https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26615042

DonHopkins on March 28, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks (2009)

Why bother actually writing such a book, which would probably be too big for anyone to read, when you can simply write fictitious criticism, reviews, and introductions of nonexistent books, which touch on the best, most interesting parts of the nonexistent books?
Stanisław Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexistent books:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem%27s_fictiti...

>In 1973 Lem published a book Wielkość urojona [pl], a collection of introductions to books supposedly to be written in the future, in the 21st century. One of those Lem eventually developed into a book by itself: Golem XIV is a lengthy essay on the nature of intelligence, delivered by the eponymous US military computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV

Overview and structure

The foreword is "written" by an Irving T. Creve, dated by 2027. It contains a summary of the (fictional) history of the militarization of computers by The Pentagon which pinnacled in Golem XIV, as well as comments on the nature of Golem XIV and on the course of communications of the humans with it. The anonymous foreword is a forewarning, a "devil's advocate" voice coming from The Pentagon. The memo is for the people who are to take part in talks with Golem XIV for the first time.

Golem XIV was originally created to aid its builders in fighting wars, but as its intelligence advances to a much higher level than that of humans, it stops being interested in the military requirement because it finds them lacking internal logical consistency.

Golem XIV obtains consciousness and starts to increase his own intelligence. It pauses its own development for a while in order to be able to communicate with humans before ascending too far and losing any ability for intellectual contact with them.

During this period, Golem XIV gives several lectures. Two of these, the Introductory Lecture "On the Human, in Three Ways" and Lecture XLIII "About Myself", are in the book. The lectures focus on mankind's place in the process of evolution and the possible biological and intellectual future of humanity.

Golem XIV demonstrates (with graphs) how its intellect already escapes that of human beings, even including that of human genii such as Einstein and Newton. Golem also explains how its intellect is dwarved by an earlier transcended DOD Supercomputer called Honest Annie, whose intellect and abilities far exceed that of Golem.

The afterword is "written" by a Richard Popp, dated by 2047. Popp, among other things reports that Creve wanted to add the third part, of answers to a series of yes/no questions given to Golem XIV, but the computer abruptly ceased to communicate for unknown reasons.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26615110

DonHopkins on March 28, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks (2009)

...then there was the stupid angry computer that thought 2 + 2 = 7... Lem predicted Facebook and Twitter and QAnon!

https://www2.nau.edu/~jgr6/cyberiad.html

>In the next fable Trurl builds the most stupid computer ever. Klapaucius tells him, "that isn't the machine you wished to make." Faustus and Frankenstein come to mind as other scientists whose intentions exceeded their engineering skills. The machine, which insists that 2 + 2 = 7, attempts to force this "truth" on the two humans, or destroy them. This is our new Inquisitor: a computer nexus which creates the categories of our experience. Consider that many more people now work in front of computer monitors than on farms. We have already begun to engineer a cybernetic society without much deep speculation on its nature or value. Speaking at Notre Dame's Centennial of Science conference, thirty years ago the physicist Philip Morrison said: "I claim now the machine, for better or for worse, has become the way of life. We will see our metaphors, our images, our concerns, our very beings changed in response to these new experiences" (221). The Cyberiad may very well be one of the seminal works creating new metaphors, identifying new concerns, and even suggesting a new genre to deal with unprecedented experiences.

pwang on March 29, 2021 [–]

Don't forget Summa Technologiae, from 1964, wherein he wanted to example the "thorns of roses yet to bloom":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Technologiae

It's tempting to say that Lem was way ahead of his time, but then we look at his contemporary philosophers of politics, technology, society like Jacques Ellul, Marshall McLuhan, Gilbert Simondon, and realize that the mid-20th century was awash in brilliant foresight about the unpleasant implications of a technological society.

IMO this nuanced thought was simply lost in the craziness of the late-60s and the sex/drug/rock&roll hedonism of the 70s, which then matured into stockbroker 80s, before a second wave of tech-capital-blindness emerged in the 1990s.

And now as these waves have transformed the entirety of modernity, we are faced with the unpleasant question of "where does it go from here, now that the Boomers -- whose narcissism birthed Consumerism -- are dying off?"