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I thought maybe that’s what Terry Pratchett’s Hex was poking fun at, but it looks like Children of Time is quite new (2015 vs 1994 for Hex’s first appearance).
by jon_richards 5y ago
I thought maybe that’s what Terry Pratchett’s Hex was poking fun at, but it looks like Children of Time is quite new (2015 vs 1994 for Hex’s first appearance). I wonder what the origin of that trope is.
- wolfram74 5y agoI haven't read Hex, but I just read Children of Time, and Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter (1979) plays around with the loosely computational nature of an ant colony. Probably a few people thought about it before then, but it's getting closer to the dawn of general computation at that point
- krige 5y agoHex is not a book but rather a recurring device in the Discworld series, mostly in later books centered on wizards - basically a technomagical computer analogue that is powered apparently by ants rather than electrons. Not sure how much did the late Pterry have the hivemind=computer analogy in mind but as an added bonus on the surface it does open up at least a few jokes about computer "bugs".