Accelerando
I’ve been playing with a review of this book for a couple of weeks now. It isn’t easy to summarize my thoughts about this, and I’m not even sure I’m going to be able to do it right, even now.
This was a Big Book.
Stross bleeds more ideas on each page than most writers can cram into a career. More than once I had to stop and mull over what was essentially a throw-away concept, inspecting it for the deep ramifications it may have on humanity of the future.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Accelerando covers three generations of a family as they witness a technological revolution known as the Singularity. This isn’t a new concept in the Sci-Fi world, as you can see by the linked article. For those too busy to click over and read, the short version says that human progress will eventually hit such rapid rates of change that our future can no longer be meaningfully predicted by what we know today. Tomorrow will be completely incomprehensible in the context of today.
I love the future. I am possessed with the dream of what comes next. I desire to live as long as humanly possible, to witness where things go and what we learn. I’m a data junky in a data-rich world.
But Stross’s vision of the Singularity scared the hell out of me.
This has shaken my foundational belief in so many things, and the expected steady-state primacy of capitalism and the capacity for man to continue to be the best tool in the box for solving problems.
The first part of the novel covers a guy living in the near future. He’s plugged in 24/7 through a wearable computer and advanced networks, perptually unwired and awash in a data-rich sea. He spends his time inventing and patenting ideas, and then giving them away to various foundations dedicated to the free use of information. It’s all very ‘open source, anti-ownership’, something I’m quite suspicious of in general. Our man is forced to think in terms of daily market cycles, cramming to stay abreast of technological developments by the hour. Even his sleep time is grudgingly conceeded as the world rushes by during that down time.
We see glimpses of automated legal processes, where thousands of shell corporations pass ownership of assets around by the microsecond, spamming the legal system with automated filings and staying ahead of the still inefficient beauracracy of national governments trying to collect taxes. We see the beginning of the legal dispute about uploaded intelligence. Who owns the data file that might one day be good enough to simulate (or actually capture) a persons essence? Who has the right to copy it? What is the status of a copy? How will death by defined in that future? And we begin to see the death of the economy we’ve known for all of human existence.
Value is based on scarcity. Capitalists understand this. Anything that is wanted and rare is naturally valuable, and this is what drives economic activity. Everything is built on that idea. This is why the IP world is so difficult – once an idea exists, the hard work is done, but people aren’t willing to pay the market value of a great idea when that idea can be passed around for zero cost. Imagine a world where prevalent nanotechnology actually does eradicate the problem of scaricity for most tangible goods. A high end PC can be whipped up from a pile of sludge (given the right elements), or a house can be constructed from a larger pile of sludge, all without significant effort. What happens to the economy when the things we all consume no longer have to be produced by humans? What do those humans do? Do they NEED to do anything when everything costs practically nothing? Imagine a situation where absolute wealth increases for everyone, while the need to work vanishes. Some would say that is good (and we all certainly would welcome that situation in our personal lives), but applied to an entire society? What becomes valuable?
Some would say ideas.
But then we enter the next generation of the book, when things are moving so fast, unaugmented humans have no hope of keeping up. The Artificial Intelligences, in various forms, are well beyond us, and effective humans must be in a symbiotic relationship with augmentation. Self aware investment vehicles make their own decisions. Corporations are ‘alive’ and reacting faster than their CEO can follow. The very essence of the economy has changed to a complex (yet optimized) exchange of things, ideas, credits or whatever that is well beyond the average human’s understanding. Ideas are no longer the domain of man.
And so it goes.
The uploaded, augmented AI/Humans, the post-humans, continue to accelerate, devouring ‘dumb matter’ and constructing more and more processing power. Economy 2.0 transcends basic human capabilities, and those that aren’t interested in joining this Brave New World are taking up valuable room and matter. As the post-humans suck up every available particle of matter and continue to weave their processing units, they begin to cast a jealous eye on that remaining dumb matter supporting the standard humans. In the end, even the Amish have no where to go.
The relationship between denizens of the Singularity and us are akin to a man and an ant. Everything that we hold valuable, everything that we believe to be part of the human experience, simply ceases to mean anything. The world you think you might comprehend in a couple of hundred years is about as relevant as the Cro-Magnon’s dream of Manhattan in 2006.
And it scares me.
I leave this book sounding like a Ludditte, ready to smash the infernal machine and return to the horse and plow. Well, not really…but it is interesting to find myself, for the first time in my life, questioning my faith in technologiy’s ability to enhance and improve humanity. Would I want to live in the world portrayed here? Would I want to live in a world that could very well come to be? The ideas in this book are not completely far-fetched. The issues Stross has so masterfully introduced are on the horizon, at least those introduced in the first part of the novel (and believe me – those ideas are quite sufficient to upset everything we count upon in our present lifestyle).
This book is worthy of hours of debate.
I still can’t isolate where I stand on the Singularity – is it welcome or should it be shunned. I can’t extract my own position, and for me this is quite unique. It will be some time before I figure out what I really think.
How often does a book accomplish that?
Filed under: Reviews (Books and Movies)
It takes only a brief look at mankind’s history to see that we have always found tools to offload the mundane or difficult tasks. We when it isn’t enjoyable, we call it work. If it is work, we don’t want to do it. We find more enjoyment in the creative activity of building a tool to do our job than in doing the job itself. Almost any software developer will tell you its better to spend two hours writing the tool to do a mundane task than it is to take the one hour and just do it.
We enjoy creativity. It doesn’t seem to matter that if you are a left-brain or right-brain thinker—assuming such categorizations exist. Creating is what we do. It’s what we love. It’s what we enjoy.
I’d go so far as to say that creativity and the ability to admire it are what separate us from true animals. Heroism—the denying of your basic instincts for a greater cause—seems to be another possible difference. But, animals can be trained to run into fire. Some reports say they have done it without training. Stories of animal heroes abound. Years ago, I thought using tools separated us from animals. Then, I watched a documentary in which a bird beat a stick against a log to lure prey. Other animals use tools as well. Using tools does not separate us, but creating tools does. Creating useless art also does. There aren’t very many animals who can admire creativity. A dog may make a nice pile in the yard, but he won’t turn around and say, “Damn, I’m good.”
Ultimately, I think we get the ability to admire creativity from God. When God created our habitat, he looked at it and said, “It’s good.” Perhaps originally, all we could do is recognize creativity. Perhaps in eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil Adam sort of stole creativity as well. But that’s a theological discussion. We have creativity. We enjoy creativity. Will we ever offload that? In don’t think so.
I’ve not read Accelerando. From your review, it presents a world where technology trumps man’s ability to keep up. Either from your review or from some of our conversations, I gathered that the essence of your fear is in discovering that at the end of it all, there is nothing to do. I believe either our creativity or our Creator will solve that. Which one does, probably depends on where you place your faith.
Our history is also full of people who fear the loss of control to technology. They fear that somehow, man will lose something of himself in the development of new tools. My history professor once said that Plato despised paper. With it, man can write things down and figure things out. He no longer needs to use his memory. I think the professor was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the spirit is true. When we were kids, calculators were going to ruin our ability to think. Whether or not they have is probably in question. But the fact remains that they have become an accepted part of our culture. They are augmentations. They free us from the mundane task of calculating so that we can pursue more interesting things.
Our current society has created a world where the vast majority of people do mundane things that they don’t enjoy. We do it because we need cash to live. We augment ourselves with chemicals such as, Caffeine, SSRIs, and Provigil. These augmentations help us bear a life that we, by and large, don’t enjoy. Wouldn’t it be a great thing to be able to offload the mundane task of earning an income so we could pursue the more enjoyable task of writing, building, painting, singing, playing, or any number of more creative and exhilarating tasks? When we develop that tool, it will be wonderful.
And, if someday, the time comes that we can and do offload the task of exploring a relationship by spawning simulacra, it will be because we have a stronger desire to do something else. It is not that technology has stripped us of the last vestige of humanity. It is that humanity has discovered something so unimaginably wonderful that we can no longer afford the time to spend getting to know our friends. And, like the throwbacks of today, we will have the option to spend that time anyway. That is, until we no longer want it.
This is the problem with my review. While I appreciate (and agree) with a lot of your response, the fears expressed in Accelerando go even deeper than a Ludditte fear of obsolecence. I’m not able to give the books premise a fair airing here without it being read by all. It isn’t just finding you have nothing to do with all of this wonderful time, it is finding out that your very existence is utterly useless (and a nihlist wouldn’t blink an eye at what I just typed, so the statement lacks power).
It is more than that. Your logic about our past abilities to augment ourselves and offload mundane work are reasonable, but in the world of the Singularity, they no longer apply. That is the point of the Singularity. Our linear, or even logarithmic, application of labor saving, life improving technology has as much bearing on tomorrow as a flint knife has on a plasma torch. Certainly you can trace from one to the other, but to look ahead and see that progression before it happens is literally impossible. The warm assurance that we’ll be fine falls a little flat when you look at it that deeply.
What’s the big deal? Tools and better tools. I know it sounds like nothing. I advocating the same thing. There wasn’t a tech I feared (and I probably still would support about anything tech related that came along), but this book shook me, and I don’t think I can communicate that feeling without offering the book to be read.
The splitting off of persona thing – let me amplify on that, since we talked about it but readers here haven’t been exposed.
Imagine living as an upload based on silicon (or whatever). You meet a woman at a party. You each spin off a cascade of copies, existing in an accelerated reference frame. Those copies go off, get married, and live a tremendous number of simulated, varied lives together. They have kids, or not. They fight, or not. They divorce, or not. About every major decision is played in a matrix of possibilities, all residing inside an incredibly accurate, indistinguishable copies. Then, before you finish your cocktail, those experiences are merged back into your primary ‘memory’ and those copies are reabsorbed. You’ve just had every possible meaningful experience with a woman you had just met.
What’s left?
In such a world, could anyone ever be a stranger? Is there anything about anyone that you couldn’t know?
And I think that might be the point of my fear. My natural yearning toward experience and perpetual living has been taken to a logical conclusion – near omniscience…
And I find myself recoiling from the very idea.
Being in a Godlike state, having near Godlike command over information and matter, seems to be a rather dull condition. I wouldn’t have expected that.
But of course – it is science fiction and I shouldn’t worry, right?
At risk of sounding sophomoric….
It is our own mortality that makes life precious. Removing that mortality removes the significance of each experience.
It seems like a take on the classic science fiction theme of immortality, awash in the neon green-limned blackdrop of a possible future.
Simply, Living Forever ain’t all it’s cracked up to be!
This looks like a challenging read. I have put it on my Beach Reading list.
I wasn’t really talking about a fear of obsolescence. But, I can see how my examples seemed to point in that direction. I was attempting to reference the fear of futility or even boredom. This is what I saw in your statement, “What’s left?”
Humanity is nothing if not creative. Without creativity, we are mere machines. Trust this. When the time comes that we can explore a multiplicity of relationships in the time it takes to have a beer, there will be plenty of other things to do.
We could live forever and still not fully know, explore, and experience the fullness of man’s ability, let alone God’s creation.
It is not lost on me that this represents a 180 degree position change for me. (Given some of our break-time conversations.) Wait a few days, and I’ll switch back.
So you see, what you’re seeing is a genius at work.
[...] Amateur Megalomania has this to say about Charles Stross’s novel “Accelerando”: Stross bleeds more ideas on each page than most writers can cram into a career. More than once I had to stop and mull over what was essentially a throw-away concept, inspecting it for the deep ramifications it may have on humanity of the future. (…) [...]