4 ms·

The Diamond age was my favorite Stephenson novel, but I'd like to highlight a personal favorite Neal Stephenson premonition, the extent of which is not fully re

The Diamond age was my favorite Stephenson novel, but I'd like to highlight a personal favorite Neal Stephenson premonition, the extent of which is not fully realized, but seems likely. This one (circa 2019) is less ambitious, and less well-known: There are parts of Fall, or Dodge in Hell that describe a phenomenon called apes. These are bots, generally chatbots and similar. Commanded by state and non-state actor, they dominate the internet, and can be used to manipulate public opinion, or what people think they know in general. More generally, he discusses the creation of a post truth world, describing a brief period in history between the scientific revolution, and now, where people could agree on a cohesive world view. In the novel, the internet has now ended this; everyone is siloed into their own information bubbles, and can't agree on a common reality. Look up "MOAB" or "apes" in conjunction with this book for more information. I should note that these are some of the smaller ideas in that book...

jpm_sd 3y ago
The real-world parts of Fall were great, but the tedious simulation stuff ruined the book for me. As with all science fiction, his "predictions of the future" are actually sharp observations of current reality. He's not gazing into a crystal ball, he's just seeing the present from a different angle.
- fullspectrumdev 3y ago
  Agree. I enjoyed it significantly less than his other works for the same reason. It was an interesting exploration of some ideas, but the “in simulation” arcs tended to have an absurdly slow pace, which may have been deliberate attempt to help show the passage of time between the “real world” parts.
- FeloniousHam 3y ago
  I found the real-world parts a bore, and his re-creation of existence quite diverting. When I recommend the book, it's always with admonition to "skip the tedium, it goes on forever". Well, I did like "real world" parts that describe the practical basis for how the fantasy realm was manifest, but the life and times the present day characters was of no use to me. I didn't care a whit about the conspiracy theories, the post-US factions, any of that stuff.
- VikingCoder 3y ago
  After reading Fall, playing Minecraft Skyblock or Luckyblock feels kind of amazing...
- jhbadger 3y ago
  Exactly. It's like how younger people read Snow Crash and think it was prophetic, but that's because they don't know that multiplayer RPGs called MUDs existed when he wrote it in 1992.
jjk7 3y ago
I think the internet will eventually die for this reason... Am I reading an honest comment from a stranger or from a Neal Stephenson advertising bot? Eventually it will be just all bots, and very little desire for real humans to interact.
- flohofwoe 3y ago
  I guess we'll just move back into small, trusted - but isolated - online communities, like back in the BBS days, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's mainly social media which will be (or rather: already is) overrun by bots, but social media (or even the web) isn't "the internet".
  - drakenot 3y ago
    Neal Stephenson's Anathem (2008): > “Early in the Reticulum-thousands of years ago-it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downright misleading information,” Sammann said. > “Crap, you once called it,” I reminded him. > “Yes-a technical term. So crap filtering became important. Businesses were built around it. Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into the Reticulum. But it had to be good crap.” > “What is good crap?” Arsibalt asked in a politely incredulous tone. > “Well, bad crap would be an unformatted document consisting of random letters. Good crap would be a beautifully typeset, well-written document that contained a hundred correct, verifiable sentences and one that was subtly false. It’s a lot harder to generate good crap. At first they had to hire humans to churn it out. They mostly did it by taking legitimate documents and inserting errors-swapping one name for another, say. But it didn’t really take off until the military got interested.” > “As a tactic for planting misinformation in the enemy’s reticules, you mean,” Osa said. “This I know about. You are referring to the Artificial Inanity programs of the mid-First Millennium A.R.” > “Exactly!” Sammann said. “Artificial Inanity systems of enormous sophistication and power were built for exactly the purpose Fraa Osa has mentioned. In no time at all, the praxis leaked to the commercial sector and spread to the Rampant Orphan Botnet Ecologies. Never mind. The point is that there was a sort of Dark Age on the Reticulum that lasted until my Ita forerunners were able to bring matters in hand.”
kristjansson 3y ago
For an earlier iteration of the same concept, see 'bogons' in Anathem (2008 (!))
paulpauper 3y ago
I dunno. His books are so long that anyone can find something to infer as predictive or prescient. It's like confirmation bias. Does any sci fi writer who incorporates human-like intelligence robots into their novels predict GPT? I say not
- rtkwe 3y ago
  They're long but it's not like they're not just spewing random ideas out the whole length like a Nostradamus where you shoot enough shots you'll eventually get something that can be interpreted to be prescient.
throwuwu 3y ago
I take issue with the assertion that there was a period where all people could agree on a world view. Most of the 20th century was defined by sharp disagreement between world views and all of their constituent parts. Perhaps if you limit the scope to all citizens of a nation then the statement would be more truthful but there are large disagreements there as well.
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  One thing I liked about reading "The Three Body Problem" was the unique (to Westerners) worldview it portrayed, and the difficulties of academic science in China under the Mao regime - very different from the worldview in post WWII America.
rsync 3y ago
The “ameristan” portion of Fall is one of my favorite William Gibson novels.
anticodon 3y ago
> everyone is siloed into their own information bubbles, and can't agree on a common reality It has already happened. I was born in USSR and live in Russia, and when I hear or read anything about USSR or Russia in Western media, it makes my hair stand on end. But if I try to explain what it was really like or what it is like now, I only get insults in response: "Putin bot", "Kremlin shill", "as dumb as Trump's followers", etc. So I gave up and stop trying. But it's clear that there're several "versions" of the reality, some of them are very far from "real" reality. And the divide will become only deeper. I also notice that comments on social networks and youtube became so weaponized that I simply cannot read them and stopped trying. I actively avoid reading any comments on any website with only 3 or 4 exceptions (like HN).
- ukuina 3y ago
  Would like to hear your take on the discrepancies in perception, if you are willing to put yourself out there again.
  - anticodon 3y ago
    I no longer see the point. It is difficult to explain. After many internet and real life discussions I made a single conclusion: intensive propaganda creates an impenetrable partition in minds. And we live in times of the most intensive propaganda ever. You can't hide from it anywhere. If you open video about cats on YouTube, open comments section, you'll read something like: "Cute cats, but did you know that every morning Putin eats kitten for breakfast?" (I exaggerate, but only a little). Even when I read contemporary science fiction, there's always some piece of current propaganda like if it is obligatory in order to be published. It is difficult to gather and analyze facts and present them in easy to understand fashion. Some things are really difficult to explain, especially historical and cultural things. You waste lots of time and energy to research and to present facts in support of your point of view. But time is not limitless, I have work to do and life to live. Also, amount of facts is limitless. You can always fight one set of facts against another, with carefully constructed set of arguments you can prove almost anything. It's not math, where it's kind of possible to prove or debunk any theory without a doubt. Real life if more complex, and real life is not entirely rational or logical. Also, it's like fighting with windmills in Don Quixote. I know, we all know, that all governments finance paid commenters. E.g. several months ago there was a leak that Washington finance troll factories managed by Russian "opposition". First they tried to deny it, but then had to admit that it is true. And it was only one leak about one trolls factory. So here I am trying to write a few comments for free in my precious free time, while there're powerful organizations employing hundreds of paid commenters with salaries and KPI and clear guidelines on what to write. How can I fight alone against huge and well paid apparatus of propaganda and commenters employing millions of people to put everywhere version of truth contradicting to mine and to put me and my country in extremely bad light? It's a futile battle, and I give up on it.
k8svet 3y ago
I read this book about 5 years ago. I remember thinking, just like with global warming, "wow this is terrifying, glad I'll be dead by then". Oh if only. I think about MOAB nearly every single day. And I cherish every, single, day. Because horrors await us, very soon. Not sure how long ago you read it, but I'm just now remembering the interludes where they start to contrast society that has split around MOAB belief. Prescient indeed.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  The way things have gone so far really does make it hard to be optimistic about the future, particularly when it comes to the internet.
anon84873628 3y ago
I mean, yeah, but the "post truth world" was a thing sometime within the G.W. Bush administration, and Stephen Colbert coined the word "truthiness" in 2005, so calling it a "premonition" by Stephenson is a bit of a stretch. Not to mention social media manipulation by bots in the 2016 US presidential race...
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  Stephenson covered similar ideas as far back as Snow Crash, in 1992. The "burb-claves" and how everyone ultimately paid to live in their own socio-economic bubble, complete with ethics and housing. literal walled gardens and group-think bubbles. Stephenson expanded on that in Diamond Age in '96

jpm_sd 3y ago

The real-world parts of Fall were great, but the tedious simulation stuff ruined the book for me. As with all science fiction, his "predictions of the future" are actually sharp observations of current reality. He's not gazing into a crystal ball, he's just seeing the present from a different angle.

fullspectrumdev 3y ago
Agree. I enjoyed it significantly less than his other works for the same reason. It was an interesting exploration of some ideas, but the “in simulation” arcs tended to have an absurdly slow pace, which may have been deliberate attempt to help show the passage of time between the “real world” parts.
FeloniousHam 3y ago
I found the real-world parts a bore, and his re-creation of existence quite diverting. When I recommend the book, it's always with admonition to "skip the tedium, it goes on forever". Well, I did like "real world" parts that describe the practical basis for how the fantasy realm was manifest, but the life and times the present day characters was of no use to me. I didn't care a whit about the conspiracy theories, the post-US factions, any of that stuff.
VikingCoder 3y ago
After reading Fall, playing Minecraft Skyblock or Luckyblock feels kind of amazing...
jhbadger 3y ago
Exactly. It's like how younger people read Snow Crash and think it was prophetic, but that's because they don't know that multiplayer RPGs called MUDs existed when he wrote it in 1992.

jjk7 3y ago

I think the internet will eventually die for this reason... Am I reading an honest comment from a stranger or from a Neal Stephenson advertising bot? Eventually it will be just all bots, and very little desire for real humans to interact.

flohofwoe 3y ago
I guess we'll just move back into small, trusted - but isolated - online communities, like back in the BBS days, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's mainly social media which will be (or rather: already is) overrun by bots, but social media (or even the web) isn't "the internet".
- drakenot 3y ago
  Neal Stephenson's Anathem (2008): > “Early in the Reticulum-thousands of years ago-it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downright misleading information,” Sammann said. > “Crap, you once called it,” I reminded him. > “Yes-a technical term. So crap filtering became important. Businesses were built around it. Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into the Reticulum. But it had to be good crap.” > “What is good crap?” Arsibalt asked in a politely incredulous tone. > “Well, bad crap would be an unformatted document consisting of random letters. Good crap would be a beautifully typeset, well-written document that contained a hundred correct, verifiable sentences and one that was subtly false. It’s a lot harder to generate good crap. At first they had to hire humans to churn it out. They mostly did it by taking legitimate documents and inserting errors-swapping one name for another, say. But it didn’t really take off until the military got interested.” > “As a tactic for planting misinformation in the enemy’s reticules, you mean,” Osa said. “This I know about. You are referring to the Artificial Inanity programs of the mid-First Millennium A.R.” > “Exactly!” Sammann said. “Artificial Inanity systems of enormous sophistication and power were built for exactly the purpose Fraa Osa has mentioned. In no time at all, the praxis leaked to the commercial sector and spread to the Rampant Orphan Botnet Ecologies. Never mind. The point is that there was a sort of Dark Age on the Reticulum that lasted until my Ita forerunners were able to bring matters in hand.”

kristjansson 3y ago

For an earlier iteration of the same concept, see 'bogons' in Anathem (2008 (!))

paulpauper 3y ago

I dunno. His books are so long that anyone can find something to infer as predictive or prescient. It's like confirmation bias. Does any sci fi writer who incorporates human-like intelligence robots into their novels predict GPT? I say not

rtkwe 3y ago
They're long but it's not like they're not just spewing random ideas out the whole length like a Nostradamus where you shoot enough shots you'll eventually get something that can be interpreted to be prescient.

throwuwu 3y ago

I take issue with the assertion that there was a period where all people could agree on a world view. Most of the 20th century was defined by sharp disagreement between world views and all of their constituent parts. Perhaps if you limit the scope to all citizens of a nation then the statement would be more truthful but there are large disagreements there as well.

photochemsyn 3y ago
One thing I liked about reading "The Three Body Problem" was the unique (to Westerners) worldview it portrayed, and the difficulties of academic science in China under the Mao regime - very different from the worldview in post WWII America.

rsync 3y ago

The “ameristan” portion of Fall is one of my favorite William Gibson novels.

anticodon 3y ago

> everyone is siloed into their own information bubbles, and can't agree on a common reality It has already happened. I was born in USSR and live in Russia, and when I hear or read anything about USSR or Russia in Western media, it makes my hair stand on end. But if I try to explain what it was really like or what it is like now, I only get insults in response: "Putin bot", "Kremlin shill", "as dumb as Trump's followers", etc. So I gave up and stop trying. But it's clear that there're several "versions" of the reality, some of them are very far from "real" reality. And the divide will become only deeper. I also notice that comments on social networks and youtube became so weaponized that I simply cannot read them and stopped trying. I actively avoid reading any comments on any website with only 3 or 4 exceptions (like HN).

ukuina 3y ago
Would like to hear your take on the discrepancies in perception, if you are willing to put yourself out there again.
- anticodon 3y ago
  I no longer see the point. It is difficult to explain. After many internet and real life discussions I made a single conclusion: intensive propaganda creates an impenetrable partition in minds. And we live in times of the most intensive propaganda ever. You can't hide from it anywhere. If you open video about cats on YouTube, open comments section, you'll read something like: "Cute cats, but did you know that every morning Putin eats kitten for breakfast?" (I exaggerate, but only a little). Even when I read contemporary science fiction, there's always some piece of current propaganda like if it is obligatory in order to be published. It is difficult to gather and analyze facts and present them in easy to understand fashion. Some things are really difficult to explain, especially historical and cultural things. You waste lots of time and energy to research and to present facts in support of your point of view. But time is not limitless, I have work to do and life to live. Also, amount of facts is limitless. You can always fight one set of facts against another, with carefully constructed set of arguments you can prove almost anything. It's not math, where it's kind of possible to prove or debunk any theory without a doubt. Real life if more complex, and real life is not entirely rational or logical. Also, it's like fighting with windmills in Don Quixote. I know, we all know, that all governments finance paid commenters. E.g. several months ago there was a leak that Washington finance troll factories managed by Russian "opposition". First they tried to deny it, but then had to admit that it is true. And it was only one leak about one trolls factory. So here I am trying to write a few comments for free in my precious free time, while there're powerful organizations employing hundreds of paid commenters with salaries and KPI and clear guidelines on what to write. How can I fight alone against huge and well paid apparatus of propaganda and commenters employing millions of people to put everywhere version of truth contradicting to mine and to put me and my country in extremely bad light? It's a futile battle, and I give up on it.

k8svet 3y ago

I read this book about 5 years ago. I remember thinking, just like with global warming, "wow this is terrifying, glad I'll be dead by then". Oh if only. I think about MOAB nearly every single day. And I cherish every, single, day. Because horrors await us, very soon. Not sure how long ago you read it, but I'm just now remembering the interludes where they start to contrast society that has split around MOAB belief. Prescient indeed.

JohnFen 3y ago
The way things have gone so far really does make it hard to be optimistic about the future, particularly when it comes to the internet.

anon84873628 3y ago

I mean, yeah, but the "post truth world" was a thing sometime within the G.W. Bush administration, and Stephen Colbert coined the word "truthiness" in 2005, so calling it a "premonition" by Stephenson is a bit of a stretch. Not to mention social media manipulation by bots in the 2016 US presidential race...

red-iron-pine 3y ago
Stephenson covered similar ideas as far back as Snow Crash, in 1992. The "burb-claves" and how everyone ultimately paid to live in their own socio-economic bubble, complete with ethics and housing. literal walled gardens and group-think bubbles. Stephenson expanded on that in Diamond Age in '96