Re: OFF TOPIC Snow Crash [was Re: Hello World]
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 15:13:25 +1100, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > Deep in the brain, well underneath the level of modern languages and > consciousness, there is a deeper "machine language" of the brain. If you > can write instructions in this machine language, you can control > people's brains. Back in the distant past, the Sumerians learned how to > do this via spoken language, but few people speak Sumerian any more, > hence there are two versions of Snow Crash: one is a drug plus virus. > The drug is to encourage people to inject themselves, which then allows > the virus to get into their brain. The other is an animated bitmap, > which contains "machine code" for the human brain, and is injected via > the optic nerve (i.e. when a hacker sees it). is this why web designers are now embeding QR codes in web pages? -- Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table. -- Dave Barry, "The Snake" -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: OFF TOPIC Snow Crash [was Re: Hello World]
alex23 wrote: > On 24/12/2014 2:20 AM, Grant Edwards wrote: >> And even _with_ all the technical jibber-jabber, none of it explained >> or justified the whole "writing a virus to infect the brain through >> the optic nerve" thing which might just have well been magick and >> witches. > > While I love SNOW CRASH, I do think it'd fundamentally flawed. The worst > for me is that in a fictional universe with a VR system capable of > displaying anything, the crux of the book revolves around a couple of > characters having a long, long discussion about Sumerian history. > > A: "" > B: "And then what?" > A: "" > B: etc Keep in mind the limitations of the media. The novel is written word, so there are only a limited number of ways of getting background information to the reader. In this case, having one character (an AI) tell another character (the protagonist) what he needs to know is arguably the least-worst way. The many pages of info-dumping is one of the lesser parts of the book. I wonder what Stephenson's motive for writing it as dialog was, because in other parts of the book he demonstrated great skill in imparting background information to the reader without dry info-dumps (e.g. the Rat Things). At least it is information that is *not* common knowledge in-universe. Old pulp SF used to be filled with cheesy dialog like this: Attractive but stupid female: "Professor, I know you've told me before, but how does the microwave oven work again?" Avuncular male authority figure: "Well my dear, as you know all foods contain water molecules. The oven uses radio-frequency subatomic radiation, know as 'microwaves', specially tuned to excite the oxygen-to-hydrogen molecular bonds in water molecules. As you know, heat is just the action of excited molecular bonds, so this has the effect of beaming heat energy deep into the food so that it cooks from the inside out without burning. and then the microwave oven is not used for anything more exciting than making a cup of tea for the rest of the book. In the case of Snow Crash, I think we need to keep in mind when it was written. In 1990, the idea that you might *carry on a conversation* with your computer still seemed (1) plausible to SF readers, who expected strong AI and robots with Asimov's Three Laws to be just around the corner, and (2) the widespread public Internet, or even use of computers, was still pretty rare. The idea that you could only get information out of a computer by typing, or pointing, would have struck readers in 1994 as terribly unrealistic. The other interface, the holographic interface so beloved of recent SF television and movies where you push screens around in space, hadn't been invented yet, and isn't terribly good for getting information to the reader since they can't actually see what is on the screen. > It's been at least a decade since I read it, but wasn't that also the > explanation for how the virus worked? Deep in the brain, well underneath the level of modern languages and consciousness, there is a deeper "machine language" of the brain. If you can write instructions in this machine language, you can control people's brains. Back in the distant past, the Sumerians learned how to do this via spoken language, but few people speak Sumerian any more, hence there are two versions of Snow Crash: one is a drug plus virus. The drug is to encourage people to inject themselves, which then allows the virus to get into their brain. The other is an animated bitmap, which contains "machine code" for the human brain, and is injected via the optic nerve (i.e. when a hacker sees it). -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: OFF TOPIC Snow Crash [was Re: Hello World]
On 24/12/2014 9:50 PM, alister wrote: what feels like 3 or 4 chapters in & it is still trying to set the scene, an exercise in stylish writing with very little content so far. even early scifi written for magazines on a per word basis were not this excessive (because if they were they would probably have been rejected or seriously edited). My personal theory is that Stephenson polishes and polishes the first few chapters until the whole creative process really engages - the first chapter is especially overwritten - and then tears through the novel in an increasingly unrefined way, until it arrives at its anticlimactic conclusion. He was notorious for a while for not providing satisfying endings to his books. Hopefully it will finally settle down & amend my current impression. SNOW CRASH doesn't, I'm afraid, but Stephenson himself does as a writer. CRYPTONOMICON is a great geek read. ANATHEM is a fantastic piece of SF (possibly my favourite of his) THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD is an amazing accomplishment and really shows that modern infotech didn't spring out of nothing like Venus from the foam. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: OFF TOPIC Snow Crash [was Re: Hello World]
On 24/12/2014 2:20 AM, Grant Edwards wrote: And even _with_ all the technical jibber-jabber, none of it explained or justified the whole "writing a virus to infect the brain through the optic nerve" thing which might just have well been magick and witches. While I love SNOW CRASH, I do think it'd fundamentally flawed. The worst for me is that in a fictional universe with a VR system capable of displaying anything, the crux of the book revolves around a couple of characters having a long, long discussion about Sumerian history. A: "" B: "And then what?" A: "" B: etc It's been at least a decade since I read it, but wasn't that also the explanation for how the virus worked? -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: OFF TOPIC Snow Crash [was Re: Hello World]
On Tue, 23 Dec 2014 16:20:10 +, Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2014-12-23, Steven D'Aprano > wrote: >> Chris Angelico wrote: >> >>> On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Roy Smith wrote: If I really didn't trust something, I'd go to AWS and spin up one of their free-tier micro instances and run it there :-) >>> >>> How do you know it won't create console output that stroboscopically >>> infects you with a virus through your eyes? Because that's *totally* >>> what would be done in the town of Eureka. >> >> Anybody in IT who hasn't read Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" needs to >> hand in their Geek Card immediately. > > I tried, but I got so tired of the author doing stuff like pointing out > that there were 65536 of something or other (and that it's a power of > TWO, kids!) that I gave up. The annoying thing was that there was no > real technical reason why the quantity _needed_ to be a power of two. > Too many of the technical details that you got constantly beat over the > head with were > > 1) not even remotely relevent to the story > > 2) mostly an effort by the author to demonstrate that he had a > junior-high level understanding of a 68K based Macintosh and knew > lots of cool grown up tech-sounding words -- and even if had only a > vague idea of what they meant, he could still impress the other > 13-year olds. > > 3) just plain wrong > > And even _with_ all the technical jibber-jabber, none of it explained or > justified the whole "writing a virus to infect the brain through the > optic nerve" thing which might just have well been magick and witches. I am reading it now thanks to this list & I currently agree that it is quite annoying what feels like 3 or 4 chapters in & it is still trying to set the scene, an exercise in stylish writing with very little content so far. even early scifi written for magazines on a per word basis were not this excessive (because if they were they would probably have been rejected or seriously edited). Hopefully it will finally settle down & amend my current impression. -- Guns don't kill people. It's those damn bullets. Guns just make them go really really fast. -- Jake Johanson -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: OFF TOPIC Snow Crash [was Re: Hello World]
Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2014-12-23, Steven D'Aprano > wrote: >> Chris Angelico wrote: >> >>> On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Roy Smith wrote: If I really didn't trust something, I'd go to AWS and spin up one of their free-tier micro instances and run it there :-) >>> >>> How do you know it won't create console output that stroboscopically >>> infects you with a virus through your eyes? Because that's *totally* >>> what would be done in the town of Eureka. >> >> Anybody in IT who hasn't read Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" needs to >> hand in their Geek Card immediately. > > I tried, but I got so tired of the author doing stuff like pointing > out that there were 65536 of something or other (and that it's a power > of TWO, kids!) that I gave up. The annoying thing was that there was > no real technical reason why the quantity _needed_ to be a power of > two. Neal Stephenson's technical chops, and his limits, are well established. He is a writer first and foremost and it is quite obvious that he's often showing off his technical knowledge even when it's not strictly relevant. Remember to that Snow Crash became a cult classic among hackers, but it was written for a science fiction and cyberpunk audience. To them, 2^16 is a strange and exotic concept: 1, or 5, or 10 would be a round number, not 65536. > And even _with_ all the technical jibber-jabber, none of it explained > or justified the whole "writing a virus to infect the brain through > the optic nerve" thing which might just have well been magick and > witches. Any sufficiently advanced technology. I disagree. I think he did a good job of making such a thing seem plausible without getting bogged down with inventing a detailed mechanism which could only ever be wrong. But then I was easily convinced, because I already knew of various related facts and concepts which probably primed me to accept the concept of the Snow Crash virus: - Zombie ant fungus and various other parasites which manipulate the brains of organisms, including human beings (Toxoplasmosis, syphillis and others). - The optic nerve is technically not a nerve, but part of the brain, and there are deep and subtle connections between it and the rest of the brain, e.g. blind-sight. - The theory of memes, or perhaps I should say the meme of memes, since memetics has never been quite vigorous enough to count as an actual theory. - Super-stimuli. - The human brain considered as an information processor. - Julian Jaynes' book "The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind", a hypothesis so wonderful that it needs to be true (alas, it's probably rubbish). Personally, I don't believe that in this day and age of Java programming, anyone could be programmed by looking at a black and white animated bitmap, but back in the 1990s it was probably a bit more plausible that hackers would spend their time learning to read machine code. But there's always the chance that somebody will find a way a stimulus that crashes the human brain and lets them run the arbitrary code of their choice... -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: OFF TOPIC Snow Crash [was Re: Hello World]
Rustom Mody wrote: > On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 9:50:22 PM UTC+5:30, Grant Edwards wrote: >> >> And even _with_ all the technical jibber-jabber, none of it explained >> or justified the whole "writing a virus to infect the brain through >> the optic nerve" thing which might just have well been magick and >> witches. > > You find that far-fetched? > I would have thought it commoner than common-cold -- basis for the > trillion dollar industry called advertising [controversial and perhaps annoying] To say nothing of religion, both the supernatural/mystical kind and the "my editor/programming language/brand of car/gaming console/etc is better than yours" kind... -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: OFF TOPIC Snow Crash [was Re: Hello World]
On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 9:50:22 PM UTC+5:30, Grant Edwards wrote: > > And even _with_ all the technical jibber-jabber, none of it explained > or justified the whole "writing a virus to infect the brain through > the optic nerve" thing which might just have well been magick and > witches. You find that far-fetched? I would have thought it commoner than common-cold -- basis for the trillion dollar industry called advertising -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: OFF TOPIC Snow Crash [was Re: Hello World]
On 2014-12-23, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: > >> On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Roy Smith wrote: >>> If I really didn't trust something, I'd go to AWS and spin up one of >>> their free-tier micro instances and run it there :-) >> >> How do you know it won't create console output that stroboscopically >> infects you with a virus through your eyes? Because that's *totally* >> what would be done in the town of Eureka. > > Anybody in IT who hasn't read Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" needs to hand > in their Geek Card immediately. I tried, but I got so tired of the author doing stuff like pointing out that there were 65536 of something or other (and that it's a power of TWO, kids!) that I gave up. The annoying thing was that there was no real technical reason why the quantity _needed_ to be a power of two. Too many of the technical details that you got constantly beat over the head with were 1) not even remotely relevent to the story 2) mostly an effort by the author to demonstrate that he had a junior-high level understanding of a 68K based Macintosh and knew lots of cool grown up tech-sounding words -- and even if had only a vague idea of what they meant, he could still impress the other 13-year olds. 3) just plain wrong And even _with_ all the technical jibber-jabber, none of it explained or justified the whole "writing a virus to infect the brain through the optic nerve" thing which might just have well been magick and witches. -- Grant -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
