From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Mar 10 2003 - 05:15:59 MST
Has anyone discussed the Cory Doctorow novel yet? (My email has been gappy.)
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue304/books.html
thinks that
< what we have here is a rare
example of post-Singularity fiction. The
Singularity, or Spike, is deemed to be that
moment at which mankind emerges into
transhuman existence, with or without the
help or hindrance of strong AI.
(Doctorow eschews the AI, for the most
part.) Envisioning such a future is one of
the hardest tasks an SF writer can take
on, but Doctorow proves himself equal to
the challenge. His reorganization of
society into ad-hocs craving Whuffie
derives a lot from present-day
cyber-culture (Slashdot, and all that), and
his biomorphic mutability seems
positively Extropian. >
His blithe treatment of a reputation-based economy--where people e-trade in
Whuffie, or units of gratitude or esteem--should excite some extropes.
There was a fairly laudatory review at the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/books/review/009ANTRIT.html
Damien Broderick
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