Re: The Golden Age by John C. Wright

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Mar 03 2003 - 06:00:03 MST

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    By coincidence, I finished this book during the weekend (so I had
    to avoid reading this and Damien's posts until today).

    I found it one of the best descriptions of a trans/posthuman
    lifestyle I have encountered, a good complement to Walter John
    William's _Aristoi_ and the works of Greg Egan. To me the best
    aspect of the novel was the thought that had gone into customs
    and signs, not just the big setting: how politeness
    works in VR, how mass-minds express how much of them are
    attending to a person, how status can be demonstrated when you
    can look like anything you want and so on. That is important
    stuff, since it makes the setting come alive far more than
    likely extrapolations of uploading technology - and it is the
    kind of ideas that many people find absent in transhumanism, and
    hence deduce that we all are inhuman.

    The style is flowery and somewhat redolent of 19th century
    writing. Which seems to fit; the Silver-Gray Mansion reality
    style does have a distinctly Victorian flair (some people
    organise themselves into virtual cultures centered around certain
    AIs and cultural assumptions, not unlike different schools of
    art; the main character subscribes to the Silver-Gray style). I
    wonder what it is that attracts people to neo-Victorianism? Is
    that the archetypal culture for anglosaxon writers that want to
    create something different but recognizable?

    On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 03:46:15PM -0800, Hal Finney wrote:
    >
    > What we see in the novel is the working-out of this principle as applied
    > to a world in which alterations to the mind and its perceptions can
    > be achieved almost without limit. In fact this is to some extent a
    > "travelogue" novel, meaning one whose interest flows from the setting and
    > scenery more than the plot. But in this case, the tour is of mentality
    > rather than of physical space.

    It is interesting to track where Phaeton's body actually goes
    physically through the novel; he is moving almost exclusively
    vertically. It really shows how geography usually matters almost
    nothing (and the shock of unmediated reality when you are used to
    live in super-augmented reality).

    > Add to this the capability of individuals to alter their brains,
    > their motivations and perceptions, as easily as we change our clothes.
    > It's a tremendous power, but extremely dangerous. A single rash act
    > can put you on the path to mental self-destruction; and there can be
    > no intervention, nothing stronger than verbal persuasion is allowed
    > to try to rescue someone who has made such a mistake. We see several
    > cases where good, strong people have destroyed themselves in this way.
    > The ultimate freedom is the freedom to be wrong.

    This is IMHO the main point of the book. Phaeton is a
    strong-willed hero type (or was the swami right in that he was an
    typical villain? Note how Phaeton's true past might be an elegant
    form of self-reference), the kind of ultra-individualist on a
    quest we have seen in _Atlas Shrugged_ or _The Prisoner_. And
    while admirable, he (like the other heros) is also inhuman in his
    stubborness. In a way, he uses his freedom to be wrong to sustain
    his freedom to do what he considers right - but that sense of
    being right, how can he even be sure of it?

    Of course, the literary style and general thrust of the novel
    probably won't lead to a conclusion where Phaeton's mission
    actually was just a case of megalomania brought on by some clever
    cognitive hacking, but the possibility seems open. And that
    really makes the story fascinating: in a world where minds can be
    edited almost arbitrarily, how can you distinguish truth from
    falsehood? No wonder that Phaeton is a bit unstable.

    > Wright's characters describe history in terms of eras called Mental
    > Structures. They are presently in the Seventh Mental Structure, aka
    > the Golden Oecumene ("golden age"). Here is my reconstruction of the
    > earlier eras and their defining events:

    That fits well with my impression (I didn't take notes, but
    mentally tried to form the timeline).

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
    GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
    


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