"It's easy to see our problems and the solution to the problems that we have now. But it is very hard to see how that solution is going to turn on us, and the new problem that it's going to be."
From the interview to Roger Williams ("localroger") in the Gday World podcast. He is the author of "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect", a "short" (more than 100 pages long) story available online. Very interesting, at least for me, who still had not read any Singularity fiction.
Seedy title and a letdownish ending. But pretty good, and some deep stuff, if hard to stomach at times... although it makes sense. Also, very interesting to compare that kind of world to Matrix… and, even more, to Baudrillard's complaints about Matrix.
His other short stories, the Passage series, are also pretty good. Donation-worth good.
I arrived at this from Yegge's 3rd entry on the "a programmer´s view of the universe" series, which is a story. Which at the moment seemed respectably good, but after MOPI and Passage, is just a cute toy. Supposedly Yegge wanted to explain something, but he seems to have abandoned the thing, and what he has done up to now is interesting, but I can't see why he expected it to be kind of explosive. Maybe something related to his environment?…
Anyway, it's a pity he left blogging. His rants have been a powerful guide for a lot of doubts I had, and some which I didn't even know I had. He convinced me to go the SICP/python route instead of the C++ one, and to revisit the Java world, although maybe not for Java itself. About which I'll have to explain a bit, because I know some people which would like that same enlightenment…
(...and some other which won't like it but should get it anyway)
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