Charlie's Diary

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Tue, 03 Dec 2002 Thinking outside the box Fascinating essay here: Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced Think for a moment on how our culture characterizes "magic". Generally, it is envisioned as "occult" -- the obscure and arcane. It requires intensive specialized training, and even then, it is so dangerous and sensitive to tiny errors -- get one word wrong in a spell, and... -- that ordinary people can't possibly use it. It is capricious and erratic. And when magic is preformed by an adept on behalf of the uninitiated, often there is a terrible, punitive cost. The "magic" we imagine is rare and strange and uncanny and scary and very, very marginal to every day life ... Every so often you come across someone who looks at the box from outside, scratches their head, and says "why are you sitting in that thing?" Now here's someone smart enough to have done it to Clarke's law, with the logical corollary: really profound technologies don't look magical at all: they just let things happen that would otherwise be impossible. [ Link ] [ Discuss singularity ] posted at: 21:23 | path: /misc | permanent link to this entry Flame wars, 11 o'clock high Back in August at ConJose (the word science fiction convention) I found myself invited to sit in on a panel on Scottish SF writers. Along with me there were China Mieville, Pat Cadigan (who couldn't make it, due to a family emergency), Lawrence Person (editor of Nova Express, a critzine) and Eric Raymond. The panel turned out to be a blood in the water event. Lawrence, who invited everyone, is a libertarian. Eric is a red blooded libertarian -- I think he wouldn't take exception to that description -- while China is a politically active socialist and I'm just a hapless SF writer who lives in Scotland and got caught in the crossfire when Eric and Lawrence decided to go after Scottish SF in general as being eeeevil pinko commie stuff. Or something like that. About five days ago, NTK now ran a somewhat sarcastic piece discussing Eric's politics. This in turn spawned a thread on rec.arts.sf.written in which Eric (and the usual libertarian peanut gallery -- naming no names, you guys know who you are) turned up and ... well, it was interesting to see how memories of the event differ depending which side of the barricades you're on. After I showed up, and even China found himself unable to resist the urge to comment, it began deteriorating into the usual ideologically loaded flame war; Eric seems to think it appropriate to call China and other socialists -- a category so broad that by his lights it includes me -- genocidal psychopaths, and we choose not to be so labelled. What really intrigues me about the whole thing is the way that libertarians seem to elevate individual liberty to a quasi-religious status. It's not simply a major human need; it's the only human need in their eschatology. Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death" is interpreted as a literal statement of principle, not as the rhetoric of a blowhard revolutionary trying to whip up support for a war which will replace one kind of government with another. The fetish of freedom, taken to an ultimate conclusion, seems to bring out just as much evil in people as its absence. [ Discuss ESR on Scottish SF ] posted at: 00:17 | path: /politics | permanent link to this entry

specials: Is SF About to Go Blind? -- Popular Science article by Greg Mone Unwirer -- an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction Inside the MIT Media Lab -- what it's like to spend a a day wandering around the Media Lab "Nothing like this will be built again" -- inside a nuclear reactor complex Quick links: RSS Feed (Moved!) Who am I? Contact me Buy my books: (FAQ) Missile Gap Via Subterranean Press (US HC -- due Jan, 2007) The Jennifer Morgue Via Golden Gryphon (US HC -- due Nov, 2006) Glasshouse Via Amazon.com (US HC -- due June 30, 2006) The Clan Corporate Via Amazon.com (US HC -- out now) Accelerando Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB -- due June 27, 2006) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) Free download The Hidden Family Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) The Family Trade Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Iron Sunrise Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) The Atrocity Archives Via Amazon.com (Trade PB) Via Amazon.co.uk (Trade PB) Via Golden Gryphon (HC) Via Amazon.com (HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (HC) Singularity Sky Via Amazon.com (US HC) Via Amazon.com (US PB) Via Amazon.com (US ebook) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC) Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB) Toast Via Amazon.com Via Amazon.co.uk Some webby stuff I'm reading: [ Engadget ] [ Gizmodo ] [ The Memory Hole ] [ Boing!Boing! ] [ Futurismic ] [ Walter Jon Williams ] [ Making Light (TNH) ] [ Crooked Timber ] [ Junius (Chris Bertram) ] [ Baghdad Burning (Riverbend) ] [ Bruce Sterling ] [ Ian McDonald ] [ Amygdala (Gary Farber) ] [ Cyborg Democracy ] [ Body and Soul (Jeanne d'Arc)  ] [ Atrios ] [ The Sideshow (Avedon Carol) ] [ This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow) ] [ Jesus's General ] [ Mick Farren ] [ Early days of a Better Nation (Ken MacLeod) ] [ Respectful of Otters (Rivka) ] [ Tangent Online ] [ Grouse Today ] [ Hacktivismo ] [ Terra Nova ] [ Whatever (John Scalzi) ] [ GNXP ] [ Justine Larbalestier ] [ Yankee Fog ] [ The Law west of Ealing Broadway ] [ Cough the Lot ] [ The Yorkshire Ranter ] [ Newshog ] [ Kung Fu Monkey ] [ S1ngularity ] [ Pagan Prattle ] [ Gwyneth Jones ] [ Calpundit ] [ Lenin's Tomb ] [ Progressive Gold ] [ Kathryn Cramer ] [ Halfway down the Danube ] [ Fistful of Euros ] [ Orcinus ] [ Shrillblog ] [ Steve Gilliard ] [ Frankenstein Journal (Chris Lawson) ] [ The Panda's Thumb ] [ Martin Wisse ] [ Kuro5hin ] [ Advogato ] [ Talking Points Memo ] [ The Register ] [ Cryptome ] [ Juan Cole: Informed comment ] [ Global Guerillas (John Robb) ] [ Shadow of the Hegemon (Demosthenes) ] [ Simon Bisson's Journal ] [ Max Sawicky's weblog ] [ Guy Kewney's mobile campaign ] [ Hitherby Dragons ] [ Counterspin Central ] [ MetaFilter ] [ NTKnow ] [ Encyclopaedia Astronautica ] [ Fafblog ] [ BBC News (Scotland) ] [ Pravda ] [ Meerkat open wire service ] [ Warren Ellis ] [ Brad DeLong ] [ Hullabaloo (Digby) ] [ Jeff Vail ] [ The Whiskey Bar (Billmon) ] [ Groupthink Central (Yuval Rubinstein) ] [ Unmedia (Aziz Poonawalla) ] [ Rebecca's Pocket (Rebecca Blood) ] Older stuff: June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 (I screwed the pooch in respect of the blosxom entry datestamps on March 28th, 2002, so everything before then shows up as being from the same time)

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