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"As opposed to illiteracy, where you can't read, aliteracy means that you can but you just can't be bothered. They say aliteracy is on the rise these days."
- Peter Watts
 |
| Headspace | ||
| A virtual world in which a person could raise a virtual baby with full haptic realism. |
Maria lives in a world a world that is crumbling. As the Earth slowly floods, the infrastructure that supports her contact with her virtual child, Linda, is lost.
| Little Linda, a Headspace baby, was four years old now... The little girl playing on the sunlit patio still made a beautiful image for Maria to gaze upon, in her desktop screen, in her damp, darkened flat.
...Everything Linda knew Maria had taught her. Maria had gloves and a headset, and she would hear the child laugh, feel her when her avatar hugged her, a ghostly presence through the pads on her fingertips. She still couldn't be with the child, not fully... But that barrier was going to melt away someday soon. The transhumanists had promised... |
| Technovelgy from Flood,
by Stephen Baxter. Published by Gollancz in 2008 Additional resources -
|
This is one of my favorite scenes from the book, because it clearly contrasts two rather different visions of the future. One is that of the Singularity, which might bring technological nirvana to all humanity. The other is what I call the "Mud Hut future", in which we have lost almost everything we have now due to stupidity. Baxter writes:
The fact was, her access to Headspace was the product of a complex and interconnected society, the capstone of a pyramid grounded in very old technologies, in farming and mining and manufacture and transport and energy production. It was only as that essential pyramid was crumbling that Maria became fully aware of its existence. The singularity came to seem more and more out of reach - an absurdity, actually. You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Flood
More Ideas
and Technology by Stephen Baxter
Tech news articles related to Flood
Tech news articles related to works by Stephen Baxter
Headspace-related
news articles:
- Someday, You Might Like VR Enough To Move In
- Via Virtual Reality, Mother Encounters Deceased Daughter
- Wearable Synthetic Skin for Virtual Reality
- Sorry, Futurists! Tamagotchi Kids, Virtual Children Already Predicted By SF Writer in 2008
| Anna Indiana AI Singer-Songwriter |
| Metaverse Hardware - Run And Flail Like A Maniac, Or Lie Quietly? |
| Virtual Co-Embodyment - Two People Control One Virtual Body |
| Sorry, Futurists! Tamagotchi Kids, Virtual Children Already Predicted By SF Writer in 2008 |
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'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
