Blogging the Noosphere

Just finished this delightful little book, Rapture for the Geeks, by Dooling (see MacLeod’s Fall Revolution series for the origin of the expression of his title).  A fun little book, and a bit different from what I was expecting.  It is about the singularity, of course, but it also channels parts of the Jargon file / Hacker’s Dictionary, Raymond’s Art of Unix Programming and other works of Unix and Open Source advocacy, with a dash of the Science v. Religion discourse of the likes of Dennett, Hitchins and Dawkins.

I quite enjoyed the book, though there is nothing really new here in terms of an original contribution to the topics by Dooling.  Those unfamiliar with the concept of the technological singularity, though, will find a lot of good references and ideas to follow up from here.  Dooling  collects quotes and excepts from all of the great original thinkers, from Turing through Kurzweil.  I was right with him till probably the last chapter where, to my mind, he looses the courage of his convictions on the value of religion regarding its moral and philosophical contributions.  He seems early on to be right with the scientists when talking about minds, brains and the “soul”.  So found his wishy-washiness in the end a bit perplexing.

But as I said there is a lot of fun to be had.  I haven’t mentioned my admiration of the poetry of Emily Dickenson yet in this blog.  For some reason, she appears to appeal enormously to those of the geeky mindset, especially her poem about the Mind/Brain.  Dooling presents a Python program version of Emily’s famous poem (again not his work, but that of Martelli and Ravenscroft of the Python Cookbook fame, and Google and, BTW, who are working with Guido, the inventor of Python, at Google on the Python language and other projects).  It is an example of the pure poetry of programming in general, and the Python programming language in particular.

Just finished Stephenson’s Anathem this week.  Initial impressions: I definitely liked it a lot, though it may not end up being my favourite Stephenson (still probably Cryptonomicon followed by the Baroque trilogy).  It is a fun easter-egg hunt of the major philosophical and intellectual milestones  of western civilization.

1. What other modern  writer (SF or otherwise) can you think of who could turn such a description into an engaging work of fiction?
2. I probably didn’t recognize half as many references as I would like to believe I would have (or want to admit not to spotting).

I’m sure the prime audience for Stephenson is heavily skewed to computer & tech geeks, all of who probably saw the Turing test, Penrose tiles and Godel “parallels”  (among many others) as well.  I won’t give away any spoilers, because the twist/reveal comes about 3/4 of the way into the book that finally puts this weird game into some kind of understandable perspective.  Oh and as an academic, I found the concept of the cross between a University and a Monastary in the Concents quite fascinating.

Capsule review: Will definitely be a must read for any Stephenson fan, and probably any fan of SF will  greatly enjoy if they (as usual for Stephenson) have a large appetite for chunky, complex novels.  Those  not usually interested in the genre, should probably read Cryptonomicon  first to determine your taste for Stephenson before plowing into Anathem.