Antidote to save your loved ones from techno-Manicheanism, written with a grin and a wink.
"Technology is a trickster, and it has been so since the first culture hero taught the human tribe how to spin wool before he pulled it over our eyes."
A science fiction of the soul from the manual on paranoia, drug addiction, and defilement.
"Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost [...] perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well."
The benefits and pleasures of a Lindy walk in book form, sounds like the soft putt-putt of a mind ready to lay to rest.
"No clear picture emerged. Neither then nor today."
"In a grain of sand in the hem of Emma Bovary's winter gown [...] Flaubert saw the whole of the Sahara."
One to come back to again and again, vast and violent.
"December 23: Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I'd rather not talk about it, because I didn't understand it."
From the black smoker to the black mirror, an excerpt from a forthcoming book that connects biology and computation.
"Retroviruses are unsettingly ... intimate. HIV specifically targets immune cells, but if a retrovirus infects an egg or sperm cell, it can insert its code into an organism's germ line, becoming a permanent part not only of that cell, but of an entire species."
"Perhaps, when it kills, such a virus is doing its job: wiping out rivals who have invaded the original host's territory. [...] Outside our bodies, 'our' viruses could be similarly seeking out and destroying whole animals who are recognized as 'not-us'."
Funny, sheer mass of quality ideas on every page, relevant, and a great first introduction to Stross.
"As a demonstration they mean business, two "software engineers" in California have been kneecapped, tarred, feathered, and left for dead under placards accusing them of reverse-engineering movie plot lines using avatars of dead and out-of-copyright stars."
"If you are remembering this presentation, you are probably resimulated. This is not the same as being resurrected. [...] (Exception: If you died after the singularity, you may be a genuine resurrectee. In which case, why are you reading this FAQ?)"
"A weakly godlike intelligence is not a supernatural agency but the product of a highly advanced society that learned how to artificially create souls [late twentieth century: software]"
Whenever Frank talks about games I get excited about them all over again.
"We ignore the ambiguity of the physical position of the Chess piece in order to access a higher level of ambiguity. The beauty of Chess is not knowing where you are, but not knowing where you are. [...] When a Chess player is suspended in hypnotic rapture above the board, she isn't appreciating the clear, straight lines of pure logic, she is deep inside this jungle, looking for a way out."
The first history of computing book I have read, highly recommend. In depth descriptions of the conceptual underpinnings (information theory, cybernetics), and then rich history of decade after decade of research and development.
Worth reading for the Grand Inquisitor chapter. Meandering and slow, then dense explosive conversations, then slow again. Dmitri Karamazov is the classic Underground Man, mercurial, ruinous, yet all the same righteous.
"Here is perhaps the one man in the world whom you might leave alone without a penny, in the center of an unknown town of a million inhabitants, and he would not come to harm, he would not die of cold and hunger, for he would be fed and sheltered at once; and if he were not, he would find a shelter for himself, and it would cost him no effort or humiliation. And to shelter him would be no burden, but, on the contrary, would probably be looked on as a pleasure."
Begins with art and beauty and ends in an electromagnetic shotgun to the head. So many relevant essays that are getting refiltered through AI & e/acc.
"This is because what appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy's resources."
"Only proto-capitalism has ever been critiqued."
"Garbage time is running out. Can what is playing you make it to level-2?"