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A review by julcoh
Accelerando by Charles Stross
4.0
A far flung vision of post singularity human civilization, fascinating and complex, equal parts exciting and frightening. Always-on exocortical network connections allow you to spawn "ghosts" into the web to do research, live separate lives at accelerated speed, and merge back into your mind. The conversion of planetary mass into computing power. Economics 2.0. Nearly omnipotent artificial intelligences.
At what point do we become more machine than human, and would anyone care? Will we steel our species against technological evolution, or dive headfirst into the black hole of asymptotic innovation? Stross paints an interesting history between Ray Kurzweil's Singularity moment, and the expansion of humanity throughout the stars, a la The Culture series by Ian M. Banks.
Stross' writing is information dense, sometimes hard to read, and rarely explains itself twice (if at all). I read more slowly and particularly than I usually do, and this is not a bad thing. I found myself enjoying the software and hardware descriptions as much as the characters-- it's a good story, but it pales against the backdrop of the arc of human civilization over a century.
I didn't love the ending, but I get that it was supposed to be a very human experience in the face of so much technology.
At what point do we become more machine than human, and would anyone care? Will we steel our species against technological evolution, or dive headfirst into the black hole of asymptotic innovation? Stross paints an interesting history between Ray Kurzweil's Singularity moment, and the expansion of humanity throughout the stars, a la The Culture series by Ian M. Banks.
Stross' writing is information dense, sometimes hard to read, and rarely explains itself twice (if at all). I read more slowly and particularly than I usually do, and this is not a bad thing. I found myself enjoying the software and hardware descriptions as much as the characters-- it's a good story, but it pales against the backdrop of the arc of human civilization over a century.
I didn't love the ending, but I get that it was supposed to be a very human experience in the face of so much technology.