Vernor Vinge
Computer scientist and science fiction author, as well as a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics.
I say, let’s learn more and then speculate.
Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.
If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.
Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and least expensive manipulation of all.
The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.
Sometimes the biggest disasters aren’t noticed at all—no one’s around to write horror stories.
The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century.
We can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals.
So high, so low, so many things to know.
It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.
The hours came to minutes, the minutes to seconds. And now each second was as long as all the time before.
Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years—and not one of them could come near to this!
If during the last thousand seconds you have received any High-Beyond-protocol packets from "Arbitration Arts," discard them at once. If they have been processed, then the processing site and all locally netted sites must be physically destroyed at once. We realize that this means the destruction of solar systems, but consider the alternative. You are under Transcendent attack.
The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.
Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.
"Poor humans; they will all die."
"Poor us; we will not."
I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology. And yet ... we are the initiators. Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things. We have the freedom to establish initial conditions, make things happen in ways that are less inimical than others. Of course (as with starting avalanches), it may not be clear what the right guiding nudge really is...
So much technology, so little talent.
Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season.
How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.