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Some other really thought provoking books by Vinge which often go overlooked is "The Peace Wars" and "Marooned in Realtime" My personal guilty favorite (I say

Some other really thought provoking books by Vinge which often go overlooked is "The Peace Wars" and "Marooned in Realtime" My personal guilty favorite (I say guilty because he really buys into the outdated concept of the technological singularity) is Rainbow's End, which deals with notions of augmented reality, digitalization of books, and even touches on right-to-repair issues in a way.

roca 5y ago
The Peace War is okay but oddly enough in this case the sequel Marooned in Realtime is much better IMHO. Much more thought-provoking and genuinely moving.
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  yes, agreed, I really listed it because it's a necessary (imo) prologue to the events in `Marooned in Realtime`
rout39574 5y ago
It was my impression that he was the first articulator of the singularity concept. Other than fashion, why do you think it's outdated? I consider Rainbow's End to be a pretty good picture of what it might be like to live through the singularity. Especially evocative: the kid at the end chipping a skill his (grandfather?) worked for a career to accumulate, using it for a weekend, and then discarding it.
- _jal 5y ago
  > why do you think it's outdated? I don't know if 'outdated' is the right word. Maybe just not that useful, except as mind-candy? It is mostly a computationally-focused reformulation of the Rapture.
  - sillyquiet 5y ago
    Yeah, this covers it for me. Maybe outdated isn't wrong so much as nothing more than a fun intellectual exercise and what if - there's no road map, there's no solid technological basis for reaching a singularity, imo there's not much theory to it outside speculation and some fairly specious projections.
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  See my reply to the other child of this comment, but basically I don't see a solid roadmap anymore from here to there - sure there's a a lot of progress and advances but taken as a whole, the singularity idea doesn't account for anything but technological advances as plotted on a curve. There are a ton of economic, social, and squishy human factors that aren't really taken into consideration. It's a fascinating idea, but I don't find it very realistic or practical, much like A.I., or self-driving cars, or casual human space travel. If you had asked me 10-15 years ago, I would still be pretty sure it could happen, but the last decade or so of real-world technological advance has convinced me otherwise.
nl 5y ago
Vinge invented the idea (and name) of the singularity.
- aardvark179 5y ago
  I think it’s fairer to say that he named and articulated the idea, but there were certainly earlier books that described technological singularities (though often centred round energy or transport rather than computing).
- carapace 5y ago
  No, that was John von Neumann. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Technological_singularity_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Technological... Vinge did "present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace" in True Names in 1981 though. > True Names is a 1981 science fiction novella by American writer Vernor Vinge, a seminal work of the cyberpunk genre. It is one of the earliest stories to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace, which would later be central to cyberpunk. The story also contains elements of transhumanism, anarchism, and even hints about The Singularity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names
  - nl 5y ago
    Hmm.. The first to use the concept of a "singularity" in the technological context was John von Neumann.[4] Stanislaw Ulam reports a discussion with von Neumann "centered on the accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue but also The concept and the term "singularity" were popularized by Vernor Vinge in his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity, in which he wrote that it would signal the end of the human era, as the new superintelligence would continue to upgrade itself and would advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate. both from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity (linked from the link you shared). I've never seen it attributed to von Neumann before, and it looks like Wikipeida has slowly increased the emphasis on it. In this earlier edit it says: > This quote has been several times taken out of context and attributed to von Neumann himself, likely due to von Neumann's widespread fame and influence. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technological_singularity&oldid=9707855#Early_conceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technological_sin... von Neumann wasn't credited until late 2004: See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technological_singularity&oldid=7660278#Early_conceptions_of_the_Singularity https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technological_sin...
carapace 5y ago
(It's Rainbows End w/o the apostrophe.)
Sharlin 5y ago
Nitpick: It's Rainbows End, without an apostrophe.
int_19h 5y ago
I just wish Vinge's ancap politics weren't so blatantly pushed in the Peace War cycle. It gets especially in your face in the short story in between them.
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  I didn't find his politics, or any politics really, very out of place in the novels, they seemed (to me) a natural part of the story telling. But, full disclosure, I am a bit libertarian myself, politically so maybe I didn't notice as much or they weren't as grating to me. On the other hand, I find Terry Goodkind's novels completely unreadable, and the politic-pushing obnoxious, so I don't give libertarian politics a pass when it comes to out-of-place axe-grinding prominence.

roca 5y ago

The Peace War is okay but oddly enough in this case the sequel Marooned in Realtime is much better IMHO. Much more thought-provoking and genuinely moving.

sillyquiet 5y ago
yes, agreed, I really listed it because it's a necessary (imo) prologue to the events in `Marooned in Realtime`

rout39574 5y ago

It was my impression that he was the first articulator of the singularity concept. Other than fashion, why do you think it's outdated? I consider Rainbow's End to be a pretty good picture of what it might be like to live through the singularity. Especially evocative: the kid at the end chipping a skill his (grandfather?) worked for a career to accumulate, using it for a weekend, and then discarding it.

_jal 5y ago
> why do you think it's outdated? I don't know if 'outdated' is the right word. Maybe just not that useful, except as mind-candy? It is mostly a computationally-focused reformulation of the Rapture.
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  Yeah, this covers it for me. Maybe outdated isn't wrong so much as nothing more than a fun intellectual exercise and what if - there's no road map, there's no solid technological basis for reaching a singularity, imo there's not much theory to it outside speculation and some fairly specious projections.
sillyquiet 5y ago
See my reply to the other child of this comment, but basically I don't see a solid roadmap anymore from here to there - sure there's a a lot of progress and advances but taken as a whole, the singularity idea doesn't account for anything but technological advances as plotted on a curve. There are a ton of economic, social, and squishy human factors that aren't really taken into consideration. It's a fascinating idea, but I don't find it very realistic or practical, much like A.I., or self-driving cars, or casual human space travel. If you had asked me 10-15 years ago, I would still be pretty sure it could happen, but the last decade or so of real-world technological advance has convinced me otherwise.

nl 5y ago

Vinge invented the idea (and name) of the singularity.

aardvark179 5y ago
I think it’s fairer to say that he named and articulated the idea, but there were certainly earlier books that described technological singularities (though often centred round energy or transport rather than computing).
carapace 5y ago
No, that was John von Neumann. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Technological_singularity_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Technological... Vinge did "present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace" in True Names in 1981 though. > True Names is a 1981 science fiction novella by American writer Vernor Vinge, a seminal work of the cyberpunk genre. It is one of the earliest stories to present a fully fleshed-out concept of cyberspace, which would later be central to cyberpunk. The story also contains elements of transhumanism, anarchism, and even hints about The Singularity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names
- nl 5y ago
  Hmm.. The first to use the concept of a "singularity" in the technological context was John von Neumann.[4] Stanislaw Ulam reports a discussion with von Neumann "centered on the accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue but also The concept and the term "singularity" were popularized by Vernor Vinge in his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity, in which he wrote that it would signal the end of the human era, as the new superintelligence would continue to upgrade itself and would advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate. both from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity (linked from the link you shared). I've never seen it attributed to von Neumann before, and it looks like Wikipeida has slowly increased the emphasis on it. In this earlier edit it says: > This quote has been several times taken out of context and attributed to von Neumann himself, likely due to von Neumann's widespread fame and influence. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technological_singularity&oldid=9707855#Early_conceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technological_sin... von Neumann wasn't credited until late 2004: See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technological_singularity&oldid=7660278#Early_conceptions_of_the_Singularity https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Technological_sin...

carapace 5y ago

(It's Rainbows End w/o the apostrophe.)

Sharlin 5y ago

Nitpick: It's Rainbows End, without an apostrophe.

int_19h 5y ago

I just wish Vinge's ancap politics weren't so blatantly pushed in the Peace War cycle. It gets especially in your face in the short story in between them.

sillyquiet 5y ago
I didn't find his politics, or any politics really, very out of place in the novels, they seemed (to me) a natural part of the story telling. But, full disclosure, I am a bit libertarian myself, politically so maybe I didn't notice as much or they weren't as grating to me. On the other hand, I find Terry Goodkind's novels completely unreadable, and the politic-pushing obnoxious, so I don't give libertarian politics a pass when it comes to out-of-place axe-grinding prominence.