Interests Meme!
Sep. 29th, 2007 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6The Meme: Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.
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donna_c_punk asked me for these:
ai rights: Think I've talked about it a fair bit. I know it's probably silly to think about, since we're really nowhere near it. But one day we probably will have artificial intelligence of some sort. And I am passionately committed to the idea that AIs should have rights. A lot of people seem unreasonably insistent on the idea that machines can't "really" think, and even if they seem to it's just an illusion and they shouldn't be given any rights. My standard response is that I can't be certain that _you_ really think and that it's not just an illusion, but I give you the benefit of the doubt because, if I'm wrong, I've hgiven rights to something that doesn't need them, but if I didn't and I was wrong, I'd have deprived something deserving of rights, and that's not a mistake I'm prepared to make. Also, I'm interested in this theme in fiction a lot, both writing and reading/watching (I root for the Cylons sometimes).
alternate history: One of many fictional themes I enjoy, that of alternate history, the "What if something happened differently...?" Mostly I like it when the alternate world is encountered by people from ours (or one close to ours), rather than just straight-faced alternate history, but I like the latter too. It's one of the things that drew me to Sliders, even though they quickly abandoned the _cool_ uses of the concept, and used it lamely. I was just remarking online recently how I kinda wish they'd do another 'exploring alternate reality' show, but perhaps one where it's not a "lost and trying to find our way home", so you could go more in depth to some of the different realities, and have a home base.
nebula awards: These are the awards given to SF novels, novella, short stories, etc, by the Science Fiction Writers and Editors of America. Mostly it's in my interests because I'm on a quest to read every Hugo or Nebula winning novel (7 or 8 more to go on Nebulas, 1 Hugo). But also, as a writer, I'd like to win one someday. Oh, I know I almost certainly never will, but we've all gotta have dreams.
neverwhere: This was my first exposure to Neil Gaiman (well, to his work at least - I'd seen him dozens of times on a Canadian television show called Prisoners of Gravity)... and although I recognize some of his other works is technically better, Neverwhere remains my favorite. I even went and downloaded the BBC miniseries version of it (which came first). It wasn't as good, but it was fun as well to get some visuals for it. I guess I like the idea of a sort of fantastic world existing in parallel to our own, but that most people don't know, and the idea by walking a specific path in a specific way, you might wind up somewhere you otherwise wouldn't.
racmx: This is an abbreviation for rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks, a USENET group. I used to hang out on it a fair bit, but then my net provider got rid of USENET access, and so my only way there is through Googlegroups now. I hate the interface, so I don't hang out there much, and really should remove the interest, but I'll keep it there out of nostalgia a while longer. A bit sad that USENET is slowly dying.
vernor vinge: Science Fiction author, writer of A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, and recent Hugo Winner Rainbows End. One of my favorite authors, does really good with big ideas and cool aliens, and of course is one of the creators/popularizors of the concept of the technological singularity - an event (like true AI or intelligence expansion) that is such a fundamental shift that it's impossible to accurately predict what things'll be like afterwards (because the AIs who run things, or we, will be so much more intelligent), which is a cool SF concept I enjoy.
y: the last man: Comic book by Brian K. Vaughan, creator of Runaways, in which a plague (or something) wipes out every mammal on Earth with a Y chromosone (that is, all males), except for two: 20something slacker Yorick Brown, and his pet monkey. So he goes on a series of quests within quests in this world where all the men are now gone, and the women are carrying on as best they can knowing that they're pretty much the last generation. I'm reading it in trades, and am still a little behind, but I enjoy it. I wouldn't call it one of my absolute favorite comics, but it's right now the only non-superhero one I read, and the only "closed" plotline one (that is, there is a beginning, middle, and end to the plot intended, over the course of 60 issues, rather than being an ongoing series forever), so I figured it merited a spot on my lists.
So, there we go.
donna_c_punk asked me for these:ai rights: Think I've talked about it a fair bit. I know it's probably silly to think about, since we're really nowhere near it. But one day we probably will have artificial intelligence of some sort. And I am passionately committed to the idea that AIs should have rights. A lot of people seem unreasonably insistent on the idea that machines can't "really" think, and even if they seem to it's just an illusion and they shouldn't be given any rights. My standard response is that I can't be certain that _you_ really think and that it's not just an illusion, but I give you the benefit of the doubt because, if I'm wrong, I've hgiven rights to something that doesn't need them, but if I didn't and I was wrong, I'd have deprived something deserving of rights, and that's not a mistake I'm prepared to make. Also, I'm interested in this theme in fiction a lot, both writing and reading/watching (I root for the Cylons sometimes).
alternate history: One of many fictional themes I enjoy, that of alternate history, the "What if something happened differently...?" Mostly I like it when the alternate world is encountered by people from ours (or one close to ours), rather than just straight-faced alternate history, but I like the latter too. It's one of the things that drew me to Sliders, even though they quickly abandoned the _cool_ uses of the concept, and used it lamely. I was just remarking online recently how I kinda wish they'd do another 'exploring alternate reality' show, but perhaps one where it's not a "lost and trying to find our way home", so you could go more in depth to some of the different realities, and have a home base.
nebula awards: These are the awards given to SF novels, novella, short stories, etc, by the Science Fiction Writers and Editors of America. Mostly it's in my interests because I'm on a quest to read every Hugo or Nebula winning novel (7 or 8 more to go on Nebulas, 1 Hugo). But also, as a writer, I'd like to win one someday. Oh, I know I almost certainly never will, but we've all gotta have dreams.
neverwhere: This was my first exposure to Neil Gaiman (well, to his work at least - I'd seen him dozens of times on a Canadian television show called Prisoners of Gravity)... and although I recognize some of his other works is technically better, Neverwhere remains my favorite. I even went and downloaded the BBC miniseries version of it (which came first). It wasn't as good, but it was fun as well to get some visuals for it. I guess I like the idea of a sort of fantastic world existing in parallel to our own, but that most people don't know, and the idea by walking a specific path in a specific way, you might wind up somewhere you otherwise wouldn't.
racmx: This is an abbreviation for rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks, a USENET group. I used to hang out on it a fair bit, but then my net provider got rid of USENET access, and so my only way there is through Googlegroups now. I hate the interface, so I don't hang out there much, and really should remove the interest, but I'll keep it there out of nostalgia a while longer. A bit sad that USENET is slowly dying.
vernor vinge: Science Fiction author, writer of A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, and recent Hugo Winner Rainbows End. One of my favorite authors, does really good with big ideas and cool aliens, and of course is one of the creators/popularizors of the concept of the technological singularity - an event (like true AI or intelligence expansion) that is such a fundamental shift that it's impossible to accurately predict what things'll be like afterwards (because the AIs who run things, or we, will be so much more intelligent), which is a cool SF concept I enjoy.
y: the last man: Comic book by Brian K. Vaughan, creator of Runaways, in which a plague (or something) wipes out every mammal on Earth with a Y chromosone (that is, all males), except for two: 20something slacker Yorick Brown, and his pet monkey. So he goes on a series of quests within quests in this world where all the men are now gone, and the women are carrying on as best they can knowing that they're pretty much the last generation. I'm reading it in trades, and am still a little behind, but I enjoy it. I wouldn't call it one of my absolute favorite comics, but it's right now the only non-superhero one I read, and the only "closed" plotline one (that is, there is a beginning, middle, and end to the plot intended, over the course of 60 issues, rather than being an ongoing series forever), so I figured it merited a spot on my lists.
So, there we go.
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Date: 2007-09-30 12:30 am (UTC)Otherwise, all good interests of which I can approve. I know you are thrilled. ;)
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Date: 2007-09-30 02:25 am (UTC)I didn't realize it was bandwidth intensive though, but then I never looked into or really considered the matter. I guess sending all the messages to all the different hosts can add up much more than a website sending them (even with lots more HTML stuff) only to individual people reading that message.
I liked more that it was sort of 'open', in that it was a one stop place for any discussion topic you might have wanted, and could crosspost freely, dip in for a brief spell without pain and dip out again, without having to sign up before and after. Now to talk about the things I want I'd have to join like 7 different forums, and mostly I just don't bother.
I used to IRC some but I'm not as put out about it's decline, or even really noticed. But yeah, there is a community aspect, and a bit of unique character to it (and weird bouts of obscure fun like riding netsplits to get ops) that would be lost even if other chat interfaces take over.