Accelerando

A cyberpunk written by Charles David George Stross in 2005
Reviewed edition by Ace from 2006
A paperback has 410 pages
ISBN 0-441-01415-1

Click to rate this book from worst

to best.

Manfred Macx is lucky to live in the era of stunning technological progress - improved human-computer interfaces based on neural connections, truly intelligent artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, starflight. In fact, he is not only living in the era - he is riding the wave, making his living out of staying abreast of everyone else, picking up technological trends before others even know they could be trends to begin with.

Of course, with progress comes change. What would happen if people were wired all the time, delegating the monotonous parts of social interaction to software agents ? What would happen if artificial intelligence entered business, optimizing the process better than any human could ? What would happen if nanotechnology advanced so much everything could be converted into nanomachines ? Just read the book to find out ...

The book is available online under the Creative Commons License. The address is http://www.antipope.org/charlie/accelerando.

Review

My first hour with Accelerando was quite discouraging. Full of quasi-technological mumbo-jumbo, the text was grating on my nerves - I guess I was afraid it would turn into another "Locke and Demosthenes post on the web to save the world" piece (if you did not read the Ender Series from Orson Scott Card, check out XKCD at http://xkcd.com/635 to see what I have in mind).

Gradually, however, the book got me :-) to use the words of one of the characters - it almost felt like it makes sense. It became clear that while Charles Stross is letting his imagination run wild where technology is concerned, he is really only using it to highlight some of the absurdities that we run into every day. By the time I got to read about Economy 2.0 (optimized by artificial intelligence to be extremely efficient, except that the concept of value no longer makes sense to humans), I knew I was hooked. The cyberpunk jacket aside, this is certainly a book to read to get a slightly humorous but certainly thought provoking look at where we are heading.

Rated as good by Ceres on 2009-10-04

Back To Index