Mirth Turtle Social – Jul 21, 2021 12:38 AM

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Seeing this garbage robot reminded me of a book! The eerily accurate 1988 sci-fi novel Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling is set in 2023 and this is the first scene.

https://twitter.com/MachinePix/status/1417631000067194894

Photo of a pulp sci-fi book cover. The book is called "Islands in the Net" by Bruce Sterling. In a circle is a picture of a woman with what appears to be a leather jacket that is attached to cords that come from her hair. Taglines read "Author of 'Schismatrix' and 'The Artificial Kid'" and "One of the most exciting new talents to enter science fiction in decades ... If you want a look at what the future might *really* be like, read Sterling." Credited to Gardner Dozois (?) editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

Photo of a page of the previous novel. It reads "It was a video casette recorder. Twenty years of grit and brine had made it a solid mass of corrosion. A thin gruel of sand and broken shell dropped from its empty casette slot.
"It was an old-fashioned unit. Heavy and clumsy. Limping, Laura dragged it behind her by its cord. She looked up the beach for the local trash can.
"She spotted it loitering near a pair of firemen, who stood in hip boots in the gentle surf. She called out, 'Trash can!'
"The can pivoted on broad rubber treads and rolled toward her voice. It snuffled across the beach, mapping its way with bursts of infrasound. It spotted Laura and creaked to a stop behind her.
"Laura hefted the dead recorder and dropped it into the open barrel with a loud, bonging thump. 'Thank you for keeping our beaches clean," the can intoned. 'Galveston appreciates good citizenship. Would you like to register for a valuable cash prize?'
"'Save it for the tourists,' Laura said. She jogged toward home, favoring her ankle."

Re: Seeing this garbage robot reminded me of a book! The...

It got so much right, like drone assassinations, data brokers, watchphones, and a kind of decentralized, democratic corporation that we would recognize today as a DAO.

Re: It got so much right, like drone assassinations,...

Its vision of the internet is also really prescient

A photo of another page from Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling. It reads:
"The Lodge could also handle teleconferencing: multiple phone calls woven together. Teleconferencing was the expensive borderland where phones blurred into television. Running a teleconference was an art worth knowing, especially in public relations. It was a cross between chairing a meeting and running a TV news show, and Laura had done it many times.
"Every year of her life, Laura thought, the Net had been growing more expansive and seamless. Computers did it. Computers melted other machines, fusing them together. Television-telephone-telex. Tape recorder–VCR–laser disk. Broadcast tower linked to microwave dish linked to satellite. Phone line, cable TV, fiber-optic cords hissing out words and pictures in torrents of pure light. All netted together in a web over the world, a global nervous system, an octopus of data. There'd been plenty of hype about it. It was easy to make it sound transcendently incredible."
A paragraph here describes her talking to her baby before continuing.
"The Net was a lot like television, another former wonder of the age. The Net was a vast glass mirror. It reflected what it was shown. Mostly human banality.
"Laura zoomed one-handed through her electronic junk mail. Shop-by-wire catalogs. City Council campaigns. Charities. Health insurance.
"Laura erased the garbage and got down to business. A message was waiting from Emily Donato."

Re: Its vision of the internet is also really prescient

But it's also laughably wrong. There's video calls, but bandwidth is too expensive to do it live so everyone prerecords their messages. The world has also disposed of all nuclear weapons 🙃 Anyway it's a fun read

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