Tag: sf

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Enjoyed this one by Karl Schroeder a lot. A fun extrapolation of “not your keys-not your crypto“, set in a society in ecocollapse with AI automating most work, institutions both public and private holding on to their assets while they disappear and crumble, surveillance everywhere and everyone bumping into the demands and constraints of the planet’s carrying capacity. Will explore his other books.

Schroeder is a futurist and writes for clients as foresight consultancy.
Reading it made me ask a number of questions, around the development of AR/MR glasses, specific aspects of crypto and smart contracts (also because of its role in the book I read right before this by Suarez), reducing the cost and increasing the scale of sensors in the environment, and gaming and virtualisation. I’ve jotted those down during reading and started exploring.

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A multiverse novel but different. Starting from the biological basis of consciousness and the primacy of the conscious observer. Robert Lanza posited biocentrism in 2007 and this 2023 novel together with Nancy Kress explores it. Likable story, but rather flat charactered I thought and one part that was a verbatim repeat of another section which I found odd.

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An island in China where the global e-waste gets processed is at the center of the book, and where an old experiment emerges into a new consciousness. Really enjoyed this one, weaving western and Chinese perspectives on SF together. Took me a long time, about a year, to finish, because I read it on paper and I had long stretches without opportunity to comfortably read a paper book so it just sat there on a side table. Read the last half in the last few days making time for it early evening.