High either. No problem teaching him
> this stuff. Just feed it to him in roughly the right order and he could
> absorb any of it.
>
> So just find people like him, record what it is that their brains are
> doing when they learn the math then implement that in software. Then
> hack up the appropriate API and you are set! Okay, a few orders of
> magnitude too glib, but this is an SF group. One would think a little
> hand-waving was permissible.
We're not talking about brain modification here. Vinge, as best I can
tell, is saying that people like we have today, in the environment he
sets up, could do such things.
[...]
> > (I should say that, by high school student here, I mean someone as in
> > Vinge's book. In other words, someone with no particular interest in
> > physics, but interested in 'facilitating' as a school project or
> > whatever. Obviously, with a lot of narrow focus, a dedicated high school
> > can pass beyond the above characterization. For a few outstanding
> > individuals, more might even be possible, but they're few and far
> > between. Even someone like Ruth Lawrence was 18 when she finished
> > graduate school.)
>
> Aaron do you remember high school? How many hours a week would you have
> needed to attend to get all the knowledge you graduated with? Would 10
> hours have been sufficient?
[...]
>
> The whole system just needs to be discarded. I'm pretty sure I'll live
> through exactly that. Once parents get to a point that they can keep an
> eye on their kids while they are at work, a pervasive publicly funded
> baby sitting service won't seem as attractive as it does now. I'll be
> cheering. And really, my high school experience wasn't traumatic. It was
> just such a terribly designed system, creaking along.
This does seem to be a common trope in sf which I also don't buy. I'm
not claiming that our education is perfect, but I really doubt that it's
possible to get any revolutionary change in outcomes no matter how you
change the system. People are still people.
Aaron
Sean O'Hara
>
> The read I got from all of Fairmont High was that it was a sort of a
> vocational school for slow but not quite retarded children, thus making
> Juan, by implicaition, an idiot.
>
I don't think it's entirely a vocational school, but the major
characters apart from Miri are on the voc-ed track instead AP/IB or
whatever the pre-Singularity equivalent is. When Alice first
broaches the subject of Robert returning to school, Miri dismisses
the idea because he'd be stuck in the shop classes, indicating
there's another part of the school we don't get to see.
But, yeah, the classes we do see are geared towards the people who'd
be in autoshop today. But since cars consist of black boxes inside
black boxes, the school had to come up with something to keep the
kids from turning JD, and the best they could come up with was Legos.
--
Sean O'Hara | http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com
Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime
rates in the country.
-Marion Barry
David A Molnar
> I think there's a throwaway line about one of the belief circles being
> called the Zones of Thought.
Not just a belief circle, but a now-defunct belief circle.
I don't have my copy with me, but IIRC this was in the context of
discussing how some belief circles survive and others don't.
I took it as an in-joke. Maybe even a reference to the Amazon
labelling of the book, although that's a stretch.
-David Molnar
Rob Friefeld
parties in cryptography literature. I couldn't make out what that might
mean in the context of this story. Is it just a minor in-joke by Vinge?
--
Rob Friefeld
Long Beach, California
Hardy Hestert
[snip]
> >> Second, what is
> >> up with the "Zones of Thought" label? I know James Nicoll dismisses this
> >> as a simple error in another thread, but if it is not intended by Vinge
> >> to be a Zones of Thought novel why is *still* labeled as such on
> >> Amazon?
> >
> > It's almost certainly a mistake since the physical book contains no
> > mention of the Zones of Thought.
> >
> >
>
> Yes. Well it is mentioned but not in a way that suggests this an Earth
> of the slow zone story. Actually, I don't think "Zones of Thought" are
> mentioned in _A Deepness in the Sky_. If you are embedded in the Slow
> Zone, you may not even know it.
Didn't Pham Nuwen get a vague idea of the zones, from the on/off star
technology, towards the end of _ADitS_, which led him to plan an
exploration mission to the fast zone, which he falsely assumed to be
towards the galactic center?
Brion K. Lienhart
> Phillip SanMiguel schrieb:
>>Yes. Well it is mentioned but not in a way that suggests this an Earth
>>of the slow zone story. Actually, I don't think "Zones of Thought" are
>>mentioned in _A Deepness in the Sky_. If you are embedded in the Slow
>>Zone, you may not even know it.
>
>
> Didn't Pham Nuwen get a vague idea of the zones, from the on/off star
> technology, towards the end of _ADitS_, which led him to plan an
> exploration mission to the fast zone, which he falsely assumed to be
> towards the galactic center?
It was the "Cavorite" (anit-gravity nanotech). Since the system had a
high proper motion and was headed out from the core, they *ass*u*me*d*
that the material must have come from there.
David Goldfarb
Mazaron <tf_m...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>Phillip SanMiguel wrote:
> Second, what is
>> up with the "Zones of Thought" label? I know James Nicoll dismisses this
>> as a simple error in another thread, but if it is not intended by Vinge
>> to be a Zones of Thought novel why is *still* labeled as such on Amazon?
>
>Thought series?
Rabbit is an AI, and in the Slow Zone AI is not possible. But in the
Zones books Earth is well into the Slow Zone.
What's more, there's a reference in the book to the Tines and the
Zones of Thought, suggesting that the world of _Rainbow's End_ contains
in its history the novel _A Fire Upon the Deep_.
--
David Goldfarb |"Come on, characters with super-strength don't
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | *do* inertia! Or leverage."
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Dani Zweig
Anthony Cerrato
"David Goldfarb" <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote in
message news:e70l73$2v1q$1...@agate.berkeley.edu...
> In article
<1149985087....@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
> Mazaron <tf_m...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >Phillip SanMiguel wrote:
> > Second, what is
> >> up with the "Zones of Thought" label? I know James
Nicoll dismisses this
> >> as a simple error in another thread, but if it is not
intended by Vinge
> >> to be a Zones of Thought novel why is *still* labeled
as such on Amazon?
> >
> >Who is to say this is not set in the very distant past of
the Zones of
> >Thought series?
>
> Rabbit is an AI, and in the Slow Zone AI is not possible.
But in the
> Zones books Earth is well into the Slow Zone.
>
> What's more, there's a reference in the book to the Tines
and the
> Zones of Thought, suggesting that the world of _Rainbow's
End_ contains
> in its history the novel _A Fire Upon the Deep_.
I'm glad you mentioned that! The mention of Tines and Zones
really threw me! First of all, it came up as a complete non
sequitur and actually made no sense at all in the context of
the story! Then, while RE is supposed to take place in the
near future (I didn't catch a specific date first time
around and didn't feel like digging for it)--someone here
said 2026?) Clearly the Zones in FutD were in a relatively
far, far future!!!???
So it seems this whole thing makes no sense at all--did
Vinge just slip up, go bananas or what?
...tonyC
James Nicoll
Anthony Cerrato <tcer...@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>"David Goldfarb" <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote in
>message news:e70l73$2v1q$1...@agate.berkeley.edu...
>> In article
><1149985087....@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
>> Mazaron <tf_m...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> >Phillip SanMiguel wrote:
>> > Second, what is
>> >> up with the "Zones of Thought" label? I know James
>Nicoll dismisses this
>> >> as a simple error in another thread, but if it is not
>intended by Vinge
>> >> to be a Zones of Thought novel why is *still* labeled
>as such on Amazon?
Sorry, who did what now?
The inclusion of the ZoT isn't an error. It's deliberate self-
reference, like that Simak story where it turned out aliens used an
even older Simak story for inspiration.
>> >Who is to say this is not set in the very distant past of
>the Zones of
>> >Thought series?
>>
>> Rabbit is an AI, and in the Slow Zone AI is not possible.
>But in the
>> Zones books Earth is well into the Slow Zone.
>>
>> What's more, there's a reference in the book to the Tines
>and the
>> Zones of Thought, suggesting that the world of _Rainbow's
>End_ contains
>> in its history the novel _A Fire Upon the Deep_.
>
>
>I'm glad you mentioned that! The mention of Tines and Zones
>really threw me! First of all, it came up as a complete non
>sequitur and actually made no sense at all in the context of
>the story! Then, while RE is supposed to take place in the
>near future (I didn't catch a specific date first time
>around and didn't feel like digging for it)--someone here
>said 2026?) Clearly the Zones in FutD were in a relatively
>far, far future!!!???
RAINBOW'S END is set in the 21st century. It is not set in
same the universe as the Zones of Thought. It is set in a universe
where Vernor Vinge wrote the Zones of Thought books but public taste
has moved on and the Zot are no longer thought interesting.
It might be an in-joke or it could be a signal to the readers
that they shouldn't expect any more ZoT books.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
Robert Hutchinson
> It might be an in-joke or it could be a signal to the readers
> that they shouldn't expect any more ZoT books.
In an interview I read recently, Vinge basically said that he wants to do
another book in several of his "universes": Rainbows End, the bobble
universe, and Zones of Thought. (He also said that he really and truly
intended not to take seven more years before another novel was ready.)
--
Robert Hutchinson | "Audiences won't soon forget when the
| thing-we-didn't-know-what-it-was was put into
| the helicopter by the guy we didn't know."
| -- Servo, MST3K, 810, Giant Spider Invasion
Jens Kilian
> He also said that he really and truly intended not to take seven more years
> before another novel was ready.
So who bobbled him up?
--
mailto:j...@acm.org As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]
http://del.icio.us/jjk
Andrew Plotkin
> James Nicoll says...
>
> > It might be an in-joke or it could be a signal to the readers
> > that they shouldn't expect any more ZoT books.
>
> In an interview I read recently, Vinge basically said that he wants to do
> another book in several of his "universes": Rainbows End, the bobble
> universe, and Zones of Thought.
Is that another novel in each world, or is he planning _Hexapodia: the
Number of the Beast_? :)
David Goldfarb
>really threw me! First of all, it came up as a complete non
>sequitur and actually made no sense at all in the context of
>the story!
Sure it did. The context was a discussion of art -- in the past
of the story there was a "belief circle" similar to the "Dangerous
Knowledge" and "Scooch-a-mout" ones, that based itself on Vinge's
Zones universe. But someone did some art that was so *bad* that
it wrecked the popularity of the Zones circle.
--
David Goldfarb |"Ah, Amerikanski humor. Is most funny.
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu |
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu |
| We bomb now." -- J. Michael Straczynski
Frank Mayhar
> In an interview I read recently, Vinge basically said that he wants to do
> another book in several of his "universes": Rainbows End, the bobble
> universe, and Zones of Thought. (He also said that he really and truly
> intended not to take seven more years before another novel was ready.)
Man, that would really be nice. He's on my shortlist of must-buy authors,
but man, the books are a long time between.
Of course, we all know the difference between "intending" and "doing."
--
Frank Mayhar fr...@exit.com http://www.exit.com/
Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/
http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/
Alexander Kay
> It might be an in-joke or it could be a signal to the readers
>that they shouldn't expect any more ZoT books.
At this point, I *don't* expect any more Zot! books, but I'm still deeply
disapointed about it. [Yes, I deliberately mis-parsed that.]
Scott McCloud and Vernor Vinge both produce wonderful work, far more
slowly than I wish they would.
Alexx
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers.
alexx@panixSPAMBL@CK.com http://www.panix.com/~alexx
"Well, Dave, that's a hell of a question to ask a man who worships a snake."
-- Alan Moore in correspondence with Dave Sim about _From Hell_
David Goldfarb
Alexander Kay <al...@panix.com> wrote:
>In <e73miv$i2g$1...@reader2.panix.com> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>
>> It might be an in-joke or it could be a signal to the readers
>>that they shouldn't expect any more ZoT books.
>
>At this point, I *don't* expect any more Zot! books, but I'm still deeply
>disapointed about it. [Yes, I deliberately mis-parsed that.]
Hear, hear. (Although you have read "Hearts and Minds", right?)
--
David Goldfarb |
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | [This space intentionally left blank.]
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu |
Alexander Kay
>In article <e76i98$lcr$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
>Alexander Kay <al...@panix.com> wrote:
>>In <e73miv$i2g$1...@reader2.panix.com> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>>
>>> It might be an in-joke or it could be a signal to the readers
>>>that they shouldn't expect any more ZoT books.
>>
>>At this point, I *don't* expect any more Zot! books, but I'm still deeply
>>disapointed about it. [Yes, I deliberately mis-parsed that.]
>Hear, hear. (Although you have read "Hearts and Minds", right?)
AKA "Zot! Online"? If so, yes. Should give it a re-read sometime...
Alexx
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employers.
alexx@panixSPAMBL@CK.com http://www.panix.com/~alexx
"I remember looking at the knife and realising in a vague and dreamy
way that it would, technically speaking, be physically possible for
me to pick up the carving knife and stab my mother through the back
of the neck."
-- Alan Moore, in correspondence with Dave Sim about _From Hell_
David Goldfarb
Alexander Kay <al...@panix.com> wrote:
>In <e77513$1rfc$1...@agate.berkeley.edu> gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (David Goldfarb) writes:
>
>>In article <e76i98$lcr$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
>>Alexander Kay <al...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>At this point, I *don't* expect any more Zot! books, but I'm still deeply
>>>disapointed about it.
>
>
>AKA "Zot! Online"? If so, yes. Should give it a re-read sometime...
That's the one. It's archived on McCloud's web site.
--
David Goldfarb |"Ah, the stench of evil is about this place!"
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | "Actually, I think that's air-freshener."
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | --_Zot!_ #4