Neal Stephenson Saw the Fractures in the American Soul and Prophesied the Fractured Age. From The Feed to Techno-Feudalism, The Future He Predicted Is Already Here.
Such a great summary. Several of these books have been bouncing around in my head as comparisons to our current timeline. I think between Stephenson and the Simpsons we have the future pretty well mapped out.
My pleasure, really! Fiction holds so many keys to reading our times properly, and the future looming ahead. Stephenson makes a great case for a "wait a minute" moment...
I’ve always said the Neal writes just around the corner and often will read a headline that reminds me of one of his books. Could explain why he generally has a poor ending! lol. Such a brilliant writer. And why my favourite book is anathem. Which is your favourite?
To DenZ… that is. Great reads. Started with Baroque Cycle, read forward, then back. Each could be made into movies or series. Epic adventure, philosophic critique, hopping through time/space. Small set place to globe spanning. Investigative, interesting characters… wonderful.
Sometimes a slog of meticulously crafted observational details…
From the Shaftoe family to Sophia and her daughter. Hard to pick a favorite. My top five: Baroque Cycle, Diamond Age, The Big U, Cyptonomicon, to… Terminal Shock.
Even the ones that took a long time to get through. (How I read includes blasting through a quick read to taking a number of years to get all the way through a book. Say, Salman Rushdie The Midnight Children. Currently have >20 books in process.)
Very interesting is how you forget about a book but then you look at the moon and you think of Seveneyes. Or a jar of pickles.
Some are still searching for Solomon’s Gold. Heavy gold… Gold-198 and 199… others have found it.
Thank you to Slick for sharing outside the paywall. Calmed my morning…
Birds are chirping, a few cars rolling, slight cool breeze, as the marine layer parts and sunshine emerges. No sirens or train song NOW.
How do you learn how to understand how deep the cage goes? How long does it take to learn that if one did not spend one's preceding years building up a huge background of knowledge in a disciplined way? Can one truly "rise to the need of the time", then? What are those needs? I feel like being asked to "run a marathon as a couch potato with 30 days to get ready" in this.
Also, what do we call an "appearance and disappearance of magic"? Does the world literally change as we start looking at it differently, i.e. do the laws of cause and effect shift so things that were previously causally efficacious become less so and conversely, literally like a dream? Or is everything that was before possible still possible now, but we just have to avoid being funneled in perception? But moreover, should we see the "scientific" and "magical" views or ideas necessarily as a competition? What would it mean if we could pile together the full set of observations (i.e. not theories - just hard data) made under both views, as they are, and assert both are simultaneously entirely correct, legitimate, and/or "reasonable"? Where would that get us?
Sure, but how do you do that? How do you get that knowledge of whatever kind it is, if not book or rote - *fast*, where the term "fast" is defined by the parameters the moving situation sets forward? But also you must have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge to write these posts and I'm sure a lot of it comes from books, articles, etc. even if not all. (I mean, Neal Stephenson himself wrote ... books, even if fiction books, still books and which still contain "knowledge" in the form of *ideas*.) And so how can one rapidly close that competence gap to be able to become *ahead* of the curve and *majorly* affect the world for the better?
Majorly affecting the world for the better is a high bar to set. An easier approach is to ask yourself, what do I want to do?
I didn't think I'd write about the technate or Neal Stephenson's dystopian foresight when I started my Substack a few months ago. But I started it, and here we are, it feels like it's writing itself.
tl;dr don't be like me, be like you. Radically like you.
Why choose to lower a bar? Why not shoot for the high bar and if you miss at least you didn't miss for lack of trying - remember that if you don't shoot, what if had you shot you would not have missed?
Other point is I don't see it as being you, but rather that you need *knowledge* to do stuff in *any* capacity that's likely to be of strong benefit. It's a kind of universal rule of human accomplishment, I'd think. It's not a matter of having the exact same kind of knowledge as you, but having an amount sufficient to make pieces that can be influential with whatever kind is best suited/natural to me. To be "radically like me" at a much bigger scale, instead of SETTLING.
I hear that, but right now it feels like you're facing an insurmountable lack of knowledge that's in the way of getting started on whatever you're gonna do. So maybe you don't need all the knowledge, you need to start?
The thing I want to start is gaining more knowledge. In particular, how do you get enough specific, citeable facts to write something that is solid and doesn’t end up like just vague hand-waving and opining? How do you manage to remember all that? Do you read pages several times over, rote memorize from notes, etc.? Do you really do a lot of rote hard drilling?
The "thing I want right now" in this context is the ability to write pieces that will be of high contributive quality.
Since when did life become something you have to buy? Jack London
Such a great summary. Several of these books have been bouncing around in my head as comparisons to our current timeline. I think between Stephenson and the Simpsons we have the future pretty well mapped out.
Hahaha yes. The Simpsons are just a bit more hit-and-miss.
Apparently seeing the future takes a goatee.
This was fantastic. Thank you ❤️
My pleasure, really! Fiction holds so many keys to reading our times properly, and the future looming ahead. Stephenson makes a great case for a "wait a minute" moment...
INDEED! :)
I’ve always said the Neal writes just around the corner and often will read a headline that reminds me of one of his books. Could explain why he generally has a poor ending! lol. Such a brilliant writer. And why my favourite book is anathem. Which is your favourite?
I remember the Baroque Cycle feeling so broad in scope and wild, yet so deep...
His books have too many pages. No chance in today’s quick-click & selfie-engaged society.
Ah. I don't think long form is dead, far from it. But book sales numbers would say you're right.
I call BS.
To DenZ… that is. Great reads. Started with Baroque Cycle, read forward, then back. Each could be made into movies or series. Epic adventure, philosophic critique, hopping through time/space. Small set place to globe spanning. Investigative, interesting characters… wonderful.
Sometimes a slog of meticulously crafted observational details…
From the Shaftoe family to Sophia and her daughter. Hard to pick a favorite. My top five: Baroque Cycle, Diamond Age, The Big U, Cyptonomicon, to… Terminal Shock.
Even the ones that took a long time to get through. (How I read includes blasting through a quick read to taking a number of years to get all the way through a book. Say, Salman Rushdie The Midnight Children. Currently have >20 books in process.)
Very interesting is how you forget about a book but then you look at the moon and you think of Seveneyes. Or a jar of pickles.
Some are still searching for Solomon’s Gold. Heavy gold… Gold-198 and 199… others have found it.
Thank you to Slick for sharing outside the paywall. Calmed my morning…
Birds are chirping, a few cars rolling, slight cool breeze, as the marine layer parts and sunshine emerges. No sirens or train song NOW.
That the Snow Crash guy? Cool idea book, horribly written.
Yes, that’s him. Snow Crash is in the piece, too
How do you learn how to understand how deep the cage goes? How long does it take to learn that if one did not spend one's preceding years building up a huge background of knowledge in a disciplined way? Can one truly "rise to the need of the time", then? What are those needs? I feel like being asked to "run a marathon as a couch potato with 30 days to get ready" in this.
Also, what do we call an "appearance and disappearance of magic"? Does the world literally change as we start looking at it differently, i.e. do the laws of cause and effect shift so things that were previously causally efficacious become less so and conversely, literally like a dream? Or is everything that was before possible still possible now, but we just have to avoid being funneled in perception? But moreover, should we see the "scientific" and "magical" views or ideas necessarily as a competition? What would it mean if we could pile together the full set of observations (i.e. not theories - just hard data) made under both views, as they are, and assert both are simultaneously entirely correct, legitimate, and/or "reasonable"? Where would that get us?
It's not about book knowledge or rote if that's what you're asking. Far from it.
I'll write more about the cage soon. And "both are true" that you raise is not a bad starting point.
Sure, but how do you do that? How do you get that knowledge of whatever kind it is, if not book or rote - *fast*, where the term "fast" is defined by the parameters the moving situation sets forward? But also you must have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge to write these posts and I'm sure a lot of it comes from books, articles, etc. even if not all. (I mean, Neal Stephenson himself wrote ... books, even if fiction books, still books and which still contain "knowledge" in the form of *ideas*.) And so how can one rapidly close that competence gap to be able to become *ahead* of the curve and *majorly* affect the world for the better?
Majorly affecting the world for the better is a high bar to set. An easier approach is to ask yourself, what do I want to do?
I didn't think I'd write about the technate or Neal Stephenson's dystopian foresight when I started my Substack a few months ago. But I started it, and here we are, it feels like it's writing itself.
tl;dr don't be like me, be like you. Radically like you.
Why choose to lower a bar? Why not shoot for the high bar and if you miss at least you didn't miss for lack of trying - remember that if you don't shoot, what if had you shot you would not have missed?
Other point is I don't see it as being you, but rather that you need *knowledge* to do stuff in *any* capacity that's likely to be of strong benefit. It's a kind of universal rule of human accomplishment, I'd think. It's not a matter of having the exact same kind of knowledge as you, but having an amount sufficient to make pieces that can be influential with whatever kind is best suited/natural to me. To be "radically like me" at a much bigger scale, instead of SETTLING.
I shall not settle. End of story.
I hear that, but right now it feels like you're facing an insurmountable lack of knowledge that's in the way of getting started on whatever you're gonna do. So maybe you don't need all the knowledge, you need to start?
The thing I want to start is gaining more knowledge. In particular, how do you get enough specific, citeable facts to write something that is solid and doesn’t end up like just vague hand-waving and opining? How do you manage to remember all that? Do you read pages several times over, rote memorize from notes, etc.? Do you really do a lot of rote hard drilling?
The "thing I want right now" in this context is the ability to write pieces that will be of high contributive quality.
Why ‘hard’ data?