On Fri, Jul 27, 2018 at 07:40:50AM -0700, Mirimir wrote: > On 07/27/2018 06:04 AM, John Newman wrote: > > On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 10:58:31PM -0400, Steve Kinney wrote: > > <SNIP> > > >> I like Douglas Rushkoff, or his work at least: I make a point of > >> reading everything of his I can get my hands on. He seems to have > >> mastered the art of presenting information in a context that never quite > >> crosses the line to offend Liberal and Oligarch sensibilities, but the > >> data itself tends to convey an inherently radical message to anyone with > >> more than half a brain & clue. He has often been been the first to > >> bring the most useful and interesting "new stuff" to (nearly) mass > >> market audiences. Students of propaganda should not miss the Rushkoff > >> canon. > > > > I think Kurzweil and most of the other "futurists" out there are > > really just shity wannabe sci-fi writers. Cory Doctorow excluded > > perhaps, he can actually write at least, and hasn't staked his name > > and career on predictions of some sort of technological ex machina > > that will save humanity from its own over-indulgence and inability > > to think in the long term. > > Cory Doctorow is cool, and all, but his fiction is ~lame. I like the > ideology pretty much, but the writing just doesn't grab me. But then, > I'm rather into action porn, so hey. LOL! I've never read any of his novels, just a few short stories, a long time ago. I can't remember what I thought of them particularly (which is a bad sign I guess). But I know a lot of people dig it, and I think its at least real literature, not "futurist" daydreaming. I think we are on the cusp of an existential crisis, and the world is about to burn down around us ... :) Literally, even. > > Anyway, I'm reminded of Old Bill Burroughs' stuff about the rich > planning to escape Earth on nuclear-pulse-driven ships. He didn't flesh > it out, but it basically involved planetary-scale destruction. Neal Stephenson used a nuclear-pulse ship, based on a lot of real research that went into Project Orion, in Anathem. It's a cool idea, and it's something humanity could more or less do right now - if the people with the money had any interest in such things. I really like Anathem, probably read it 3 or 4 times.. one of my favorite NS books. > Now of course, the g-forces involved would have killed everyone in the > ships. But consider Vinge's ships, combining bobble tech with nuclear > pulse propulsion. Bobbles, for those who don't know Vinge's stuff, are > spherical stasis fields. Inside the bobble, time stops for some set > external time. So from the outside, bobbles are perfect spherical > mirrors. To everything, including acceleration. And you can have a > complex structure, with configurations of bobbles nested within bobbles. > So basically, the ship periodically drops a nuclear device, bobbles and > rides the shock wave, and then de-bobbles and repeats. And there's no > limit to the size of the nuclear devices. Could be the entire planet :( I need to read some Vernor - I don't know his stuff at all, but actually own a couple paperbacks (unread, obviously). Too many fucking books, too little time. -- GPG fingerprint: 17FD 615A D20D AFE8 B3E4 C9D2 E324 20BE D47A 78C7
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