[ExI] Accelerando - and other recommendations, too

[Tomasz Rola]

On Mon, 1 Mar 2010, Damien Broderick wrote:

> On 3/1/2010 9:42 PM, Keith Henson wrote:
> 
> > If anyone wants to read a story that was written around the ideas that
> > floated across the Extropy list in those days, try Acclerando by
> > Charles Stross.  It's free on the net, but you might want hard copy as
> > well.
> 
> I've been reluctant to mention this, but in that context (a good
> recommendation from Keith!) I might as well: if anyone wants to get something
> of the flavor of the ideas and approaches buzzing on the list in the mid-'90s,
> read my book THE SPIKE. The trouble is that these once hair-raising ideas are
> now commonplace, some decade and a half later (although I had to omit some of
> the more difficult material because I was aiming at a general Wired-ish
> audience).

I still have to find some time for this book. However, I've thought it is 
a good moment to mention something from myself. I am the long time reader 
of books (and other things) written by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. 
Sometimes it seems strange to me that he did not get much publicity here 
(or that he got no pub at all, actually). Of course I may not be quite 
objective, since I consider the man one of my heroes (yep, and how many 
writers deserve to be called like this?). He wasn't explicitly extropian, 
yet if you could read his "Summa technologiae" or "Golem XIV" maybe you 
could recognise this or that. Some will say, this is old crap stuff. I 
still think this old stuff kicks a** - even 50 years later. Which is a 
hell of achievement.

>From what I could read, Michael Kandel did wonders translating Lem into 
English, so you may pay attention to translator's name. Unless you could 
read Polish, and maybe German (I can say nothing about quality of German 
translations, only expect them to be good because Lem is said to have many 
German-speaking readers). I think Russian translations can be good too, 
since I've heard there were times when he got a lot of attention of their 
scientists and I doubt they would waste their time (unless, of course, 
they read this in some other language, Polish, maybe? - oh, I don't mean 
reading Lem in Polish would be a waste of time, ok let's stop it).

> Perhaps one reason the idea flux seems a bit lacklustre now is that people who
> weren't there then inevitably rehash many of the same ideas, which are still
> somewhat novel if you're 20 or younger, and this is not so enthralling for the
> old timers. The Swobe cascade would also have been laughed off the list fairly
> quickly back then; 'gene would have been scathing in his brilliantly condensed
> way.

Yes, ideas seem to be recycled a bit. Read some older stuff, from times 
when extropy wasn't a word yet.

> Still, I'm sure there are new ideas waiting to be explored, or old ideas
> waiting to be examined in depth--but it's not obvious what they are. (I'm
> waiting eagerly for Keith to tell us what his current idea for cheap energy
> is.)

Is there anybody taking bets :-) ?.

Regards
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **