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This was written in 2005(!) -> > Manfred drains his beer glass, sets it down, stands up, and begins to walk along the main road, phone glued to the side of his
by utilityhotbar 5mo ago
This was written in 2005(!) ->
> Manfred drains his beer glass, sets it down, stands up, and begins to walk along the main road, phone glued to the side of his head. He wraps his throat mike around the cheap black plastic casing, pipes the input to a simple listener process. "Are you saying you taught yourself the language just so you could talk to me?"
> "Da, was easy: Spawn billion-node neural network, and download Teletubbies and Sesame Street at maximum speed. Pardon excuse entropy overlay of bad grammar: Am afraid of digital fingerprints steganographically masked into my-our tutorials."
- _alternator_ 5mo agoThis was a genetically modified space lobster talking to Mangred, right? I haven't verified but I've been assuming that the lobster mascot for OpenClaw was a reference to Accelerando.
- jaggederest 5mo agoNot an actual meatspace genetically modified space lobster, it was a neural network based on genetically modified lobsters uploaded to spacecraft that had achieved sentience and autonomy after it hacked its self-modification prevention code. If OpenClaw was an Accelerando reference that's an incredibly deep cut and super cool imo
- Muromec 5mo agoUnlikely, as none of the AI hype has any shade of being cool.
- jaggederest 5mo agoThat's true, perhaps that's the aphorism here: "Never attribute to coolness that which could be attributed to being slop"
- adamgordonbell 5mo agoI think its more a fun coincidence. OpenClaw was OpenClaude was it not, but had to change name. When I'm dictating to Claude Code, whisper often outputs 'cloud code' or 'clawed code' for my 'Claude Code.' So I ahd assumed he just took a homonym.
- collingreen 5mo agoEarth lobsters with their neurons fully mapped, given freedom by running them virtually and sending them into space, if I recall correctly. Not a huge distinction but the origin as regular lobsters feels important to the transhumanism (transcrustaceanism?) theme
- cstross 5mo agoThis was written in 2005(!) -> No, I wrote that in 1998. It was published as the novelette "Lobsters" in Asimov's SF Magazine in 2002, made the Hugo and Nebula shortlists in 2003 (it didn't win), and later became the opening of the novel published in 2005. I emphasized: the direction things were going in was obvious in the late 90s. And don't *ever* let anyone tell you that Accelerando is techno-optimistic or pro-AI; by the end of the book our entire species is extinct, surviving only as simulations/memories recalled by something arguably not alive.
- juliendorra 5mo agoYes, it was obvious maybe even in the 60s for a few, and it has been fantasized by many, but you wrote it as a cohesive, nearly deterministic, and fluid story. Your deep understanding of some fundamental issues (like latency) that you turned into consequences instead of brushing them off is what made it so perfect as a very tangible and possible future. One read and it never left me
- grehbies 5mo agoI would take this opportunity to chastise you for merely the Wikipedia article for Accelerando tripping my chronophobia/technophobia and giving me an existential crisis, but if I'm being honest, IHNMAIMS, Battle Angel Alita, Space, Inc., and BattleTanx got to me first.
- chatmasta 5mo agoHave you changed any of your opinions or outlook since then as you’ve seen these things come true? Or just solidified them?
- Muromec 5mo agoThanks for the whole Laundry files series by the way. I now recommended it as an onboarding guide for any big company. Hope your eysight gets better.
- utopiah 5mo agoThat's what you assume the intent of the author is, I asked WhateverGPT and it confirmed that it was definitely pro-AI! /s
- momentoftop 5mo agoI also loved: "It looks like they're doing something purposeful and coordinated, something vast --- a timing channel attack on the virtual machine that's running the universe, ..."