(no subject)
There are two totally unrelated parts to this post. Part one is very hopeful, all about the future and the things I cannot wait to see. Part two is about giving up and being a bit miserable and feeling vaguely resentful for what's really no good reason at all. Please skip as appropriate.
Part One
Even the professionals agree that the future I rant about to anyone who sits still and looks interested is really, really coming. We will be able to upload our sentience and create online backups of our minds in case something happens to the original. We will shape our environment in ways hitherto thought of only by science fiction writers who blurred the line between science and magic. We will be ageless, electronic, dwelling in a virtual and a real world simultaneously. Our tattoos will shift and blur, visible for parties and invisible for work, and we will be one of the most remarkable species that we have ever hoped to encounter in any of our wildest dreams. Our computers will share our level of sentience and Isaac Asimov's visions could be just as credible as Iain M Banks'. It will be so beautiful.
And it will happen in my lifetime. (By 2040 the average human life expectancy in the developed world should be about 85-90, according to an expert I recently had the pleasure of seeing. So I have every chance of living to see my beautiful future)
Part Two
In other news, sod NaNoWriMo. Some people can do it- they can write to a deadline and instil passion in their work, they can take the pressure to finish and use it to fuel their creativity. They can really get the thing up and going and just keep on going. I am not one of those people. Sod WriMo. I've written big lumps of elf-infested high fantasy a couple hundred thousand words long already, back between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, and I'd really rather not have homework again now I'm out of school and university. There were two lumps of elf-infested fantasy, actually, one revolving more around science fiction-with-aliens and the other around traditional elf-and-dragon fantasy, and they were on the laptop that got nicked without any backup. They were, it is to be noted, a bit rubbish, but the key thing is I really enjoyed writing them. I'm getting no pleasure at all from WriMo. Having no money, no job, and a social life that depends on whether I think I can afford to put money on my oyster, I don't need another thing making me feel miserable and underachieving.
I may continue my 2009 wrimo novel. But I will do in my time, with the knowledge that I've done this before and can do it again, and because I want to rather than out of some slightly misguided attempt to compete with people who aren't actually competing with me.
Part One
Even the professionals agree that the future I rant about to anyone who sits still and looks interested is really, really coming. We will be able to upload our sentience and create online backups of our minds in case something happens to the original. We will shape our environment in ways hitherto thought of only by science fiction writers who blurred the line between science and magic. We will be ageless, electronic, dwelling in a virtual and a real world simultaneously. Our tattoos will shift and blur, visible for parties and invisible for work, and we will be one of the most remarkable species that we have ever hoped to encounter in any of our wildest dreams. Our computers will share our level of sentience and Isaac Asimov's visions could be just as credible as Iain M Banks'. It will be so beautiful.
And it will happen in my lifetime. (By 2040 the average human life expectancy in the developed world should be about 85-90, according to an expert I recently had the pleasure of seeing. So I have every chance of living to see my beautiful future)
Part Two
In other news, sod NaNoWriMo. Some people can do it- they can write to a deadline and instil passion in their work, they can take the pressure to finish and use it to fuel their creativity. They can really get the thing up and going and just keep on going. I am not one of those people. Sod WriMo. I've written big lumps of elf-infested high fantasy a couple hundred thousand words long already, back between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, and I'd really rather not have homework again now I'm out of school and university. There were two lumps of elf-infested fantasy, actually, one revolving more around science fiction-with-aliens and the other around traditional elf-and-dragon fantasy, and they were on the laptop that got nicked without any backup. They were, it is to be noted, a bit rubbish, but the key thing is I really enjoyed writing them. I'm getting no pleasure at all from WriMo. Having no money, no job, and a social life that depends on whether I think I can afford to put money on my oyster, I don't need another thing making me feel miserable and underachieving.
I may continue my 2009 wrimo novel. But I will do in my time, with the knowledge that I've done this before and can do it again, and because I want to rather than out of some slightly misguided attempt to compete with people who aren't actually competing with me.