[kwlug-disc] have I ever told you guys that Facebook is evil?

[Andrew Sullivan Cant]

Doug,

> I think that Musk himself has an "aesthetic" (in Joscha's terminology) 
> that diverges from the mainstream. This aesthetic is derived from the 
> transhumanist science fiction of Iain Banks. I've read all the books. I 
> know Musk has read all the books because he borrows names and 
> terminology unique to those books in naming many of his projects. Those 
> books depict a utopian future where all cars are self driving (Tesla), 
> the human race is multiplanetary (Space X), and all humans have neural 
> implants that augment their cognition and connect them to the internet, 
> and these implants are called "neural lace" (Neuralink). Also, in Banks' 
> utopian society, there is almost no privacy, with an exception made for 
> private thoughts inside your own head. I think Musk himself places 
> little value on privacy. He clearly has no shame, and that's consistent 
> with not valuing privacy.

Oh, yeah. I had completely forgotten how much Bank's Culture stuff 
appears to shaped Musk's projects.

It is interesting, but at this point not surprising, that Musk is yet 
another person who says they LOVE some space 
communist/socialist/anarchist SF world...and then completely forget the 
social stuff.

Cause spaceships and AI and pew-pew, are cool and fun. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


I have been re-watching some Star Trek stuff, and sometimes I wonder if 
part of the problem is these show/books tell stories in the parts of the 
future societies which remain recognizable to us.

In Star Trek we watch Star Fleet, which seems like it might be the last
really hierarchical part of the Federation. When we see little bits of 
the Federation, it kind of seems more like a do what you want kind of place.

Star Fleet offices are also choosing to put themselves into more 
resource constrained situations. But everyone else in the Federation is 
supposed to basically have everything they need and more....which is 
weirder.


I think the Culture novels do something similar. In the majority of the 
Culture society everyone has more resources than they need, and it is 
implied that a lot of conflict is resolved by moving, either 
individually or whole space habitats. Again, this is pretty weird.

But the stories spends lots of time on 2 things which are more familiar.

1. We frequently follow agents of Special Circumstances (i.e., future
    space CIA) who go out exploring and messing with other cultures when
    the regular ways of resolving problems have not worked.

2. The Idiran War, which is a conflict with another similarly powered
    space civilization that has reach the point where the Idiran's and
    the Culture can not tolerate each others existence. But it is
    supposed to be one of the few(only) situations in the Culture's long
    history where that has happened.

Which seems pretty similar to Star Trek focusing on Star Fleet.


Well now I am thinking about the Culture novels. Time to go browser 
Wikipedia and maybe re-read some books. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series#Books_in_the_series

Andrew