4 ms·

I like this book and I’m never quite sure how some of the terms were Doctorow capturing what’s going on and writing it down vs inventing it. I think how whuffie

I like this book and I’m never quite sure how some of the terms were Doctorow capturing what’s going on and writing it down vs inventing it. I think how whuffie was described here seems like something that will really exist and I don’t know if there were any sites displaying cumulative karma for people. It was at least the first time I read it. Also, I think the “comm” described in Eastern Standard Tribe is the first time a smartphone was practically described with functions we had later in the iPhone (payment, maps, pervasive information, camera, image and video sharing). I wondered if phone designers ever drew inspiration from Doctorow’s specific books.

jes5199 3y ago
Eastern Standard Tribe is a weird one because its predictions turned out to be rather short-term, half of the ideas seem obvious now and half seem foolish
com2kid 3y ago
> I think how whuffie was described here seems like something that will really exist and I don’t know if there were any sites displaying cumulative karma for people. The book was written when slashdot.org was really big, it basically invented the "Karma" system. There was this idea of user generated and curated content being a bright happy new future, and DAOITMK basically shot that idea dead by showing all the faults such a system would have. Of course subsequent sites (re: reddit) have exhibited all of those flaws. HN stays reasonable because of the mods, but even so the culture is a lot different here than it was 10 years ago. When I first created an account here short comments almost always got downvoted, posters who didn't have anything substantial learned to stay quiet. (The downside of that culture is people learned to type intelligent sounding long form fluff!)
stoolpigeon 3y ago
"I don’t know if there were any sites displaying cumulative karma for people." Slashdot did for a long time - though there were caps on it. I used to see if I could get it to the top limit, down to the bottom limit and back to the top in a single day. It wasn't really all that difficult.
- prepend 3y ago
  Did slashdot let you see that stoolpigeon has 776 karma or whatever over the whole profile. I just remember ranking comments within a thread. And kuro5hin had particular flavors and you could sort in thread but I don’t think you could see if particular flavors summed for a particular person.
tetris11 3y ago
I find Whuffie as a concept pretty interesting, though not that different from regular wealth. For example, being the daughter of prominent Imagineers did hold a lot of sway in their world, despite the daughter herself not being particularly remarkable. What I mean to say is, trust-fund kids will still be alive and well in some form in a post dollar world.
- keepamovin 3y ago
  Maybe I'm extending your sentiment-vector too far in its direction (or maybe mistaking its direction entirely!), but are you at the: "So no matter what kind of future we have, there's still no point in trying, because in the end it's not about what you choose, it's about what's given to you?"-Level or a less extreme version of that-Level...?
  - tetris11 3y ago
    The latter, as anything is better than what we have now; a semi-meritocracy for STEM and maybe a handful of other professions. Whuffie seems like it would open up that definition to a wide range of careers and interests (artists for example), but would still suffer from some of the nepotism after the initial uptake of the value system. I'm also wondering how one could redistribute Whuffie in a charitable kind of way
    - keepamovin 3y ago
      I guess you can’t change human weakness, or preference with clever technology. I don’t think whuffie automatically make things more meritocratic. Maybe it would just go in the other direction where things would be more about what people like socially…so popularity. So if anything it’ll be more political and cliquey. Regarding your “nepotism”, I think it would just reflect human nature in the sense that even now children of respected parents —say, the child of a respected physicist—is afforded a sort of social standing and goodwill, and kind appraisal, because of how people appreciate their parents. But if the child is bad then that won’t be extended and it won’t save them. Similarly, if the child acts in a way that people see as against the good legacy of their parents, it wouldn’t save them. I don’t think there’s anything wrong looking kindly at the children of people you like. But I don’t think that’s really the kind of nepotism that you’re against, is it? I don’t know tho. I know there’s other kinds of nepotism based on supposed influence or whatever, which I think is more what you’re talking about here, but I think they may be may be less under that reputation system. The example you cite of the guy’s girlfriend (I think)—a child of prominent Imagineers-I imagine her whuffie accrued simply because she wasn’t all bad and people respected her parents. It wasn’t the pernicious kind that I think you’re so against. So perhaps there’s a distinction you’re interested in considering more then. Anyway, those collectively form part of what are just the negative side. Which I think would be less commanding and influential than the positive side. I definitely think there is a positive side of whuffie where if you’re doing good work, which people respect, that isn’t in the current system necessarily remunerative—like in the story, the guy is earning lots of whuffie from being a missionary and helping people out— then you’ll always have more than enough. Where is in the current system you wouldn’t. And I think that positive benefit far outweighs any amplification of already pre-existing negative human traits. But of course I haven’t yet lived long enough in this particular version of the future so I could be wrong. Maybe it will turn out to be disaster or maybe we’ll all end up hating it. But I think it’ll be fun to try, don’t you? as long as it’s not administered by some centrally controlled government or state, where it could be tied to how compliant you are with not spouting “dangerous misinformation” or whatever the heresy of the day is deemed. Haha
tialaramex 3y ago
> I wondered if phone designers ever drew inspiration from Doctorow’s specific books. I'm sure at least somebody was thinking about that because Doctorow's books are popular, but all that specifically happened is vendors discovered if you tell people that the handheld computer you're selling them is a "phone" they'll buy that, and then of course they actually wanted a handheld computer, so they'll keep buying them even as actually they now realise they don't want to make telephone calls. Both Android Inc. and the Apple secret project to develop their smartphone pre-date Doctorow's novel. Which doesn't mean he knew about them, but it means he couldn't have inspired these efforts. The handheld computers aren't specifically doing those things, they can just do whatever, because they're a general purpose computer, and the features you listed are among the popular things to use that for. I guess maybe they needn't have happened to have cameras, but given how cheap that is to do it's not a big surprise. The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from Diamond Age is maybe more directly inspirational, various technologies are clearly inspired by the Primer which substantially pre-dates them because it's from a time (the mid-1990s) where many people don't have Internet access.
- kbutler 3y ago
  > vendors discovered if you tell people that the handheld computer you're selling them is a "phone" they'll buy that, and then of course they actually wanted a handheld computer, so they'll keep buying them even as actually they now realise they don't want to make telephone calls So much this. And we expected tablets to become more popular, but instead phones grew to the max screen size that still allows pocketability.
- themadturk 3y ago
  William Gibson has often said the biggest miss he made with Neuromancer was not foreseeing the cell phone. Doctorow surely knew that, and was determined to not make the same mistake. (Plus, of course, Palm devices and Blackberries were around, it wasn't that big a leap to imagine the modern smartphone.)

jes5199 3y ago

Eastern Standard Tribe is a weird one because its predictions turned out to be rather short-term, half of the ideas seem obvious now and half seem foolish

com2kid 3y ago

> I think how whuffie was described here seems like something that will really exist and I don’t know if there were any sites displaying cumulative karma for people. The book was written when slashdot.org was really big, it basically invented the "Karma" system. There was this idea of user generated and curated content being a bright happy new future, and DAOITMK basically shot that idea dead by showing all the faults such a system would have. Of course subsequent sites (re: reddit) have exhibited all of those flaws. HN stays reasonable because of the mods, but even so the culture is a lot different here than it was 10 years ago. When I first created an account here short comments almost always got downvoted, posters who didn't have anything substantial learned to stay quiet. (The downside of that culture is people learned to type intelligent sounding long form fluff!)

stoolpigeon 3y ago

"I don’t know if there were any sites displaying cumulative karma for people." Slashdot did for a long time - though there were caps on it. I used to see if I could get it to the top limit, down to the bottom limit and back to the top in a single day. It wasn't really all that difficult.

prepend 3y ago
Did slashdot let you see that stoolpigeon has 776 karma or whatever over the whole profile. I just remember ranking comments within a thread. And kuro5hin had particular flavors and you could sort in thread but I don’t think you could see if particular flavors summed for a particular person.

tetris11 3y ago

I find Whuffie as a concept pretty interesting, though not that different from regular wealth. For example, being the daughter of prominent Imagineers did hold a lot of sway in their world, despite the daughter herself not being particularly remarkable. What I mean to say is, trust-fund kids will still be alive and well in some form in a post dollar world.

keepamovin 3y ago
Maybe I'm extending your sentiment-vector too far in its direction (or maybe mistaking its direction entirely!), but are you at the: "So no matter what kind of future we have, there's still no point in trying, because in the end it's not about what you choose, it's about what's given to you?"-Level or a less extreme version of that-Level...?
- tetris11 3y ago
  The latter, as anything is better than what we have now; a semi-meritocracy for STEM and maybe a handful of other professions. Whuffie seems like it would open up that definition to a wide range of careers and interests (artists for example), but would still suffer from some of the nepotism after the initial uptake of the value system. I'm also wondering how one could redistribute Whuffie in a charitable kind of way
  - keepamovin 3y ago
    I guess you can’t change human weakness, or preference with clever technology. I don’t think whuffie automatically make things more meritocratic. Maybe it would just go in the other direction where things would be more about what people like socially…so popularity. So if anything it’ll be more political and cliquey. Regarding your “nepotism”, I think it would just reflect human nature in the sense that even now children of respected parents —say, the child of a respected physicist—is afforded a sort of social standing and goodwill, and kind appraisal, because of how people appreciate their parents. But if the child is bad then that won’t be extended and it won’t save them. Similarly, if the child acts in a way that people see as against the good legacy of their parents, it wouldn’t save them. I don’t think there’s anything wrong looking kindly at the children of people you like. But I don’t think that’s really the kind of nepotism that you’re against, is it? I don’t know tho. I know there’s other kinds of nepotism based on supposed influence or whatever, which I think is more what you’re talking about here, but I think they may be may be less under that reputation system. The example you cite of the guy’s girlfriend (I think)—a child of prominent Imagineers-I imagine her whuffie accrued simply because she wasn’t all bad and people respected her parents. It wasn’t the pernicious kind that I think you’re so against. So perhaps there’s a distinction you’re interested in considering more then. Anyway, those collectively form part of what are just the negative side. Which I think would be less commanding and influential than the positive side. I definitely think there is a positive side of whuffie where if you’re doing good work, which people respect, that isn’t in the current system necessarily remunerative—like in the story, the guy is earning lots of whuffie from being a missionary and helping people out— then you’ll always have more than enough. Where is in the current system you wouldn’t. And I think that positive benefit far outweighs any amplification of already pre-existing negative human traits. But of course I haven’t yet lived long enough in this particular version of the future so I could be wrong. Maybe it will turn out to be disaster or maybe we’ll all end up hating it. But I think it’ll be fun to try, don’t you? as long as it’s not administered by some centrally controlled government or state, where it could be tied to how compliant you are with not spouting “dangerous misinformation” or whatever the heresy of the day is deemed. Haha

tialaramex 3y ago

> I wondered if phone designers ever drew inspiration from Doctorow’s specific books. I'm sure at least somebody was thinking about that because Doctorow's books are popular, but all that specifically happened is vendors discovered if you tell people that the handheld computer you're selling them is a "phone" they'll buy that, and then of course they actually wanted a handheld computer, so they'll keep buying them even as actually they now realise they don't want to make telephone calls. Both Android Inc. and the Apple secret project to develop their smartphone pre-date Doctorow's novel. Which doesn't mean he knew about them, but it means he couldn't have inspired these efforts. The handheld computers aren't specifically doing those things, they can just do whatever, because they're a general purpose computer, and the features you listed are among the popular things to use that for. I guess maybe they needn't have happened to have cameras, but given how cheap that is to do it's not a big surprise. The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from Diamond Age is maybe more directly inspirational, various technologies are clearly inspired by the Primer which substantially pre-dates them because it's from a time (the mid-1990s) where many people don't have Internet access.

kbutler 3y ago
> vendors discovered if you tell people that the handheld computer you're selling them is a "phone" they'll buy that, and then of course they actually wanted a handheld computer, so they'll keep buying them even as actually they now realise they don't want to make telephone calls So much this. And we expected tablets to become more popular, but instead phones grew to the max screen size that still allows pocketability.
themadturk 3y ago
William Gibson has often said the biggest miss he made with Neuromancer was not foreseeing the cell phone. Doctorow surely knew that, and was determined to not make the same mistake. (Plus, of course, Palm devices and Blackberries were around, it wasn't that big a leap to imagine the modern smartphone.)