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State of the me and a bit of commentary.
Jun. 7th, 2011 02:28 pmIt's been pointed out to me that I didn't say so much as a word on Twitter for days after announcing I was sick. I'm sorry to anyone who was worried unduly... I never like making "Yep, still sick." updates, as that feels... I don't, like I'm complaining or rooting for sympathy. I didn't expect to be down for as long as I did, and in fact I wasn't really conscious of how many days were passing since I spent them almost completely offline.
Also, I'm very conscious of the fact that I had an unrelated illness the week before WisCon, and so now I've got two weeks with very little to show for it in terms of writing and getting day-to-day/monthly stuff done. Guilt springs eternal.
In any event, I'm back now, and writing again and I'd like to say a little bit about the flash story I posted yesterday, "The Sweat of their Brows". It owes a considerable creative debt to Rhysling-nominated poet and law student![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
popelizbet and her writings and researchings on the subjects of artificial intelligence and civil rights... specifically, her paper Out of the Chinese Room, Into the Courtroom: Personhood, Rights, Duties and the Conscious Computer, presented at the Terasem Movement's Sixth Annual Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons, which is, in fact, a thing. Lizbet re-presented her paper in meatspace at WisCon 35, and in the course of discussions on it I had several seeds of ideas for stories that might end up as Fantasy In Miniature shorts or in the finished version of Game Theory. A lot of them had to do with unexpected ways in which artificial minds might hamper progress, or at least fail to devote all their superhuman potential solely to the cause of advancing humanity in ways we find meaningful. Those who read the Game Theory draft in my newsletter will perhaps recognize this theme.
Simply put, I find any of the typical fictional outcomes of astronomical increases in computing power--broadly, these would be relative stasis, apocalypse, and human immortality--to be terribly realistic. Just looking at the changes that increases in computer technology have wrought in my own lifetime is enough to convince me of this... the society I live in has been markedly changed by the internet, smart phones, and other advances in personal computing, but neither the dramatic end of the world nor a bright shiny utopia has been ushered in.
( The rest of this may spoil the story for those who haven't read it, so I'm putting it under a cut. )
So that's where that story came from. Today I'm going to finish and post the next chapter of Tales of MU. It's not going to be quite the same chapter that would have been written if I'd finished it the week I started it... at that point, I could see the way clearly to the point I wanted to bring it with some rather substantial rewrites that would make the whole thing a lot more conversational. Now... not so much. The chapter's been left as it is too long and it's somewhat ossified. Yesterday I tried to reshape it into what it would have been and spent hours accomplishing little. Today I've spent an hour so far moving forward instead of backwards and added 1,000 words. And so it goes.
Also, I'm very conscious of the fact that I had an unrelated illness the week before WisCon, and so now I've got two weeks with very little to show for it in terms of writing and getting day-to-day/monthly stuff done. Guilt springs eternal.
In any event, I'm back now, and writing again and I'd like to say a little bit about the flash story I posted yesterday, "The Sweat of their Brows". It owes a considerable creative debt to Rhysling-nominated poet and law student
popelizbet and her writings and researchings on the subjects of artificial intelligence and civil rights... specifically, her paper Out of the Chinese Room, Into the Courtroom: Personhood, Rights, Duties and the Conscious Computer, presented at the Terasem Movement's Sixth Annual Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons, which is, in fact, a thing. Lizbet re-presented her paper in meatspace at WisCon 35, and in the course of discussions on it I had several seeds of ideas for stories that might end up as Fantasy In Miniature shorts or in the finished version of Game Theory. A lot of them had to do with unexpected ways in which artificial minds might hamper progress, or at least fail to devote all their superhuman potential solely to the cause of advancing humanity in ways we find meaningful. Those who read the Game Theory draft in my newsletter will perhaps recognize this theme. Simply put, I find any of the typical fictional outcomes of astronomical increases in computing power--broadly, these would be relative stasis, apocalypse, and human immortality--to be terribly realistic. Just looking at the changes that increases in computer technology have wrought in my own lifetime is enough to convince me of this... the society I live in has been markedly changed by the internet, smart phones, and other advances in personal computing, but neither the dramatic end of the world nor a bright shiny utopia has been ushered in.
( The rest of this may spoil the story for those who haven't read it, so I'm putting it under a cut. )
So that's where that story came from. Today I'm going to finish and post the next chapter of Tales of MU. It's not going to be quite the same chapter that would have been written if I'd finished it the week I started it... at that point, I could see the way clearly to the point I wanted to bring it with some rather substantial rewrites that would make the whole thing a lot more conversational. Now... not so much. The chapter's been left as it is too long and it's somewhat ossified. Yesterday I tried to reshape it into what it would have been and spent hours accomplishing little. Today I've spent an hour so far moving forward instead of backwards and added 1,000 words. And so it goes.