Last weekend I finally finished reading Charles Stross excellent 'accelerando', a brilliant, complicated & funny story of the impending technological singularity and the repercussions for the future of humanity.
It begins a few years or so in the future, and ends three generations later in a floating city high in the atmosphere above Saturn. One of the key characters is a robot cat. There are digital lobsters, albino orangutans and a flock of pidgeons that work as one group mind.
If this sounds like your cup-o-tea, then you're in luck, because the entire novel is available free, online here.
If you'd like a different file-type than the above html, then you're also in luck, because on www.accelerando.org there are links to text file version, ebooks version, pdf's.. you name it.
There is also a technical companion for the novel... it can be a pretty full-on read.
In other news, I gots me a shiny new phone. It's a htc touch cruise [see below] and it's a load of nerdy fun.
.. Sure, I haven't entirely figured out how to use it, but I will, and it shall be grande. Update: I've actually just signed up for an unlimited mobile data plan, I figure that that's the way everything is probably going to be in a few years time anyway, so why not jump on it now and see what it's like.
I specifically wanted unlimited data because I wanted a situation where I didn't have to worry about the costs.
Kinda like with the invent of digital cameras. I don't know about you, but when I was using a film camera, I was a lot more selective about what shots I took because every shutter close cost me about 80 cents to develop the film.
Sure, it could be argued that this could be creatively inspiring, I admit that limitation is quite useful when inspiring creativity. But I also bet that I missed out on a lot of good shots.
The thing is that I'm not necessarily trying to be creative here, at least not as a major motivation. I want to feel what it's like to be able to take photos on my phonecam and upload it to flicker and create blog posts directly from the device and do things like IM and streaming audio without worrying about my bill.
I want to explore my options :)
Last Saturday I also spend about 2hrs sitting in the coffee bean at Low Yat, drinking the largest no-fuss, sumartran dark coffee I could buy and reading.
It was so relaxing, why don't I do this more often?
I don't have the answer. I haven't been a coffeeshop sitter since at university, and honestly, it's a bad thing.
Sitting in coffee shops for hours is clearly the pinnacle of our society, and, if we're going to progress as a species it should be encouraged at all costs.
and yes, the accelerando book cover has been oh-so-realistically placed in the lower corner by yours truly.
Hmmm.. what else did I do last weekend? Oh yes, we went to see 'John Rambo', which was actually my girlfriend's idea *shock*, and quite a good idea at that.
I'll cover my thoughts on the movie in another post.
Till then, tata.
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