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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (6629)	1/27/1998 2:44:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 71178

Mornin', Penni. >I decided that rather than try to participate, I needed to just get away or post here on other things.< When I gave the nutshell update to Zin, I was by no way trying to invoke the Ostrich. Wanting to not talk about the current scandal by no means implies (to me anyway) being unable to talk about it. I applaud your decision to keep your own counsel. In the meantime, many others are treating this compulsive attentionfest as a big party. I know I sure put on a funny hat a coupla times! >I'm not familiar with Brin and so was uncertain whether the machines you refer to are without humanity in their self-awareness.< William Gibson writes cyberpunk: near-future fiction. In his works, the machine (and the mechanically enhanced human) are dehumanized and exalted at the same time in a dizzying mix. Greg Bear (Eon) paints a portrait of a society perhaps a thousand years hence. Mechanical intelligences coexist with people - some embodied, some not. Neat read. What marks the masters (like Brin and Bear, also Charles Sheffield) is that their machines are not subhuman or inhuman. There is nothing monstrous about them. While many are distinctly nonhuman, they have an integrity (an equivalent to humanity) which makes them worthy peers. I don't know how clear this is. Direct connectedness. If you're a human, not embodied, you live and move in a sea of data. Parts are strictly private; others are even more collective than a hive. Many levels all at once. If we develop the idea of myth as a mediator for human values and ideas, you don't need such a mediator if contact with fellows is immediate. Context gets communicated simultaneously with text. I imagine trying to grasp such a composite existence is like trying to describe Stravinsky to a deaf person. Star Wars? the story I heard was that Lucas adapted themes out of B movies. So he probably was using epic themes, but at one remove. Such themes are trite after all because they are so universal.