jadis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP_Dk81f9fg

Lisnaholic

I didn't know that, elph! So how many Book Titles to Band Names are we looking at, I wonder:

The Fall (post-punk)
Eyeless In Gaza (post-punk)
Titus Groan (prog folk)
Soft Machine (jazz fusion)

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innerspaceboy

I've been curious about techno-futurism ever since the spark of passion for science fiction was planted within me as a young boy when I first read Isaac Asimov's short story, "The Last Question." I secured the first-ever publication of the story, a holy grail of my library in the November 1956 Vol 4, No 5. issue of the pulp zine, Science Fiction Quarterly. It was Asimov's favorite short story of his own authorship and the first science fiction tale I read which directly inspired a life-long love of the genre. It remains my favorite short story to this day.

Of late I've been riveted by the foundational texts I've been exploring to expand upon the subject of techno-futurism.

I began by reading Mondo 2000's A User's Guide to the New Edge: Cyberpunk, Virtual Reality, Wetware, Designer Aphrodisiacs, Artificial Life, Techno-Erotic Paganism, and More. Mondo 2000 was a glossy cyberculture magazine published in California during the 1980s and 1990s. It was a more anarchic and subversive prototype for the later-founded Wired magazine. The "User's Guide" special edition explores all the hyper-futuristic utopian and dystopian idealism of the year 1992. It is truly a time capsule of techno culture.

The next logical text on the subject is Ray Kurzweil's New York Times best-selling book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005). I started a thread on the subject of The AI Singularity and Transhumanism back in 2016 but just now secured a copy of the book.

Kurzweil describes his law of accelerating returns which predicts an exponential increase in technologies like computers, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence. Once the Singularity has been reached, Kurzweil says that machine intelligence will be infinitely more powerful than all human intelligence combined. Afterwards he predicts intelligence will radiate outward from the planet until it saturates the universe. The Singularity is also the point at which machines' intelligence and humans would merge. Kurzweil spells out the date very clearly: "I set the date for the Singularity—representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability—as 2045".

The Transhumanism Wiki offers a chapter-by-chapter analysis and summary of the 652pp work in an accessible and concise manner. It examines Kurzweil's four postulates and their resulting technological consequences.

https://transhumanism.fandom.com/wik...larity_Is_Near

Also relevant is William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984). Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" and famously said, "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed" in an interview on Fresh Air, NPR (31 August 1993).

I understand that there are viable criticisms of Kurzweil's theories, but I find the potential optimism of techno-futurism refreshing in this age of jaded and cynical metamodernity. It would be awe-inspiring to experience the Singularity in my lifetime. I'd welcome your thoughts.

"The future is fun! The future is fair! You may already have won! You may already be there." - The Firesign Theatre



Supplemental note:

One friend recommended Neal Stephenson's sci-fi novel, Snow Crash (1992) as being oddly prescient.

And another introduced me to The 2045 Initiative, an organization working towards Futurism / Artificial General Intelligence / Avatars / Singularity-related technologies and philosophies.

Links I've found for The 2045 Initiative so far:

Their official website: 2045 Initiative

Their concept video from 2012: https://youtu.be/01hbkh4hXEk

Their YouTube channel with latest developments: https://www.youtube.com/@2045Initiative/videos

And they have a presence on Facebook as well.

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jadis

Another nod to Burroughs:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M43w...DuranDuranVEVO

A girl once tried to sell me on Steely Dan cause she knew I was a big WSB fan and I was like "these are some of the least Burroughsian sounds I've ever heard in my life"

Some of the junky slang in Naked Lunch gets explained in Junky, his first and most autobiographical book. But it's a bummer how few editions get published these days in English with proper scholarly annotations, which is imo the true purpose of literary criticism. Of 20th century classics it's Ulysses, Lolita, maybe a couple of others and that's it. One of the great things about the USSR was how much effort they put into annotating books (not that those puritan communist idiots would ever publish any Burroughs or Ulysses or Lolita in a million years).

Lisnaholic

Good call on Steely Dan. Yeah, such a disparity between the source and meaning of the name, and the style and attitude of the band. I often wondered why they didn't come up with a better name for themselves; when they were so inventive themselves, why fall back on someone else's innapropriate invention for your name?

At least with this band, some of their tracks sound like they are generated by soft machines. (Anyway, that's the kind of thing I used to imagine as I obsessively replayed this track:-)

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Frownland

Les Chants de Maldoror - Digging it a lot but man, someone really should have given this to my metalhead ass 12 year old self, he woulda shat his pants.

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Mindy

Mom got me the dreams book and my sister gave me the Crypto book.

Finna make a blog series on my blog about what I read in the crypto assets book

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SituationNoWin

I'm finally reading Dracula. It's been sitting on my shelf a looong time: The price on the back is $3.99.

The Batlord

The only fantasy book that can **** with LOTR.

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Trollheart

After exhausting the supply of my own short stories (most of which, surprisingly, she enjoyed), as well as my own Sherlock Holmes novella (very well received), and with only half-written/half-begun longer short stories/novels left, leaving aside one or two that she would definitely not want to hear, Karen wanted more Sherlock Holmes. We settled on Doyle's son's collection, The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes. I have to say, four stories in and it's a surprising and major disappointment. Guess you can't beat the originals.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018