The Freeze-Frame Revolution
October 12, 2021
You monster, I thought. You mass-murdering motherfucker. You liar. You impostor. You helpless machine. You innocent puppet. You false friend. “I hate you,” I said. “I’ll kill you if I can.” “I’ll save you,” it said. “If you let me.” “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” Peter Watts — spoiler alert — Our mind […]
The Dark Defiles
September 9, 2016
The dark defiles. They lead here, all of them. This is where they empty out, and he chose to follow them to their end. He was not brought here, he asked to come. The ikinri ‘ska. The ancient, silent walkways at An-Monal, the stilled machines. The watchful spirits that lived in the walls. The […]
The Cold Commands
September 9, 2016
“Gifts at the crossroads are not cheap,” Hjel says quietly. “Everyone must pay. And most of us heal somewhat with time.” “I am Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of Warriors,” Ringil recited for him, hollowly. “I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves. I am Carry Me […]
The Steel Remains
September 9, 2016
“I think you look on death as your friend, ” she murmured. “That is a strange friend for a young man to have.” “The only faithful friend in this world, ” he said bitterly. “Death is always sure to be at your side.” I see what the akyia saw, Gil. I see what you […]
Echopraxia
September 9, 2016
“The neurological condition of echopraxia is to autonomy (read: free will) as blindsight is to consciousness.” ― Peter Watts, Echopraxia “I’ve told you before, Daniel: roach isn’t an insult. We’re the ones still standing after the mammals build their nukes, we’re the ones with the stripped-down OS’s so damned simple they work under almost any circumstances. We’re […]
Blindsight
August 28, 2016
Blindsight – the ability to respond to visual stimuli without consciously perceiving them, a condition which can occur after certain types of brain damage. Podcast transcript Blindsight review.txt Four types of eye movement saccades – Ballistic, conjugate (= moving in same direction) eye movements that change the point of fixation. smooth pursuit movements – Much […]
Divergence
August 3, 2016
Constantine had once been told that a mind was a sentence that could read itself. A book might have thoughts written within it, but something external had to be applied to the book in order to read the words. But what if words could be written in some medium that allowed the words to take […]
Capacity
August 2, 2016
So what exactly is a personality construct? Ah! That’s the crux of the matter. A personality construct is simply a human mind running on a computer. Actually, “computer” is an old-fashioned phrase for an old-fashioned concept. Nowadays we say “processing space.” So I am a personality construct. Does that mean I am no longer human? […]
Recursion
July 2, 2016
And so the younger races had made something a little like a computer virus, something like a pervasive bit of telepathy, something like an intricate pattern of signals, and had allowed it to spread throughout the universe. And everywhere a suitably advanced processing space or mind or pattern set evolved, it would settle and take […]