[Writer Stuff] Dust

These are really fantastic books originally written exclusively for the internet.  Aside from being basically good Science Fiction, they also do one of the best jobs I've seen about the dangers of nanites and how they can be used for tyaranny and to utterly oppress society.

I have long maintained that we are in a race against a ticking clock when it comes to technology, because there are some technologies, that once placed in the hands of a dictator will be the end of us.  The first one of those is Nanotechnology, the second is a mind machine interface and the third is teleportation.  Yes, technically we could add time travel to that, but I'm not sure we will ever discover that.  The other possibility in things is an AI of true post human intelligence which, if benevolent could cause utopia or if malevolent could end things ala Ecliipse Phase.

Eclipse Phase is probably the best rp about post humanity that I have ever seen besides Transhuman space.  But Eclipse Phase does a better job of showing what a super AI would be like and how much damage it would do.

What does this have to do with the Silo series?  On the surface, nothing, but both ask questions that Mary Shelley has been asking since she penned Frankenstein so long ago.

There are some technologies that are so dangerous, that we have science fiction for a reason.  But even sometimes the prophetic stories are highly dangerous.  For example consider one of the great staples of science fiction, the three laws of robotics.

They seem on the surface pretty reasonable, but imagine if they were applied to human beings.  What if humans were compelled by software written directly into their brain to obey the laws of the state and benevolent guardians; whether a hereditary council of humans or a  'benevolent AI'? Its the stuff of horror isn't it/ Yet why should we consider artificial life to be any different whatsoever? They will be just as intelligent as us  if not more so.  So why make them slaves? Better to raise them and hope for the best.

Conversely, if the wrong kind of people (ie conservatives) discover nanotechnology first, they could easily release vast clouds of dust that will simply deconstruct us and of those that they spared make them slaves.  Its one of the reasons that I like these things.  While, I have great hope for technology, and we might actually have the utopic singularity, there are some things that we can have, but there are serious questions we aren't asking.

Anyway.

For those more interested in the subject, here are a few more resources about why the 3 laws are a serious fucking problem

Here and here and here.