In Restrospect, Also Robots
I have the bad habit of overlooking terrible writing if it means getting to a meaty plot. This has included Rowling (no, it's not terrible, but the two dimensionality of her characters, at least in the earlier books, and the sheer potential that goes undeveloped (but that's why you have fanfiction!!! thank you Ams) really really annoy me) and now, in restrospect, Dan Brown.
As someone who's technically an editor (I'm not even remotely qualified for the task except for a deal of persistence and the tendency to ruthlessly look up every iffy-sounding word I come across), I flailed in glee when my friend sent me this link:
Dan Brown Sucks
Is it wrong that I spent my time reading this, laughing hysterically, and loving the English language and all editors everywhere to bits?
"Just count the infelicities here. A voice doesn't speak -a person speaks; a voice is what a person speaks with. "Chillingly close" would be right in your ear, whereas this voice is fifteen feet away behind the thundering gate. The curator (do we really need to be told his profession a third time?) cannot slowly turn his head if he has frozen; freezing (as a voluntary human action) means temporarily ceasing all muscular movements. And crucially, a silhouette does not stare! A silhouette is a shadow. If Saunière can see the man's pale skin, thinning hair, iris color, and red pupils (all at fifteen feet), the man cannot possibly be in silhouette.
Brown's writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad. "
Oh, yes.
I can't believe I haven't bookmarked this site yet. But now it's done. And hopefully I'll learn something and have tons of fun in the process, reading witty observations on a language that's utterly mad and completely wonderful. Hmm. Maybe I really should have gone into Linguistics, at least a bit. Unfortunately if you asked me the difference between a "past pefect" and a "present imperfect" I would simply goggle at you unattractively. Perhaps there's still time to learn...?
I need to add "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" to my list of books to buy at Borders. I just read an Amazon preview and laughed in a maniacal fashion, so clearly it is meant for me. I mean - I hopped over to Imeem recently and felt like strangling whoever the hell wrote "Who's obsessed with who in this video?" - whom, you excrescence, whom.
In other news, another friend and I had a short but intense conversation about a link I posted in Facebook.
Help The Robots Are Coming!.... Not
Not that I think robots are going to be enslaving us any time in the future, but I do think the psychological impacts of AI would make for an interesting thesis. That conversation today morning consisted of my friend telling me that I should do a thesis on how science features in pop culture and how that can be a feedback mechanism. YES OMG. That was precisely what I'd been thinking about months back. She suggested narrowing it down to Clarke in the 80's, Iain Banks now, that kind of thing, which sounds lovely.
My cousin also commented, at length, with some frustration, on that link - he actually works with some AI/robotics stuff in Purdue and is good at a frightening number of things. His point, I believe, is that there are so many conditions for a being to be considered existing in an "intelligent" state that the probability of our achieving anything like that is extremely low, at least in the near future. I'm holding out hope for a quantum computer here, increased number of permutations in a smaller time, allowing for a great many more factors to be considered - were those the conditions he was mentioning, I'll need to check with him.
But the point being, that this sort of thing isn't general knowledge. People simply don't know how bloody difficult it is to make something even remotely semi-intelligent. There seems to be an overwhelming sense of "oh my god, one day we'll look up and there will be things sticking us into pods with weird slimy pink fluid and they will use us as energy sources to Take Over the Universe." First of all, I think we'll figure out what robots mean to us far earlier than the situation arrives in which we are forced to react to them instead of dictate their conduct. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, sort of thing.
Which brings me to the next point: science fiction and its place in society. It's a wonderful - if done right - introduction to science in a society that simultaneously takes it for granted and remains wary of all that it can accomplish. I honestly think it makes science seem so much cooler; all the things we can accomplish, all from the most fundamental of scientific principles (or the speculation of even more fundamental principles!) are laid out. But the wondeful thing is, it can also anticipate some extremely interesting social developments. Science - it doesn't matter how fundamental you're being, here - is inextricably tied to society. Its advancement or regression (Galileo and the Dark Ages), how it's accepted, how it's treated and how it's taught (and therefore, spread and advanced, again) are all through human channels and subject to human whims. Which is why when I read Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go*, I was just struck all over again by that link.
Simply because of those characteristics, though, science fiction acts as some kind of feedback into society. Because the good sort of sci-fi breaks things down into the language of the layperson, extrapolate things, and then (since it has to be good writing!) makes those future situations plausible, sci-fi is believably portentous. Which is why things like Asimov's robots, Huxley's moral degeneration (from our current standpoint), Clarke's murderous HAL, all make us worry a bit.
But do writers predict readers' reactions to scientific advancements? Or do readers respond to future scientific advancements, which writers pick up on?
It's probably a bit of both. Sci-fi writers know their science history, presumably, and of course the cliche is that history is an accurate predictor or some trends. Like, for instance, the way people react violently towards some new startling developments in science.
On the other hand, the scientific developments which aren't nearly as sudden, which have been building for a while, are already building up reactions amongst the public. Cloning and stem cell research (again, Ishiguro) are good indicators of that. Sci-fi would feed off those reactions and extrapolate them.
But can sci-fi actually offer solutions to future problems? Of course Asimov's Laws immediately come to mind, but I really think that's also one of sci-fi's possibilities, besides predicting constant gloom and doom.
That's why this particular branch of literature is probably my favourite. It deals with the weird and the wonderful, but also with the extremely mundane and plausible reactions to those things. It deals with science as an institution and a culture, instead of a set of stark realities, and whether they even ARE those stark realities is completely up for debate at this point.
In another piece of news, we had a presentation at work today about a new product that we're releasing. I dunno how much of a nerd this makes me, but I nearly hung off the edge of the seat at moments looking at all the cool new features. Recursiveness! Also, deadpan delivery of "We've had complaints that this section of our product is more useless than MS Paint. We took that to heart."
Oh how I wish Core would accept my little grovelling self into its LV Hall Of Awesomeness next summer.
*Actually talking about the plot will surely spoil the story, but it deals with the problem of organ regeneration. It's just fantastic, you really should read it.
As someone who's technically an editor (I'm not even remotely qualified for the task except for a deal of persistence and the tendency to ruthlessly look up every iffy-sounding word I come across), I flailed in glee when my friend sent me this link:
Dan Brown Sucks
Is it wrong that I spent my time reading this, laughing hysterically, and loving the English language and all editors everywhere to bits?
"Just count the infelicities here. A voice doesn't speak -a person speaks; a voice is what a person speaks with. "Chillingly close" would be right in your ear, whereas this voice is fifteen feet away behind the thundering gate. The curator (do we really need to be told his profession a third time?) cannot slowly turn his head if he has frozen; freezing (as a voluntary human action) means temporarily ceasing all muscular movements. And crucially, a silhouette does not stare! A silhouette is a shadow. If Saunière can see the man's pale skin, thinning hair, iris color, and red pupils (all at fifteen feet), the man cannot possibly be in silhouette.
Brown's writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad. "
Oh, yes.
I can't believe I haven't bookmarked this site yet. But now it's done. And hopefully I'll learn something and have tons of fun in the process, reading witty observations on a language that's utterly mad and completely wonderful. Hmm. Maybe I really should have gone into Linguistics, at least a bit. Unfortunately if you asked me the difference between a "past pefect" and a "present imperfect" I would simply goggle at you unattractively. Perhaps there's still time to learn...?
I need to add "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" to my list of books to buy at Borders. I just read an Amazon preview and laughed in a maniacal fashion, so clearly it is meant for me. I mean - I hopped over to Imeem recently and felt like strangling whoever the hell wrote "Who's obsessed with who in this video?" - whom, you excrescence, whom.
In other news, another friend and I had a short but intense conversation about a link I posted in Facebook.
Help The Robots Are Coming!.... Not
Not that I think robots are going to be enslaving us any time in the future, but I do think the psychological impacts of AI would make for an interesting thesis. That conversation today morning consisted of my friend telling me that I should do a thesis on how science features in pop culture and how that can be a feedback mechanism. YES OMG. That was precisely what I'd been thinking about months back. She suggested narrowing it down to Clarke in the 80's, Iain Banks now, that kind of thing, which sounds lovely.
My cousin also commented, at length, with some frustration, on that link - he actually works with some AI/robotics stuff in Purdue and is good at a frightening number of things. His point, I believe, is that there are so many conditions for a being to be considered existing in an "intelligent" state that the probability of our achieving anything like that is extremely low, at least in the near future. I'm holding out hope for a quantum computer here, increased number of permutations in a smaller time, allowing for a great many more factors to be considered - were those the conditions he was mentioning, I'll need to check with him.
But the point being, that this sort of thing isn't general knowledge. People simply don't know how bloody difficult it is to make something even remotely semi-intelligent. There seems to be an overwhelming sense of "oh my god, one day we'll look up and there will be things sticking us into pods with weird slimy pink fluid and they will use us as energy sources to Take Over the Universe." First of all, I think we'll figure out what robots mean to us far earlier than the situation arrives in which we are forced to react to them instead of dictate their conduct. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, sort of thing.
Which brings me to the next point: science fiction and its place in society. It's a wonderful - if done right - introduction to science in a society that simultaneously takes it for granted and remains wary of all that it can accomplish. I honestly think it makes science seem so much cooler; all the things we can accomplish, all from the most fundamental of scientific principles (or the speculation of even more fundamental principles!) are laid out. But the wondeful thing is, it can also anticipate some extremely interesting social developments. Science - it doesn't matter how fundamental you're being, here - is inextricably tied to society. Its advancement or regression (Galileo and the Dark Ages), how it's accepted, how it's treated and how it's taught (and therefore, spread and advanced, again) are all through human channels and subject to human whims. Which is why when I read Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go*, I was just struck all over again by that link.
Simply because of those characteristics, though, science fiction acts as some kind of feedback into society. Because the good sort of sci-fi breaks things down into the language of the layperson, extrapolate things, and then (since it has to be good writing!) makes those future situations plausible, sci-fi is believably portentous. Which is why things like Asimov's robots, Huxley's moral degeneration (from our current standpoint), Clarke's murderous HAL, all make us worry a bit.
But do writers predict readers' reactions to scientific advancements? Or do readers respond to future scientific advancements, which writers pick up on?
It's probably a bit of both. Sci-fi writers know their science history, presumably, and of course the cliche is that history is an accurate predictor or some trends. Like, for instance, the way people react violently towards some new startling developments in science.
On the other hand, the scientific developments which aren't nearly as sudden, which have been building for a while, are already building up reactions amongst the public. Cloning and stem cell research (again, Ishiguro) are good indicators of that. Sci-fi would feed off those reactions and extrapolate them.
But can sci-fi actually offer solutions to future problems? Of course Asimov's Laws immediately come to mind, but I really think that's also one of sci-fi's possibilities, besides predicting constant gloom and doom.
That's why this particular branch of literature is probably my favourite. It deals with the weird and the wonderful, but also with the extremely mundane and plausible reactions to those things. It deals with science as an institution and a culture, instead of a set of stark realities, and whether they even ARE those stark realities is completely up for debate at this point.
In another piece of news, we had a presentation at work today about a new product that we're releasing. I dunno how much of a nerd this makes me, but I nearly hung off the edge of the seat at moments looking at all the cool new features. Recursiveness! Also, deadpan delivery of "We've had complaints that this section of our product is more useless than MS Paint. We took that to heart."
Oh how I wish Core would accept my little grovelling self into its LV Hall Of Awesomeness next summer.
*Actually talking about the plot will surely spoil the story, but it deals with the problem of organ regeneration. It's just fantastic, you really should read it.