Brooders.net

I didn’t finish this book.

I liked some of the concepts, but the author, Richard Dawkins, struck me as bitter and twisted throughout the first few chapters. And probably continued to complain throughout the rest of the book. Unfortunately, I also watched a documentary of his on TV, which kind of reinforced his belligerent intolerance to religion. That being said, he does have a few good points.

“There is no such thing as a Christian child, there is only a child of Christian parents.”

Insert whatever religion you like in that phrase.

Interesting point because can a child really ponder religion when their main source of “truth” (i.e. Their Parents) is telling them what to think, what to believe and how the world works? Is it Conditioning through reciting prayers and creeds? I guess it provides an easy answer to questions. Why is that mummy? “God works in mysterious ways”, or “God is teaching us a lesson”. It stops deeper questioning which doesn’t help understanding the world or situations. So his point, that children are conditioned by their parents to believe (kinda like santa claus, but with more serious restrictions on lifestyle).

It did make me reflect on my own religious upbringing. I can still recite various creeds and prayers, even though I have not attended church in 15 years. It took a while for me to throw off the concept of god. Or perhaps more accurately, recognise it only as a concept and not an actual “thing”. I am 30 now, but only in the last year or so come around to this “revelation” for want of a better word. I also wonder whether this has to do with physical proximity to my parents, as I moved interstate from them nearly 8 years ago.

So back to the book, here’s what Amazon has to say:

Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins “Darwin’s Rottweiler” for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky).

Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes. He critiques God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being.

He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. In so doing, he makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just irrational, but potentially deadly. Dawkins has fashioned an impassioned, rigorous rebuttal to religion, to be embraced by anyone who sputters at the inconsistencies and cruelties that riddle the Bible, bristles at the inanity of “intelligent design,” or agonizes over fundamentalism in the Middle Eastor Middle America.

Here’s a snippet from my childhood .. I am not sure why do small children in primary school (ages 6-12) need to sing songs with lyrics like:
“what did Judas do?,
he hung himself upon an alder”.
Why? I just think it’s weird, perhaps it a story with a righteous ending where the guilty or betrayer gets punished, so it’s all ok .. and there’s a happy ending.

So here’s an interesting concept (in my mind at least), just say we have all these religions who think they are correct. So we have:

• Religion J - We’re Right, the only god, every other is false
• Religion C - We’re Right, the only god, every other is false
• Religion I - We’re Right, the only god, every other is false
• Religion B - We’re Right, enlightenment is the way
• Religion H - We’re Right, the only gods, every other is false

If everyone thinks they’re right, someone must be wrong. In fact if there is only one religion is correct, then 80% of religions are wrong. So more than likely, they are all wrong. At least that’s my current over simplistic proof that they are all wrong.

So, is my rant above equal his? The irony is not lost on me.

It probably made me think about the issue quite seriously, I just didn’t like the messenger.

Rating: Unrated (Need to probably finish it .. maybe when the pile of other books diminishes).

Now, this is an interesting list of movies. Check out Top 50 Dystopian Movies of all time.

I found this through the Infocult feed. Bryan mentions:

It’s probably not a good sign that I’ve seen 45 of the 50.

A quick count has me at 28, with another 7 on my “to watch list”. I get the feeling he’s got a few years on me, hence why his tally is a touch higher. But I agree with the sentiment, not sure that’s a good sign either. Considering Blade Runner and Twelve Monkeys are two of my favourite movies. Perhaps it’s a latent fear that society is always capable of destroying itself.

Quite a few of these show up on SFAM’s Cyberpunk review, which isn’t a surprise as dystopia is a common theme.

( Via InfoCult Greatest Dystopian Films )

Tea from an Empty Cup was a weird read. I made the mistake of reading Dervish is digital first, which is set after this one.

Pat Cadigan has an interesting style, as with “Dervish is Digital”, most of the book is spent with the characters immersed in the virtual world. So some things are just weird. She viewed the whole cyberspace/metaverse thing in a different light to William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. But her term of choice is Artificial Reality.

Quick Plot Summary:
Detective Konstantin is investigating mysterious deaths where online people are being killed in their private AR booths with no evidence of a murderer. No surveillance footage or witnesses see these odd murders. These online experiences range from games, to bizarre fetishes and in this case the reconstruction of memories. There are some who believe that Old Japan is being rebuilt in AR and be restored to it’s former glory, but a young man dies trying to give access to this virtual place.

Blurb from Amazon

The hazards of Artificial Reality are spilling into the real world–people vanish and solitary gamers are found slain in sealed AR booths. The young woman Yuki, child of a Japan destroyed before her birth, enters AR as the new assistant to the mysterious celebrity Joy Flower, but with her own agenda: to find Tom Iguchi, her missing beloved, who never was her lover but had been one of Joy’s Boyz. The hard-boiled homicide detective Dore Konstantin stalks the virtual streets of post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty seeking a serial killer who may have murdered eight gamers from inside AR itself. But how do you find missing or hidden persons in a world where nothing is as it seems?

I didn’t really like it. I think I found it a bit confusing in place. Dervish is digital is a better read ( I rated it 8 / 10 ), although she may have just gotten into the groove with her original idea of AR. Artificial Reality in this book involves special body suits which simulate sensations such as pleasure, pain, falling, wind etc couple with a Head Mounted Display (HMD) to visually see and hear the world. Still an interesting near future look at any sort of immersive environment, it’s halfway between the Metaverse and Cyberspace.

In both of these books there is the hint of a “Ghost in the Machine”. If someone has an avatar online and they die, what happens to it?

Another thing that I don’t like is the whole concept of billable time. Yes, sure it would cost something to use this virtual world.. but the focus that everyone seems to be paying a lot of money to be in AR just gets a bit tired. Maybe in the context of 10 years ago that would have been accurate, but now virtual worlds don’t cost that much (e.g. Second Life, World of Warcraft - monthly fee + bandwidth).

This book definitely fits in the Cyberpunk category due to it’s cyberspace/AR/Metaverse thing, and the commentary on technology’s impact on society. I do think however, her ideas of people in the future thinking that AR is all that’s important is probably relevant. In a post scarcity world .. what is the meaning of life?

And if you can fly through the sky, get abducted by aliens, have sex with anything, experience a whole lot of things that are possible or too expensive in reality .. why wouldn’t you want to spend all your time there?

Rating: 6/10

Interface By Stephen Bury (Neal Stephenson in disguise)

I hesitate to call this cyberpunk. It’s not hardcore black leather clad, hacking with mirrorshades type novel. It does, however, have brain implants placed strategically in politicians by a large faceless corporation manipulating society theme. So it probably rates on cyberpunk themes, more than stylistic imagery.

So according to amazon:

Amazon.com
A biochip in presidential candidate William Cozzano’s brain hardwires him to a computerized polling system that channels the mood of the electorate directly into his brain. Neal Stephenson fans should note (if they don’t already know) that Stephen Bury is his pen name.

Book Description
A near-future thriller in which a shadowy coalition bent on controlling the world economy attempts to manipulate the president of the United States through the use of a computer bio-chip implanted in his brain.

That’s the gist of it. Once the presidential candidate Cozzano has the biochip, his team have assembled a cross section of the population and fitted them out with micro televisions strapped to their arms to monitor brain, emotion and heart reactions to political messages.

You never really know whether he’s being controlled and just fed information at the right time to sway his political arguments to favour the population. It plays upon politics as the manipulation of the masses in terms of emotional and preferential manipulation based on stereotypes.

Was it great? yeah, maybe, .. It was interesting. Being written in 1994, it’s only a shorter extrapolation from earlier Cyberpunk works. It is however, an interesting look at near technology without anything too outlandish.

Rating: 7/10