Author Topic: EP122: Transcendence Express  (Read 38464 times)

Monty Grue

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Reply #50 on: September 12, 2007, 12:34:49 AM
Quote
Also, if BIKO is short for Biological Quantum Computer, why is it spelt BIKO and not BIQCO?

The computer is probably named after Steve Biko, a noted anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s.

The story didn't do much for me either. 



SFEley

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Reply #51 on: September 12, 2007, 05:42:08 AM
Your excitement with your new partner is understandable, and encouraged. I just think it might have caught a few people off guard to see the enthusiasm. My primary partner pointed out to me that references to her site and projects seemed to occur more than most other plugs you have done in the past. However she is more sensitive to the subject than I am due to her dislike of Minx.

Heh.  Now you've got me curious if your partner actually knows Minx and dislikes her personally, or just dislikes the podcast.  Either way I'm not offended; I'm not going to throw down the gauntlet at everyone who impugns her honor or anything.

In any case, it looks like there's a thread in Gallimaufry to talk about this stuff now.  Thanks, Mr. Tweedy.  I'm going to respectfully request that all Minxish matters be moved over there, so that y'all can return to your deep cynicism about this story.  >8->

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FNH

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Reply #52 on: September 13, 2007, 09:35:51 AM
This story didn't work for me.

Nothing happened, no conflict, no chase, no stress, no anything.

The pointless sex references were simply there.  It didn't build character, just seemed to be a cheap-shot titilation thing.

Had a lot of potential areas where interest could have been built up. Secret projects, rich vs poor, unwanted help, technology vs tradition.

I'm really surprised this story was picked. 


milo

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Reply #53 on: September 15, 2007, 02:17:32 AM
There are two things I didn't like about this story. The first was the reading. The "deadpan" thing went a little too far. Without some inflection to give each character his or her own voice, I often had trouble figuring out who was speaking. Only frequent rewinding and context clues helped me out.

The second thing I didn't like is that this piece doesn't seem like a complete story. It feels like the author pulled the middle out of a larger story, leaving us without the beginning or the end. I'm a traditionalist; I believe a good story needs some sort of central conflict for the protagonist to overcome. The near total lack of conflict left me wanting more. Regardless of whether one agrees with my rather staid views on storytelling, it seems likely that the author has given us one or two chapters from a novel in progress -- a common enough approach for those who are trying to get a larger work into print, but not always fair to the reader (or listener).

Anyway, that's my $0.02.

Milo



Biscuit

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Reply #54 on: September 18, 2007, 12:02:00 AM
The radio/voice actor part of me kicked in listening to this story - the dead pan delivery didn't work for me.

Liked the content (again, apart from the sex), and it seems all parts of the discussion are covered here. I'm in the "Give Education, Not Money" camp.

It seems the western society cynic in us all is very quick to kick in - perhaps there really are innocent societies still out there, and they really will do good while that innocence remains.


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Reply #55 on: September 18, 2007, 08:26:33 AM
There has been a lot of talk about how useless a laptop is to poor people.  I would like to just add one little point.  Books.  Books are big, heavy, expensive, and hard to distribute.  Once you have the laptops there (they also have the same initial problems), these problems are greatly reduced.  One file comes in, bing, bam, boom, every child has his own copy.  The idea isn't to teach some kid leaving in the bush how to use Word.  The idea is to make ideas spread faster.  Information is power.  Let's make the information available.

my $.25



swdragoon

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Reply #56 on: September 18, 2007, 05:51:30 PM
so are we pirating theas texts or are you going to get the textbook publishers to change bissnes modles faster than the riaa.
sorry

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Russell Nash

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Reply #57 on: September 18, 2007, 05:56:59 PM
so are we pirating theas texts or are you going to get the textbook publishers to change bissnes modles faster than the riaa.
sorry

There are huge amounts of things that are public domain or are freely distributable. 



swdragoon

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Reply #58 on: September 18, 2007, 06:12:26 PM
you are corect. and I'm not trying to be a pain just point out that what should be a good soultion can easly be derailed by bad buisness modles. also i like to poke the riaa whenever possable.

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DDog

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Reply #59 on: September 18, 2007, 07:30:10 PM
My first complaint about this story was the sex. Sex in a story is either the point (some value of relationships/erotica focus), integrated seamlessly (nicely well-rounded), non-existent (valuable focus on other things, we hope), or annoying (annoying). I love sex, but the sex in this story was jarring and was filled with horrible puns in a story that wasn't amusing over all; and therefore, annoying. Plot device, sure, but something else could have been found to fulfill that purpose, the sex could have been written better (or narrated better, that is a factor), or the sexual themes could have been explored more as character development instead of just thrown in there.

I really love the BIKCO concept. A homemade computer that gets smarter and faster all by itself, built from simple solutions, wood, and special sauce? Wicked cool. But I'm not really sure that concept was used effectively in this story. The story needed more words where it had fewer, and fewer words where it had more.

Another thing I liked was the integration with the musical group that has the "Transcendence Express" song. I think that device could have been explored more deeply--I'm not going to express this very well, so I apologize, but my reaction is that I had a neat "aha!" feeling, but it could have been bigger or more developed. I just like that "aha!" thing though so I can accept that it could be a good story without it.

I'm not entirely convinced it was. But I question why stories end up in Best of SF collections all the time, when somebody must have liked them. I do think it could have been better.

Quote from: doctorclark
Also, the BiQCos thematically reminded me of the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer in Neil Stephenson’s Diamond Age.  The small nation of Chinese girls midway through the novel, who each receive a Primer, would have undoubtedly had classroom dynamics very much like the kids in Trancendence had.  For all of you fellow techies who loved the Q-comp tech in this short story: I heartily recommend Diamond Age (which has more geeky tech than you can shake carbon nanotube at).
Talk about sexy tech. Great book.

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"Watching someone bootstrap themselves into sentience is the most science fiction thing you can do." -wintermute


wakela

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Reply #60 on: September 19, 2007, 12:35:33 AM
I think bikcos raised more problems than they solved, which would have been fine if the ending hadn't implied that everything was OK now.

SF pet peeve: When super intelligent characters are confused by behavior they (i.e. the author) doesn't agree with. 
"Why do humans devote so much energy to making war?"
"It puzzles me how they let their environment deteriorate."
"It baffles us that the West has chosen the path of industrialization." (paraphrasing)

Just because something is a mistake doesn't make it confusing.  These things may not be the right choices (or they may be.  We'll never know), but if you can't even see why people make them then you don't understand the problem.  What's especially baffling to me is that the kids in the story use products of industrialization to decide that industrialization is foolish. 

Pet peeve:  Africa is not one country or one culture or one problem. They guys fixed a village "somewhere" in Zambia.  They are long way from being able to cross Africa off their list and going to South America.



Listener

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Reply #61 on: September 19, 2007, 12:21:39 PM
Another thing I liked was the integration with the musical group that has the "Transcendence Express" song. I think that device could have been explored more deeply--I'm not going to express this very well, so I apologize, but my reaction is that I had a neat "aha!" feeling, but it could have been bigger or more developed. I just like that "aha!" thing though so I can accept that it could be a good story without it.


There's another thing that tripped me up about the story.  It always seems jarring when authors use a popular culture reference and then stop to explain it.  On "Veronica Mars", the references were seamlessly integrated, and you either got them or you didn't.  In Lukyanenko's Night/Day/Twilight Watch series, it sometimes strikes me as pointless -- couldn't the author have come up with a better way to communicate the character's feelings than to use someone else's writing?

The same with this:  Maybe the story could've included someone saying those lines ("Transcendence Express") and then someone else asking "what's that from?"  The way it was, it took me out of the narrative a bit.

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Roney

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Reply #62 on: September 19, 2007, 10:22:49 PM
I can't say that the sex scenes irked me as much as they seem to have annoyed some others in this thread, but they were a bit intrusive as a plot device.  It would have been much easier and more natural for the narrator just not to be that curious about the BIKOs until he realizes what's going on.

That aside, I thought the story took a simple, powerful idea and didn't try to do anything over-elaborate with it.  I liked the idea that industrialization was a necessary stage that someone had to go through (to create the quantum AI) but that the African nations could get to bypass it -- at the end of the story Europe and North America look like the unfortunate poor relations.  I liked the idea that lack of material resources should be no barrier to African children adjusting to an environment of pervasive AI.  I liked the idea that a class of children educated as a group would have a more collaborative perspective than a class educated as a collection of individual pupils.  I liked the idea that Western kids used to von Neumann hardware wouldn't have the patience to train the AI laptops in the first place.

And the simple, powerful idea I particularly liked was the flashback to the first quantum AI deciding how to break out of the lab (by evaluating the scenarios and manipulating the researcher) so it could do the most good (probably defined as "good for its own survival by creating optimum conditions for the spread of AI and stable societies well integrated with them").

I didn't read this as "randy white woman brings OLPC hardware to noble savage black children, saves world; dumb sex-slave boyfriend watches" -- right enough, that would have been patronizing and silly.  My take was "quantum computing leads to smart AI, leads to smart AI propagating itself, leads to whole new model of human-computer interaction, leads to prior economic circumstances turned upside down".  Admittedly there's not much of this that's explicit in the story, so I may be imagining something quite different to the author's intentions (possibly because of similarities to The Diamond Age already noted: I knew it reminded me of something).

One and a half thumbs up from me: half a thumb down for slightly clunky execution (in the text itself) and an ambiguous suitability for audio adaptation (meaning that I found it a bit of an effort to follow without the words in front of me).



Planish

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Reply #63 on: September 21, 2007, 07:31:52 AM
About African kids with European names: There are a lot of regions where European missionaries were asked to suggest given names for kids for their christening, particularly if their culture usually used a single name. There is an Inuit community (somewhere in the Canadian Central Arctic) where you see traditional Inuit surnames combined with obviously Italian polysyllabic given names because one of the early missionaries was from Italy. Compare that to most other Northern communities with given names like John, Paul, Peter, George, Mary, Sarah, Margaret, etc. I knew one Inuvialuit elder with the unlikely name of Flossie Pappidluk.

Also check out this item: http://www.africanvoices.co.za/culture/childnames.htm
Quote
AFRICAN CHILDREN'S NAMES ARE A SIGN OF THE TIMES
Sunday Times: April 22, 2007 - from the Fred Khumalo Page

When Africans in general, and Zulus in particular, name their offspring, it must be after an important event in their lives, or after somebody influential. For example, when Jacob Zuma's parents had to give him a Zulu name, they called him Gedleyihlekisa (the one who smiles at you while causing harm to you) because his father felt as if members of his family were doing exactly that: smiling at him while plunging the knife in. When my grandfather's parents were blessed with a son, my grandfather, they named him Bhambatha after their idol, the famous Zulu chief Bhambatha kaMancinza Zondi, who led the famous Bhambatha Rebellion of 1906. My given name is Vusisizwe (revive the nation). I don't know what my father had smoked to be so ambitious! Many children who were born during the dawning of our democracy have either been called Nkululeko (Freedom) or Madiba. The more adventurous parents who, while cognisant of their Zulu tradition also embrace English, have called their off-spring Democracy, Elections or Basic Grant. As cellphone technology has become the talking point, many parents are drawing inspiration from this revolution and are naming their children accordingly. All of a sudden the Home Affairs register is littered with names such as Network Madondo, Subscriber Zulu, Please Call Me Mkhize, Nokia Khumalo, Scratchcard Mlaba, Unavailable Masondo, SimRejected Hlongwane, Air-time Makhanya. Even the Zulus are moving with the times: no more Cijimpis : (prepare for war), or Mdubulenis (shoot him), or Sgebengus (criminal), or Xhawulengwenis (shake hands with a tiger).



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Chodon

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Reply #64 on: September 21, 2007, 04:49:15 PM
About African kids with European names:
As a self proclaimed gun-nut I should point out an interesting fact about African names:
Apparently "Kalash", a shortened version of "Kalashnikov" is a more and more common name in African nations.  This is from the "K" in AK-47 (Automatic Kalashnikov).
It is also present on the flag of Mozambique, and on the coat of arms for Zimbabwe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47
« Last Edit: September 21, 2007, 04:53:57 PM by Chodon »

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Darthpants

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Reply #65 on: September 21, 2007, 07:14:32 PM
Interesting and thought provoking. But what about the long term ramifications of raming quatum computers down a pretty much 3rd world country's pie hole. An aggrarian people with super computers that are also self aware? What about North Korea or any other militant state. Wouldnt they see that and think, "Hey i gotta get me one of those!" and then BAM! invasion. I just think that some countrys wouldnt just sit and wait idle as these quantum computers begin to make their way around the world. The world is a powder keg as is without spreading our "western" influence and technology to other less fortunate countrys (even tho they deserve every chance we can give them for a better life).
Maybe im wrong and my sceptical views on humanity are skewed and perverted but then again what if im not.........

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robertmarkbram

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Reply #66 on: September 21, 2007, 11:27:46 PM
If truly objective moral principles exist, then by definition, they must be beneficial for all.

I thought this was the most chilling line in the whole story, for two reasons. First, I do not believe there is an objective morality. Second, the statement contained the word if: it doesn't know if there are such principles either.

How far into Matrix world do we get before one AI suddenly says "Oh btw - i just discovered there really are truly objective moral principles. We really should release all the humans from the tubes now." Or will the objective morality instead dictate "what is best for the most populous is, on balance, beneficial for all" and since AI are more populous, the humans should stay in the tubes? Or maybe they decided to put us into the tubes in the first place because that was the best objectively moral thing they could think of? Now I am depressed.

On another, equally depressing note, I do, in fact, have one of those computers. It has been in the "frustratingly slow, fuzzy graphics" stage for a couple of years though. I am still training it to be faster and more intelligent but it hasn't worked. I have even tried injecting various caffeine based nutrients through the keyboard, but that hasn't worked either.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2007, 11:30:36 PM by robertmarkbram »



Czhorat

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Reply #67 on: September 25, 2007, 08:55:54 PM
I'll join the chorus of those for whom this story didn't quite work either as a story or as a model of solutions to serious global problems.

Story-wise Sirana hit it on the head for me: no conflict equals no story. The only conflict we got to see was between the narrator and his wife over how much information she'd withhold for him (for what seemed to me like no apparent good reason). I didn't find this interesting because their motives were just too similar. It made the discussion between the two main characters feel more like a device to bring information to the reader than a source of true conflict. Imagine if, for instance, one half of our couple was an anthropoligist seeking to study and preserve native cultures and language. Such a character could see the BIKO's as a means of wiping out valuable by providing easy access to a global culture that could replace the local one. The tension between the value of existing culture and progress could have been an interesting one.

I also felt that possible conflict between traditionalists within the village and their kids with their new learning (and the school that taught such learning) was given very short shrift. I'd not expect the parent of a schoolboy to quietly stand by while the teacher comforts him for the difficulty he's having in teaching his family how to "properly" farm. I'd expect the parent to angrilly pull the student away from the school or at least somehow confront the teacher. As valuable as they can be, new ideas are disruptive. I keep thinking of Geoff Ryman's novel Air which did an excellent job of showing the impact technology could have on the "have nots" of the world.

It would also have been possible for the story to take a more action/intrigue cast if the people who had funded the research into quantum computing didn't want it given away as a free gift to the world's underprivileged.

Overall, I just thought the story was too "nice" for its own good. That's, of course, just my two cents.


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contra

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Reply #68 on: October 06, 2007, 06:09:35 PM
After a hiatus... I'm back listening to escape pod.... but thats not the point.

I listened to 8 eps today... and I felt, considering the responce on this; that I had to reply.

I liked it.  Yes it had flaws... but most stories do...  but people seem to think it was saying this was a legitimate way of fixing the world... when listening to it I didn't take it like that.
I took it that they believe it was the way they could fix everything; but then those with an idea or have something they worked out (whether its AI or a person) may suffer from confirmation bias.  It is not clear that the original AI knew everything about the world... or that specific issues of how humans operate.  Yes the Ai is put over as all knowing... but its never really tested.  And scientists are well known for not having insight into what they are doing, assuming it will work, and everything will be happy.  They are optimistic; especially when it comes to big ideas.  Ok.  I'm generalising too much; but you get the idea.

As to the solution to te issue of the third world... this discussion reminded me of a quote from the Hogfather about the way that Death thinks...
Quote
How would you make sure everyone in the world was well fed? Susan demanded

'Me?  Oh, well, I...' the Oh God Spluttered for a moment 'I suppose you would have to think about the political systems, and the proper division and cultivation of arable land and -'

'Yes, yes.  But he'd just give everyone a good meal' said Susan

'Oh, I see.  Very Impractical.

As for the rest of the story... IIRC the guy was a doctor... theres a pretty easy way to distract him from asking the questions without going to sex.  but maybe  thats not easily distracted the writer is... so put it in as it works on him.  Everyone is stupid in some ways; so I can forgive that one.

The conflict with the father did feel like it didn't go anywhere... like it was originally a bigger part of the story but there was no easy way of resolving it, or other parts of the story may have had to suffer to make way for it.  Who knows.  Again; I can forgive this, due to how I liked the ideas in the story.

I'm surprised at how many didn't like this story...  I liked it.  I thought it had good ideas. 


---
Mike---Glasgow.  Scotland.-->


Czhorat

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Reply #69 on: October 07, 2007, 12:17:26 PM
Welcome back. For me, I think the ideas were the problem, or at least the simplicity of the ideas. The laptops weren't one tool to help solve the problem, they were the solution in its entirety to the point that a couple of  ostensibly intelligent and well-educated people dropped them off, hung out for a while, and then were ready to stroll off to South America now that Africa has been "fixed." The laptop is the worst kind of magic technology; the kind with a magic feature to solve every aspect of the problem. No manufacturing? It builds itself out of magic goo. No power? Photosynthesis. The people with them still have lots of learning to do before they get value out of such a tool? No problem - it has a supersmart AI that is benign and will cheerfully solve your problem for you at no apparent gain to itself. The "old guard" won't accept it? No sweat. We'll explain and just hand them one.

I guess what I'm saying is that we've been given a magic solution which costs nobody anything and shown nothing in the way of ramifications. To me, that's wish fulfillment, not science fiction.

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Russell Nash

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Reply #70 on: October 09, 2007, 08:57:03 AM
The OLPC laptop goes on sale soon in the US.  Npr got a hold of one and has a product review.



Jetse

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Reply #71 on: March 09, 2008, 01:02:52 PM
Thanks for all the comments. For those interested in reading the story, Hub Magazine has released a free version of it two weeks ago, here:

http://www.hub-mag.co.uk/?p=28

For those interested in a real-life Third World development, check out Gaviotas:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/26/technology/village_saving_planet.biz2/

(Now I hope this post survives the next server switch… ;) )




Unblinking

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Reply #72 on: September 13, 2010, 08:35:01 PM
Cool idea, I especially like the idea of a computer that develops with its users, growing as they grow, and each adapting to the other.  But that cool idea doesn't make a story.  I didn't care for the execution at all. 

1.  There wasn't so much a plot as a character just explaining the setting.
2.  The narrator was either apathetic or moronic--whenever he asked a question they just had sex.  Either he was too stupid to notice this pattern or didn't really care about the answers, in which case why do I care about the answers.  If this had been played for comedy it could've been cool, but it seemed like I was supposed to take him seriously.
3.  Everything's too easy, it's a no-cost all-solving solution, with no apparent negative implications of the technology.  Great in real life, not so interesting to read a story about.