Diamond Age {ReadingNotes}

The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson - ISBN 0553380966 - Bantam Books 2000

Reading

• "we can assume that all of his tag mites were detected and destroyed by Atlantis/Shanghai'ss immune system." (p90)
  • thus introducing an idea very close to the concept of extended Bernardism discussed in The Things We Do

Situation on the book with potential analogous today

• racting (probably a portmanteau for "remote acting")
  • AmazonTurk in the sense that it's work that can hardly be automatized and contracts are weak/loose
  • distance schooling/tutoring (probably mainly used for foreign languages so far)
  • human NPCs in online games
    • Are NPCs better role players? by Nate Combs, Terra Nova, 2007
    • Virtual Economy Research Network on how it could potentially become more realistic as the economy takes place
  • very close to the remote workers in Sleep Dealer
    • BBC memoryshare sounds a lot like ? (forgot the name of the corporation) in Sleep Dealer to which Memo and others sell their memories to
      • link posted and name requested on the official blog of the movie
• the primer with its potential political usage
  • the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative
• the M.C. or Matter Compiler
  • Molecular assembler by K. Eric Drexler originally published in Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation
  • rapid prototyping
  • 3D printing
  • ...yet no nanotechnology equivalent (except the Claytronics with its Intel "over the top" design video)
  • Personal Nanofactories (PNs), Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN)
• dynamic labyrinth (p396)
  • a labyrinth in which you try to find the algorithm behind walls re-disposition rather than an absolute path
    • could eventually be transformed into a cognitive challenging game (and included in SecondLife to make it a more immersive experience)
      • moved to its dedicated Seedea page
  • very close to the principle of Cube
• feed lines as equivalent of pipelines to run Matter Compilers
  • probably the geopolitical challgence of that time
• wet Net (p458) and somewhat earlier discussing CypherNet being computing nodes
  • "Like the dry Net, the wet Net could be used for doing computations—for running programs."
  • "The devices lived in the blood of the human race like viruses and passed from one person to the next during sex or any other exchange of bodily fluids; they were smart packets of data, just like the ones traversing the media network, and by mating with one another in the blood, they formed a vast system of communication, parallel to and probably linked with the dry Net of optical lines and copper wires."

Notes on technique

• desire of reading SciFi <=> crack
  • highly addictive, not being able to put the book down
    • strong coherence
    • interesting topics (politic, technology, ethic, ...) presented in a non-boring way
    • unpredictability of a complex scenario unfolding, always keeping the reader on his toes
• classic techniques that were used in it so far
  • gradual introduction of specific vocabulary
    • creating a unique atmosphere yet not being overwhelming or sounding artificial
  • independent actors with their own storyline fusionning
    • keep the story less monotonous, more dynamic

See also

• How to Build Nanotech Motors by Thomas E. Mallouk and Ayusman Sen, Scientific American Magazine May 2009
• New E-Textbooks Do More Than Inform: They Grade You by Jeffrey R. Young, The Chronicle of Higher Education September 2009
  • McGraw-Hill Higher Education
• PrimerLabs.com
  • with its motto "Code the change you wish to see"
  • notion of AI/IA

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