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Neal Stephenson Explains His Vision of the Digital Afterlife

152 points by MilnerRoute 7y ago

justin66 7y ago
The actual article: https://www.pcmag.com/news/368417/neal-stephenson-explains-his-vision-of-the-digital-afterlife https://www.pcmag.com/news/368417/neal-stephenson-explains-h...
- drivers99 7y ago
  Also, title should be fixed to say "Neal" instead of "Neil".
parrellel 7y ago
I'm vaguely interested in the article, which this wasn't, but wow Slashdot's gotten really scummy since I last visited.
- ddingus 7y ago
  I would agree. I used to really enjoy that community. But it's gone downhill. I think the moderation rules were brilliant. And effective. The problem is, there needs to be a core set of user setting good norms, and they've all left. What's there now is kind of a mess.
  - Lendal 7y ago
    What's interesting is that your observation directly relates to the article. "We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems that are designed not to have [paid] humans in the loop, because if humans are in the loop they're not scalable and if they're not scalable they can't make tons and tons of money."
    - ddingus 7y ago
      Indeed! I'm actually writing about that in another community right now. I am reluctant to put it here, but maybe just a taste? [flame suit on :D ] I disagree. Honestly, one can make tons of money, and incorporate the humans too. That can all scale, though the margins are not as good. So what? There is still tons of money to be made, just not the absolute maximum tons of money to be made. The difference between those two is profound when it comes to the potential impact of social media on society today. A while back, some friends and I did an experiment. What we did was set the expectation that people need to treat other people well, assume good intent, and in general, don't be a dick. Anything else is a risk. Being a dick comes with risk. It may be small, it may be significant. It's hard to know, by design. See, when we define how shitty people can be to one another, they end up being exactly that shitty, plus a little. Give people targets and they will meet them. Give them rules, and they will game them. So then, make the only clear target real, human, discussion, mutual respect and consideration, and as time passes, the community will see more and more of that. What does this have to do with the discussion we just started? Hang with me for a minute. I have to lay some foundation first. Here is the money part: Agency. When someone says something shitty to us, we are in control over how we respond. The number one response in most communities, is righteous indignation. The number two is to return that with equally shitty discussion. And from there, it's a meta mess. They said, you said, he said... Everyone wants "the platform" to handle this for them, to protect them, to enforce "the rules", etc... Ask people this, and they will go on at length about it all. You can also give them scenarios, and they will also tell you indirectly, "the rules are great, but I need an exception, because other people are shitty to me." This behavior dynamic is chronic. Rule based systems won't fix it. Machine learning won't either. Now, what happens when people understand this is on them? Someone calls us an asshole. They are strangers, we don't know them, they have established little to no credence. Or, they are trolls and are seen as such. Maybe they are clowns. With agency in play, we have many options! Righteous indignation Laughter Ignore them Score their insult (C+ Weak sauce, try harder) On Quora, I will often apply this. Someone goes off, and I will say, "You should edit that away before someone reports it. Then we can try again." Doing that is sometimes amazing. I've had some awesome exchanges with others that started out on a very bad basis. We are in control of our end of the conversation. We manage whether it goes bad or not. So much of the angst we see related to all this social media boils down to the fact that many people do not recognize their agency in dialog, and they expect the system to take care of them, relieve them of the burden of actually interacting with other people. Now, where it comes to the real / unreal, there is a dynamic in play I find extremely disturbing, and this is the part I am reluctant to put here, so again, just a taste: Our body politic is ill. Our mainstream media is not delivering a robust, real, inclusive dialog on policy. Tons of Americans have come to realize this, and it's a growing problem for the big money, establishment media. A couple examples: Where is the anti-war movement in the US, and what coverage does it get on mainstream media? What percentage of news and opinion produced by mainstream media in the US do so from the labor, poverty point of view? When is the last time any of us saw a reasonable debate on mainstream media about Net Neutrality, Copyright, and the basic problems and dynamics we are seeing where society, the law, and technology intersect? There are many more. I just picked a few to make a point here. All of those topics suffer from conflict of interest. The owners of mainstream, big media see those topics as threats to income, and coverage, editorial influence, all reflect that reality. Now, ordinary people actually have an interest in those topics, and do discuss them. Where? Social media. In addition, there are tons of great discussions going on, here, mailing lists, forums, Reddit, you name it. They are happening, and bubble up to platforms like Twitter and FB, which actually hosts a ton of "secret groups" all focused on specific topics, causes, and ways to action, activism. (one does wonder how secret those are, but that is a discussion for another time) Right along with that we have less informed dialog, conspiracy theories, crazy people, angry people, etc... And we've got some level of nefarious activity too. Many think "the russians" are producing content that is actually impacting elections, for example. I am not going to state truth or false on that, just recognize that sentiment is out there. Every single day our mainstream media delivers "Fake News" The easiest to see are war related propaganda going out as news. It's constant. Every single day, our mainstream media talks about all "those other people" on social media producing "Fake News" and what are we going to do about it? See the trouble? We can't resolve this "Fake News" on social media problem without also recognizing the mainstream media problem we have today as well. Without that real conversation, the solutions will be incomplete, untrustworthy, draconian, and the people overall will not see the outcome as just and the process legitimate. That's rough, but real. In addition, we've got many Americans looking for strong left economic policy reform. Often, that gets lumped in with "Fake News" which makes a mess of things in that draconian solutions are seen as chilling to otherwise reasonable, permissible dialog. That's it, I will stop there, save for one last observation: In a given community, one setup with the expectations I detailed above, or even some reasonable set of expectations that are clear and do not get in the way of most reasonable, real conversations, if pointed ones: All it takes is a small percentage of regular contributors modeling the norms and the options to spread them throughout the membership, basically innoculating them against most basic meta and trolling bullshit. The resulting conversation is healthy enough to filter truth from bullshit very reasonably. Why? Because people learn how to be wrong, how to handle attacks without exacerbating things, how to be secure in their conversation and seek enlightenment not always just validation and ego stroking. Spread that, and bullshit is displaced and or quickly marginalized. (and often, bullshitters get sucked in, will own it, and begin to contribute too. Happens more than you think. And that happens, because the door for it to happen is held open, and appeals made. Come on, join us. We are all better for it...) No machine learning needed. And scaling happens by natural community distribution. The very big platforms, Twitter for example, will be a mess because size. But, what nobody realizes is Twitter feeds tons of other communities. If those discussions are robust, the laughingstocks on Twitter will be known as such, and that bubbles right back to Twitter! But there is a catch! It will do that for established big money interests same as it will nefarious politicians and bad actors trying to manipulate things. So, what is worth what? Do we really want robust, real, honest dialog, or is this really just about a cleaner, managed one like the status quo interests would prefer? No joke. How do the people make the big money? That costs money to convey. Also no joke. Hard won information. But, I have put enough here for others to go and do the work. If they do it, they can get the positive outcomes.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  There were always trolls and lots of people that weren't quite trolling but weren't contributing much. (I have a lower 5 digit account over there)
  - klyrs 7y ago
    The commitment to "no comments deleted ever" was great 'til racist trash became the most common theme in comments. Nowadays their moderation system just doesn't scale, and IMO the page would be significantly improved by a filter on the n-word
- isostatic 7y ago
  I left ahortly after Malda, tr days of conversations with Bruce Perens and Wil Wheaton are long gone, it’s mainly Infowars fans now.
  - neilv 7y ago
    Too bad Malda sold it before the social media valuations like of Facebook. Slashdot had some commercial awareness (e.g., there was a lot of predictable "take my money!" meme about products), but wasn't thinking along the most profitable lines, and maybe never could've. (I've been wondering how much/often dotcom founders of successful startups reshape the world in their image, and I doubt that Malda saw the world with a Zuckerberg eye, for example.) Another big property that was bought by the same people was SourceForge. Which didn't fetch anywhere near the price of GitHub.
hprotagonist 7y ago
relatedly: https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-am-a-bad-correspondent.html https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-am-a-bad-correspondent.... That is not such a terrible outcome, but neither is it an especially good outcome. The quality of my e-mails and public speaking is, in my view, nowhere near that of my novels. So for me it comes down to the following choice: I can distribute material of bad-to-mediocre quality to a small number of people, or I can distribute material of higher quality to more people. But I can’t do both; the first one obliterates the second.
- Krasnol 7y ago
  But his books are quite mediocre too (besides those wikipedia articles he adds to them) so what does it make his speeches?
  - rapind 7y ago
    I love his books...
    - Krasnol 7y ago
      Yeah and you are a part of a huge fan base that will downvote me into oblivion. There is nothing bad with that. You can love bad writing. Why not? However it will still not change anything about him being a mediocre writer. His inability to write endings became a meme even within the fan base. His inability to write non-cringe female characters is horrible ans sometimes quite questionable (Snow Crash). Especially these days. The way he stretches nothingness over endless pages is painful and just another sign of bad craftsmanship and yes we get that he likes to deliver some scientific ideas but there are ways to not make it look like you copy a wikipedia article. It's been done in literature. It can be copied and as to say it in Ursula Le Guins words: everybody does it. Much could be done if the editor(s) wouldn't be so afraid of him. I can't explain it otherwise.
apo 7y ago
>Q: How would you describe the current state of the internet? Just in a general sense of its role in our daily lives, and where that concept of the Miasma came from for you. > Neal Stephenson: I ended up having a pretty dark view of it, as you can kind of tell from the book. I saw someone recently describe social media in its current state as a doomsday machine, and I think that's not far off. We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems that are designed not to have humans in the loop, because if humans are in the loop they're not scalable and if they're not scalable they can't make tons and tons of money. How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? This line about perception of reality somehow being different today than it was, say, in the 1980s keeps coming up. The main shift is that the number of (dis)information sources has risen sharply and they've become much more efficient. Secondarily, entire media channels (newspapers and TV) have lost relevance to all but the older generation. Increasingly, those news outlets just track social media, which may be the oddest development of all. In this context, the effective discontinuation of the White House press conference was inevitable. For better or worse, the president talks directly, unfiltered, to everyone. That's the real doomsday machine if put into the wrong hands.
- paganel 7y ago
  > How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? Because size matters, and in this case social media is a lot more pervasive (I'd say at least an order of magnitude more) compared to TV news of the 1980s or to newspapers. I knew of lots and lots of people who to didn't read newspapers 30 years ago, also the majority of the people around me didn't give that much thought on what was presented as "news" on TV because we knew they were mostly lies anyway (I grew in an Eastern-European country located on the wrong side of the Wall), but nowadays even the remotest shepherd has a cheap Android phone with an Internet connection which he mostly uses for Facebook and Whatsapp. In other words social media is a quantitative change (billions of people are using it) which has transformed into a qualitative one (because billions of people are using social media things are different this time).
- Torwald 7y ago
0x8BADF00D 7y ago
Part of the problem is the participation trophy and helicopter parent mentality. Who are you to tell me my beliefs are wrong? I can be anything I want, I am qualified to be an expert on something because I want to be. The Earth is flat, who are you to tell me otherwise? The lack of humility is the real doomsday machine.
- RandomTisk 7y ago
  Funny you mention flat earthers, I think it's because of social media that the number of times they're mentioned dwarfs the actual number of flat earthers alive today by something like a few hundred thousand to one. Just one example where something gets blown way out of proportion.
  - jsemrau 7y ago
    I would assume the same holds true for the AntiVax movements. While I constantly hear about it online, I don't know a single parent with that mindset.
    - davemp 7y ago
      To a lesser extent there’s also an anti multilevel marketing movement. Groups whose soul purpose is to trash talk something are loathsome, even if the target deserves it.
    - pacala 7y ago
      We know there are plenty of antivaxers because they sign certificates of immunization exemption. Plus we keep track of immunization rates. In WA there are about 4% kindergarten kids with non-medical immunization exemptions [0]. In some communities, like Vashon Island, the exemption rate goes upwards 25% [1], and the non-vaccination rate upwards to 44% of kindergartners in 2012 [2]. [0] https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/Pubs/348-682-SY2017-18immunizationgraphs.pdf https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/Pubs/348-682-SY20... [1] https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article26252716.html https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article26252716.ht... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/health/measles-outbreak-washington-new-york.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/health/measles-outbreak-w...
earenndil 7y ago
Technologically, it seems to be pretty speculative and hand-wavy. Consider: > One thing we do know about quantum computers is that once we can get them to work, which is no small task, they will be unbelievably fast and increase available computing power by orders of magnitude compared to traditional computers > The near-future world of Fall is full of familiar buzzwords and concepts. Augmented reality headsets, next-gen wireless networks, self-driving vehicles, facial recognition, quantum computing, blockchain and distributed cryptography all feature prominently.
mxcrossb 7y ago
Why is social media the poster child for algoritmically driven content? If anything, social media response to scale hasn’t been to use algorithms to drive content from top down, but instead to crowd source that information. Yes Facebook might rearrange your newsfeed. But the information it shows is still driven by the likes and shares of your network. On places like reddit it is driven by upvotes, or hash tags and retweets on twitter. The algorithm is secondary to the user group. Thus if we really are going to blame social media, it’s because we aren’t more selective about the social networks we embed ourselves in. But this of course is a problem that existed from the dawn of humanity.
- detaro 7y ago
  The problem is still that the algorithms cause problems. Social media is also a poster child because we could actually observe the transition in many cases: Early Twitter and Facebook as far as I know had entirely chronological timelines, and then changed that to "increase engagement", with all the side-effects that has. Just some examples: - boosting things that are already popular increases their measured popularity even more, which both a) over-emphasizes things that get reacted to quickly, which means e.g. quick outragous headlines get even more benefit over more in-depth coverage than they already do by human nature and b) over-emphasizes popular sources over niche ones. - Facebook actually does guesses at audiences, which means liking something can actually mean you decrease it's reach with the intended audience. (the "Facebook mom problem": if you post e.g. about your latest scientific paper and your mom likes it immediately, because that's what moms do, Facebook assumes it's family content and is less likely to show it to professional contacts that are the actual audience) - for commercial content, Facebook intentionally limits reach among people who explicitly choose to follow you unless you pay for visibility
- rasteau 7y ago
  > The algorithm is secondary to the user group. Neither is secondary; both are essential to the socio-algorithmic evolutionary process. The algorithms are intended to optimize toward some user group behaviour. As the user group's choices influence the behaviour of the algorithms, so too do the algorithms' choices influence the behaviour of the user group.
dang 7y ago
Url changed from https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/05/25/0117238/neal-stephenson-says-social-media-is-close-to-a-doomsday-machine https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/05/25/0117238/neal-stephe..., which points to this.
8bitsrule 7y ago
I'm not convinced that the impact of SM is much different from the impact of 3-network TV programming back in the 50s-60s. 'We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems ....' Like Nielson ratings? We certainly weren't allowed to play a greater part then. Are we now, really? So, if once again we've allowed corporations to spoon-feed us, in return for watching advertising ... how's that any more of a doomsday than the first time around? Stephenson's a remarkable story-teller but this comment is not helpful. If things look darker, that doesn't mean that they are. TV and Newspaper headlines were essentially algorithmically predictable. 'Darker' stuff wound up in magazines. Today, anyone with the time can see it all ... unfiltered by news 'experts'. If it looks manipululated, it always was. "The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread." - John Swinton, 1880
netsec_burn 7y ago
Is this an ad for a book on HN?
mirimir 7y ago
> PCMag: The first glimpse we get of Bitworld is this newly sentient virtual mind conceiving its surroundings, its being, and its ability to think and create and learn and adjust in the midst of endless chaos. It was fascinating stream-of-consciousness writing to encapsulate cognition. That must've been a really tricky part to write. I'm looking forward to reading this, for sure. But I gotta say that Greg Egan did a good job of this, at the beginning of "Diaspora". Which he published in 1998. Also interesting is Kevin MacArdry's The Last Trumpet Project, which goes further. Read-only access to the past permits bringing everyone who ever lived into digital heavens. It came out in ~2010.
0x445442 7y ago
"My big picture view of this is that broad access to the facts is empowering to everyone who can get it. The broadening of that power base to include more people comes at the expense of the oligarchs of the world, who are always going to be able to reap power, wealth, and benefits from keeping everybody else in the dark." This is a very interesting quote to me because it's the type of quote that "the oligarchy" uses to label those like Alex Jones wing nut conspiracy theorists.

152 points by MilnerRoute 7y ago

The actual article: https://www.pcmag.com/news/368417/neal-stephenson-explains-his-vision-of-the-digital-afterlife https://www.pcmag.com/news/368417/neal-stephenson-explains-h...

drivers99 7y ago
Also, title should be fixed to say "Neal" instead of "Neil".

parrellel 7y ago

I'm vaguely interested in the article, which this wasn't, but wow Slashdot's gotten really scummy since I last visited.

ddingus 7y ago
I would agree. I used to really enjoy that community. But it's gone downhill. I think the moderation rules were brilliant. And effective. The problem is, there needs to be a core set of user setting good norms, and they've all left. What's there now is kind of a mess.
- Lendal 7y ago
  What's interesting is that your observation directly relates to the article. "We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems that are designed not to have [paid] humans in the loop, because if humans are in the loop they're not scalable and if they're not scalable they can't make tons and tons of money."
  - ddingus 7y ago
    Indeed! I'm actually writing about that in another community right now. I am reluctant to put it here, but maybe just a taste? [flame suit on :D ] I disagree. Honestly, one can make tons of money, and incorporate the humans too. That can all scale, though the margins are not as good. So what? There is still tons of money to be made, just not the absolute maximum tons of money to be made. The difference between those two is profound when it comes to the potential impact of social media on society today. A while back, some friends and I did an experiment. What we did was set the expectation that people need to treat other people well, assume good intent, and in general, don't be a dick. Anything else is a risk. Being a dick comes with risk. It may be small, it may be significant. It's hard to know, by design. See, when we define how shitty people can be to one another, they end up being exactly that shitty, plus a little. Give people targets and they will meet them. Give them rules, and they will game them. So then, make the only clear target real, human, discussion, mutual respect and consideration, and as time passes, the community will see more and more of that. What does this have to do with the discussion we just started? Hang with me for a minute. I have to lay some foundation first. Here is the money part: Agency. When someone says something shitty to us, we are in control over how we respond. The number one response in most communities, is righteous indignation. The number two is to return that with equally shitty discussion. And from there, it's a meta mess. They said, you said, he said... Everyone wants "the platform" to handle this for them, to protect them, to enforce "the rules", etc... Ask people this, and they will go on at length about it all. You can also give them scenarios, and they will also tell you indirectly, "the rules are great, but I need an exception, because other people are shitty to me." This behavior dynamic is chronic. Rule based systems won't fix it. Machine learning won't either. Now, what happens when people understand this is on them? Someone calls us an asshole. They are strangers, we don't know them, they have established little to no credence. Or, they are trolls and are seen as such. Maybe they are clowns. With agency in play, we have many options! Righteous indignation Laughter Ignore them Score their insult (C+ Weak sauce, try harder) On Quora, I will often apply this. Someone goes off, and I will say, "You should edit that away before someone reports it. Then we can try again." Doing that is sometimes amazing. I've had some awesome exchanges with others that started out on a very bad basis. We are in control of our end of the conversation. We manage whether it goes bad or not. So much of the angst we see related to all this social media boils down to the fact that many people do not recognize their agency in dialog, and they expect the system to take care of them, relieve them of the burden of actually interacting with other people. Now, where it comes to the real / unreal, there is a dynamic in play I find extremely disturbing, and this is the part I am reluctant to put here, so again, just a taste: Our body politic is ill. Our mainstream media is not delivering a robust, real, inclusive dialog on policy. Tons of Americans have come to realize this, and it's a growing problem for the big money, establishment media. A couple examples: Where is the anti-war movement in the US, and what coverage does it get on mainstream media? What percentage of news and opinion produced by mainstream media in the US do so from the labor, poverty point of view? When is the last time any of us saw a reasonable debate on mainstream media about Net Neutrality, Copyright, and the basic problems and dynamics we are seeing where society, the law, and technology intersect? There are many more. I just picked a few to make a point here. All of those topics suffer from conflict of interest. The owners of mainstream, big media see those topics as threats to income, and coverage, editorial influence, all reflect that reality. Now, ordinary people actually have an interest in those topics, and do discuss them. Where? Social media. In addition, there are tons of great discussions going on, here, mailing lists, forums, Reddit, you name it. They are happening, and bubble up to platforms like Twitter and FB, which actually hosts a ton of "secret groups" all focused on specific topics, causes, and ways to action, activism. (one does wonder how secret those are, but that is a discussion for another time) Right along with that we have less informed dialog, conspiracy theories, crazy people, angry people, etc... And we've got some level of nefarious activity too. Many think "the russians" are producing content that is actually impacting elections, for example. I am not going to state truth or false on that, just recognize that sentiment is out there. Every single day our mainstream media delivers "Fake News" The easiest to see are war related propaganda going out as news. It's constant. Every single day, our mainstream media talks about all "those other people" on social media producing "Fake News" and what are we going to do about it? See the trouble? We can't resolve this "Fake News" on social media problem without also recognizing the mainstream media problem we have today as well. Without that real conversation, the solutions will be incomplete, untrustworthy, draconian, and the people overall will not see the outcome as just and the process legitimate. That's rough, but real. In addition, we've got many Americans looking for strong left economic policy reform. Often, that gets lumped in with "Fake News" which makes a mess of things in that draconian solutions are seen as chilling to otherwise reasonable, permissible dialog. That's it, I will stop there, save for one last observation: In a given community, one setup with the expectations I detailed above, or even some reasonable set of expectations that are clear and do not get in the way of most reasonable, real conversations, if pointed ones: All it takes is a small percentage of regular contributors modeling the norms and the options to spread them throughout the membership, basically innoculating them against most basic meta and trolling bullshit. The resulting conversation is healthy enough to filter truth from bullshit very reasonably. Why? Because people learn how to be wrong, how to handle attacks without exacerbating things, how to be secure in their conversation and seek enlightenment not always just validation and ego stroking. Spread that, and bullshit is displaced and or quickly marginalized. (and often, bullshitters get sucked in, will own it, and begin to contribute too. Happens more than you think. And that happens, because the door for it to happen is held open, and appeals made. Come on, join us. We are all better for it...) No machine learning needed. And scaling happens by natural community distribution. The very big platforms, Twitter for example, will be a mess because size. But, what nobody realizes is Twitter feeds tons of other communities. If those discussions are robust, the laughingstocks on Twitter will be known as such, and that bubbles right back to Twitter! But there is a catch! It will do that for established big money interests same as it will nefarious politicians and bad actors trying to manipulate things. So, what is worth what? Do we really want robust, real, honest dialog, or is this really just about a cleaner, managed one like the status quo interests would prefer? No joke. How do the people make the big money? That costs money to convey. Also no joke. Hard won information. But, I have put enough here for others to go and do the work. If they do it, they can get the positive outcomes.
maxerickson 7y ago
There were always trolls and lots of people that weren't quite trolling but weren't contributing much. (I have a lower 5 digit account over there)
- klyrs 7y ago
  The commitment to "no comments deleted ever" was great 'til racist trash became the most common theme in comments. Nowadays their moderation system just doesn't scale, and IMO the page would be significantly improved by a filter on the n-word
isostatic 7y ago
I left ahortly after Malda, tr days of conversations with Bruce Perens and Wil Wheaton are long gone, it’s mainly Infowars fans now.
- neilv 7y ago
  Too bad Malda sold it before the social media valuations like of Facebook. Slashdot had some commercial awareness (e.g., there was a lot of predictable "take my money!" meme about products), but wasn't thinking along the most profitable lines, and maybe never could've. (I've been wondering how much/often dotcom founders of successful startups reshape the world in their image, and I doubt that Malda saw the world with a Zuckerberg eye, for example.) Another big property that was bought by the same people was SourceForge. Which didn't fetch anywhere near the price of GitHub.

hprotagonist 7y ago

relatedly: https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-am-a-bad-correspondent.html https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-am-a-bad-correspondent.... That is not such a terrible outcome, but neither is it an especially good outcome. The quality of my e-mails and public speaking is, in my view, nowhere near that of my novels. So for me it comes down to the following choice: I can distribute material of bad-to-mediocre quality to a small number of people, or I can distribute material of higher quality to more people. But I can’t do both; the first one obliterates the second.

Krasnol 7y ago
But his books are quite mediocre too (besides those wikipedia articles he adds to them) so what does it make his speeches?
- rapind 7y ago
  I love his books...
  - Krasnol 7y ago
    Yeah and you are a part of a huge fan base that will downvote me into oblivion. There is nothing bad with that. You can love bad writing. Why not? However it will still not change anything about him being a mediocre writer. His inability to write endings became a meme even within the fan base. His inability to write non-cringe female characters is horrible ans sometimes quite questionable (Snow Crash). Especially these days. The way he stretches nothingness over endless pages is painful and just another sign of bad craftsmanship and yes we get that he likes to deliver some scientific ideas but there are ways to not make it look like you copy a wikipedia article. It's been done in literature. It can be copied and as to say it in Ursula Le Guins words: everybody does it. Much could be done if the editor(s) wouldn't be so afraid of him. I can't explain it otherwise.

apo 7y ago

>Q: How would you describe the current state of the internet? Just in a general sense of its role in our daily lives, and where that concept of the Miasma came from for you. > Neal Stephenson: I ended up having a pretty dark view of it, as you can kind of tell from the book. I saw someone recently describe social media in its current state as a doomsday machine, and I think that's not far off. We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems that are designed not to have humans in the loop, because if humans are in the loop they're not scalable and if they're not scalable they can't make tons and tons of money. How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? This line about perception of reality somehow being different today than it was, say, in the 1980s keeps coming up. The main shift is that the number of (dis)information sources has risen sharply and they've become much more efficient. Secondarily, entire media channels (newspapers and TV) have lost relevance to all but the older generation. Increasingly, those news outlets just track social media, which may be the oddest development of all. In this context, the effective discontinuation of the White House press conference was inevitable. For better or worse, the president talks directly, unfiltered, to everyone. That's the real doomsday machine if put into the wrong hands.

paganel 7y ago
> How is this any different from turning our perception of what's real over to mechanical turk systems like newspapers and TV news? Because size matters, and in this case social media is a lot more pervasive (I'd say at least an order of magnitude more) compared to TV news of the 1980s or to newspapers. I knew of lots and lots of people who to didn't read newspapers 30 years ago, also the majority of the people around me didn't give that much thought on what was presented as "news" on TV because we knew they were mostly lies anyway (I grew in an Eastern-European country located on the wrong side of the Wall), but nowadays even the remotest shepherd has a cheap Android phone with an Internet connection which he mostly uses for Facebook and Whatsapp. In other words social media is a quantitative change (billions of people are using it) which has transformed into a qualitative one (because billions of people are using social media things are different this time).
Torwald 7y ago

0x8BADF00D 7y ago

Part of the problem is the participation trophy and helicopter parent mentality. Who are you to tell me my beliefs are wrong? I can be anything I want, I am qualified to be an expert on something because I want to be. The Earth is flat, who are you to tell me otherwise? The lack of humility is the real doomsday machine.

RandomTisk 7y ago
Funny you mention flat earthers, I think it's because of social media that the number of times they're mentioned dwarfs the actual number of flat earthers alive today by something like a few hundred thousand to one. Just one example where something gets blown way out of proportion.
- jsemrau 7y ago
  I would assume the same holds true for the AntiVax movements. While I constantly hear about it online, I don't know a single parent with that mindset.
  - davemp 7y ago
    To a lesser extent there’s also an anti multilevel marketing movement. Groups whose soul purpose is to trash talk something are loathsome, even if the target deserves it.
  - pacala 7y ago
    We know there are plenty of antivaxers because they sign certificates of immunization exemption. Plus we keep track of immunization rates. In WA there are about 4% kindergarten kids with non-medical immunization exemptions [0]. In some communities, like Vashon Island, the exemption rate goes upwards 25% [1], and the non-vaccination rate upwards to 44% of kindergartners in 2012 [2]. [0] https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/Pubs/348-682-SY2017-18immunizationgraphs.pdf https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/Pubs/348-682-SY20... [1] https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article26252716.html https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article26252716.ht... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/health/measles-outbreak-washington-new-york.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/health/measles-outbreak-w...

earenndil 7y ago

Technologically, it seems to be pretty speculative and hand-wavy. Consider: > One thing we do know about quantum computers is that once we can get them to work, which is no small task, they will be unbelievably fast and increase available computing power by orders of magnitude compared to traditional computers > The near-future world of Fall is full of familiar buzzwords and concepts. Augmented reality headsets, next-gen wireless networks, self-driving vehicles, facial recognition, quantum computing, blockchain and distributed cryptography all feature prominently.

mxcrossb 7y ago

Why is social media the poster child for algoritmically driven content? If anything, social media response to scale hasn’t been to use algorithms to drive content from top down, but instead to crowd source that information. Yes Facebook might rearrange your newsfeed. But the information it shows is still driven by the likes and shares of your network. On places like reddit it is driven by upvotes, or hash tags and retweets on twitter. The algorithm is secondary to the user group. Thus if we really are going to blame social media, it’s because we aren’t more selective about the social networks we embed ourselves in. But this of course is a problem that existed from the dawn of humanity.

detaro 7y ago
The problem is still that the algorithms cause problems. Social media is also a poster child because we could actually observe the transition in many cases: Early Twitter and Facebook as far as I know had entirely chronological timelines, and then changed that to "increase engagement", with all the side-effects that has. Just some examples: - boosting things that are already popular increases their measured popularity even more, which both a) over-emphasizes things that get reacted to quickly, which means e.g. quick outragous headlines get even more benefit over more in-depth coverage than they already do by human nature and b) over-emphasizes popular sources over niche ones. - Facebook actually does guesses at audiences, which means liking something can actually mean you decrease it's reach with the intended audience. (the "Facebook mom problem": if you post e.g. about your latest scientific paper and your mom likes it immediately, because that's what moms do, Facebook assumes it's family content and is less likely to show it to professional contacts that are the actual audience) - for commercial content, Facebook intentionally limits reach among people who explicitly choose to follow you unless you pay for visibility
rasteau 7y ago
> The algorithm is secondary to the user group. Neither is secondary; both are essential to the socio-algorithmic evolutionary process. The algorithms are intended to optimize toward some user group behaviour. As the user group's choices influence the behaviour of the algorithms, so too do the algorithms' choices influence the behaviour of the user group.

dang 7y ago

Url changed from https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/05/25/0117238/neal-stephenson-says-social-media-is-close-to-a-doomsday-machine https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/05/25/0117238/neal-stephe..., which points to this.

8bitsrule 7y ago

I'm not convinced that the impact of SM is much different from the impact of 3-network TV programming back in the 50s-60s. 'We've turned over our perception of what's real to algorithmically driven systems ....' Like Nielson ratings? We certainly weren't allowed to play a greater part then. Are we now, really? So, if once again we've allowed corporations to spoon-feed us, in return for watching advertising ... how's that any more of a doomsday than the first time around? Stephenson's a remarkable story-teller but this comment is not helpful. If things look darker, that doesn't mean that they are. TV and Newspaper headlines were essentially algorithmically predictable. 'Darker' stuff wound up in magazines. Today, anyone with the time can see it all ... unfiltered by news 'experts'. If it looks manipululated, it always was. "The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread." - John Swinton, 1880

netsec_burn 7y ago

Is this an ad for a book on HN?

mirimir 7y ago

> PCMag: The first glimpse we get of Bitworld is this newly sentient virtual mind conceiving its surroundings, its being, and its ability to think and create and learn and adjust in the midst of endless chaos. It was fascinating stream-of-consciousness writing to encapsulate cognition. That must've been a really tricky part to write. I'm looking forward to reading this, for sure. But I gotta say that Greg Egan did a good job of this, at the beginning of "Diaspora". Which he published in 1998. Also interesting is Kevin MacArdry's The Last Trumpet Project, which goes further. Read-only access to the past permits bringing everyone who ever lived into digital heavens. It came out in ~2010.

0x445442 7y ago

"My big picture view of this is that broad access to the facts is empowering to everyone who can get it. The broadening of that power base to include more people comes at the expense of the oligarchs of the world, who are always going to be able to reap power, wealth, and benefits from keeping everybody else in the dark." This is a very interesting quote to me because it's the type of quote that "the oligarchy" uses to label those like Alex Jones wing nut conspiracy theorists.