4 ms·

That website has the worst design imaginable. It's a totally unreadable black text on a blackish space image. So, I'll react the the title. The real reason "t

by tivert 3y ago

That website has the worst design imaginable. It's a totally unreadable black text on a blackish space image. So, I'll react the the title. The real reason "the Culture Wins" is basically the storm trooper effect: they're the protagonists in fiction, so they're written to win regardless if it makes sense or not. I believe one of the books does hint that the eventually disappear. The culture novel about that is the one I really want to read.

ytoawwhra92 3y ago
> That website has the worst design imaginable. It's a totally unreadable black text on a blackish space image. It's a bug in their CSS. They've tried to set the background of the text container to white, but they included an alpha value which made the white completely transparent. So not an intentionally bad design.
Others 3y ago
I appreciate the fact that IMB is trying to present a optimistic view of the future. Not all sci-fi needs to be negative or dystopian, and his remains plausible despite its optimism. I think if you’d rather read about the downfall of the Culture, then you’ve somewhat profoundly missed the point of Ian’s writing.
- keiferski 3y ago
  I don't know how the world described in the article is utopian. If anything, it's dystopian, in the vein of Brave New World.
  - boxed 3y ago
    I have an ongoing argument with my wife where I proclaim Brave New World to be a utopia, not a dystopia. It's a society where the VAST majority of people are happy. Really truly happy. A society that is in ecological balance with nature. If Brave New World is a dystopia, what does that make the world we live in now? It has to be some kind of super-dystopia, because it's worse in every way you can possibly imagine.
    - keiferski 3y ago
      I don't think it's that complicated: because not everyone thinks "being happy" is the utmost peak of meaning or purpose. Many people desire challenges, difficulty, a grand narrative that comes with ups and downs.
      - KingMob 3y ago
        In the Culture, those are the people who join Contact/Special Circumstances, so they get what they want too.
      - boxed 3y ago
        And those people exist and are handled specifically in Brave New World. It's just that the system fucked up a bit and took a long time to find the protagonist of the book. But consider the world you and I live in where a vast majority of people who want challenges like this can never have them as they are stuck being dirt poor, or in criminality or something. It's gotten a lot better in the last 100 years, but it's no where close to BNW.
    - pharmakom 3y ago
      The book tackles this directly.
    - arethuza 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure that if the Culture discovered a world like that of Brave New World they'd work to shut that society down pretty quickly as they'd be appalled at the idea of creating underclasses by intentionally exposing embryos to poisons (alcohol?). The the society of Brave New World would fail as a utopia because of the "What would the Culture think?" test ;-)
      - boxed 3y ago
        I'm not saying it's the best possible utopia.
    - goatlover 3y ago
      Are they really truly happy? I got the impression they were superficially kept content by drugs, sex and social engineering. I recall strongly disliking their society.
  - varjag 3y ago
    It really isn't though, if you read the actual novels.
  - arethuza 3y ago
    Not much of a dystopia if you can leave at any point - and in fact be actively supported in leaving if that's your thing. The fact that the Culture seems to be inherently comfortable with people, ships and even chunks of society leaving or joining gives an indicator of how it really is "self consciously rational" as Banks put it.
    - keiferski 3y ago
      Maybe I'm lost here because I haven't read the books, but how does this not lead to a fundamental contradiction? The article says that the Culture intervenes in places that don't quite live up to their values or are otherwise problematic in some way. So if people leave the Culture and develop in ways that become unacceptable to the Culture and thus get interfered with again, how free are they to actually leave?
      - arethuza 3y ago
        The galaxy in the Culture novels is a big place full of many societies - a few at the same level of technological development as the Culture. So it wouldn't be that difficult to wander off somewhere and get lost and do your own thing. However, if you do go off and set up your own fascist dictatorship outside of the Culture there is also no protection should the Grey Area come hunting for you.
      - rsynnott 3y ago
        > The article says that the Culture intervenes in places that don't quite live up to their values or are otherwise problematic in some way. In practice, they mostly intervene against people with, like, slavery and death camps, not minor philosophical differences (or even pretty major ones; many civilisations run artificial afterlives of eternal torment for their people, and the Culture doesn't openly intervene against _that_). A number of breakaway ex-Culture cultures show up in the books, along with various Culture dissidents.
        tivert 3y ago
        > many civilisations run artificial afterlives of eternal torment for their people, and the Culture doesn't openly intervene against _that_ Key word: openly.
Animats 3y ago
> That website has the worst design imaginable. Firefox reader mode fixes that, and that site really needs it. Reviewers of the Culture novels tend to project their own political biases onto it. This writer quotes Marx a bit too much. There's some other review where someone was trying to read race and gender issues onto the Culture. They're missing the point. The Culture novels describe a stable society where the machines are in charge. That's been addressed many times in science fiction, but not, usually, well. Asimov's later robot novels, where it become clear that the robots are manipulating humanity, do address it. That's about as good as it gets. Frank Herbert's Dune has the "Butlerian Jihad", but Herbert's idea of robot social organization is just humans in robot costume. Jack Williamson's "Humanoids" stories, about benign but overprotective robots, reflect someone getting the goal system slightly wrong. In more popular culture, The Forbin Project (1970), a movie which seems to be enjoying a renaissance, does address the issue. The machines which control the nuclear weapons of both sides get into contact, and agree to take over to keep humanity from destroying itself. They come up with a reasonably sensible plan for running things, which is fleshed out more in the books. The Star [Trek|Wars|Gate] universe never really addresses this directly, since it would undermine the show's stars. Nor does the Marvel universe; AIs appear, but are not in charge. There's Marshall Brain's "Manna", of course, the dystopian version of this. The Culture novels show a stable society that's run by intelligent machines yet is flexible, adaptable, can deal with crises, and is pleasant for humans to live in. They don't show how to get there. Which is a problem.
globular-toast 3y ago
Did they fix the design? It looks fine to me. I'd even say it looks good. (Firefox GNU/Linux). I wonder how you're able to enjoy science fiction at all given that the answer to every story is "because it's fiction and it was written that way".
bb101 3y ago
Works perfectly on Mullvad Browser, Firefox and Safari. Remember: friends don't let friends use Chrome.

by tivert 3y ago

ytoawwhra92 3y ago

> That website has the worst design imaginable. It's a totally unreadable black text on a blackish space image. It's a bug in their CSS. They've tried to set the background of the text container to white, but they included an alpha value which made the white completely transparent. So not an intentionally bad design.

Others 3y ago

I appreciate the fact that IMB is trying to present a optimistic view of the future. Not all sci-fi needs to be negative or dystopian, and his remains plausible despite its optimism. I think if you’d rather read about the downfall of the Culture, then you’ve somewhat profoundly missed the point of Ian’s writing.

keiferski 3y ago
I don't know how the world described in the article is utopian. If anything, it's dystopian, in the vein of Brave New World.
- boxed 3y ago
  I have an ongoing argument with my wife where I proclaim Brave New World to be a utopia, not a dystopia. It's a society where the VAST majority of people are happy. Really truly happy. A society that is in ecological balance with nature. If Brave New World is a dystopia, what does that make the world we live in now? It has to be some kind of super-dystopia, because it's worse in every way you can possibly imagine.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    I don't think it's that complicated: because not everyone thinks "being happy" is the utmost peak of meaning or purpose. Many people desire challenges, difficulty, a grand narrative that comes with ups and downs.
    - KingMob 3y ago
      In the Culture, those are the people who join Contact/Special Circumstances, so they get what they want too.
    - boxed 3y ago
      And those people exist and are handled specifically in Brave New World. It's just that the system fucked up a bit and took a long time to find the protagonist of the book. But consider the world you and I live in where a vast majority of people who want challenges like this can never have them as they are stuck being dirt poor, or in criminality or something. It's gotten a lot better in the last 100 years, but it's no where close to BNW.
  - pharmakom 3y ago
    The book tackles this directly.
  - arethuza 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure that if the Culture discovered a world like that of Brave New World they'd work to shut that society down pretty quickly as they'd be appalled at the idea of creating underclasses by intentionally exposing embryos to poisons (alcohol?). The the society of Brave New World would fail as a utopia because of the "What would the Culture think?" test ;-)
    - boxed 3y ago
      I'm not saying it's the best possible utopia.
  - goatlover 3y ago
    Are they really truly happy? I got the impression they were superficially kept content by drugs, sex and social engineering. I recall strongly disliking their society.
- varjag 3y ago
  It really isn't though, if you read the actual novels.
- arethuza 3y ago
  Not much of a dystopia if you can leave at any point - and in fact be actively supported in leaving if that's your thing. The fact that the Culture seems to be inherently comfortable with people, ships and even chunks of society leaving or joining gives an indicator of how it really is "self consciously rational" as Banks put it.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    Maybe I'm lost here because I haven't read the books, but how does this not lead to a fundamental contradiction? The article says that the Culture intervenes in places that don't quite live up to their values or are otherwise problematic in some way. So if people leave the Culture and develop in ways that become unacceptable to the Culture and thus get interfered with again, how free are they to actually leave?
    - arethuza 3y ago
      The galaxy in the Culture novels is a big place full of many societies - a few at the same level of technological development as the Culture. So it wouldn't be that difficult to wander off somewhere and get lost and do your own thing. However, if you do go off and set up your own fascist dictatorship outside of the Culture there is also no protection should the Grey Area come hunting for you.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      > The article says that the Culture intervenes in places that don't quite live up to their values or are otherwise problematic in some way. In practice, they mostly intervene against people with, like, slavery and death camps, not minor philosophical differences (or even pretty major ones; many civilisations run artificial afterlives of eternal torment for their people, and the Culture doesn't openly intervene against _that_). A number of breakaway ex-Culture cultures show up in the books, along with various Culture dissidents.
      - tivert 3y ago
        > many civilisations run artificial afterlives of eternal torment for their people, and the Culture doesn't openly intervene against _that_ Key word: openly.

Animats 3y ago

> That website has the worst design imaginable. Firefox reader mode fixes that, and that site really needs it. Reviewers of the Culture novels tend to project their own political biases onto it. This writer quotes Marx a bit too much. There's some other review where someone was trying to read race and gender issues onto the Culture. They're missing the point. The Culture novels describe a stable society where the machines are in charge. That's been addressed many times in science fiction, but not, usually, well. Asimov's later robot novels, where it become clear that the robots are manipulating humanity, do address it. That's about as good as it gets. Frank Herbert's Dune has the "Butlerian Jihad", but Herbert's idea of robot social organization is just humans in robot costume. Jack Williamson's "Humanoids" stories, about benign but overprotective robots, reflect someone getting the goal system slightly wrong. In more popular culture, The Forbin Project (1970), a movie which seems to be enjoying a renaissance, does address the issue. The machines which control the nuclear weapons of both sides get into contact, and agree to take over to keep humanity from destroying itself. They come up with a reasonably sensible plan for running things, which is fleshed out more in the books. The Star [Trek|Wars|Gate] universe never really addresses this directly, since it would undermine the show's stars. Nor does the Marvel universe; AIs appear, but are not in charge. There's Marshall Brain's "Manna", of course, the dystopian version of this. The Culture novels show a stable society that's run by intelligent machines yet is flexible, adaptable, can deal with crises, and is pleasant for humans to live in. They don't show how to get there. Which is a problem.

globular-toast 3y ago

Did they fix the design? It looks fine to me. I'd even say it looks good. (Firefox GNU/Linux). I wonder how you're able to enjoy science fiction at all given that the answer to every story is "because it's fiction and it was written that way".

bb101 3y ago

Works perfectly on Mullvad Browser, Firefox and Safari. Remember: friends don't let friends use Chrome.