The Gentle Seduction (1989)

I am not an optimist nor a pessimist, but I think it's good to understand proper balance for well-being. If this story was interesting, you may also find Whispering Earring a counterbalance to this story. https://web.archive.org/web/20121008025245/http://squid314.l...

Spoilers: https://areweseductionyet.pages.dev

A chilling vision of the future, where phone books and checkbooks still exist ;)

I have the impression that nanotechnology was very in vogue for science fiction around the late-80s and early-90s…and yet, these days, it’s seemingly disappeared; both as a sci-fi trope and, AFAIK, an area of industrial/medical R&D. Why is that? Did it just atrophy, perhaps combined with unmet expectations, or did we discover some limit that makes the technology infeasible?

I ended up skimming a lot of it, though I closely read the beginning and the end. This is not a vision of humanity I agree with.

Technology is not the only path towards expansion of consciousness, even though in this day and age, it appears so. The wonders, marvels, and growth described in this story can be experienced through other means. To act and build as if it is the only path is, in my opinion, deeply misguided.

Probably not the most popular stance in this crowd.

I think "seduction" as in Baudrillard

https://monoskop.org/images/9/96/Baudrillard_Jean_Seduction....

which has a great intro about how "the more liberated people think they are talking about sex the less liberated they are" and towards the end anticipates the arc that video games will follow back when Pong and Space Invaders were state of the art. Funny enough when I got obsessed with seduction as a topic in 2021 and read that book as part of my curriculum I went down a side track in theme park design.

I really liked the story; the technology can indeed change our mind gradually and make us accept things we once refused. This actually made me ask: how do we rearrange our ideas based on that?

I read the whole thing and I think it's useful to view this topic under a different lens. The most astonishing part for me is that it was written over 30 years ago!

I'm a bit grateful that science today isn't nearly that advanced. It would be cool to be able to explore the world like the main character, but then again it seemed so sad and miserable.

I share her sentiment from the beginning of the story: I don't want to be immortal. Living a short, happy life is much better than being miserable forever even though you have everything you could possibly imagine. I think death should be treated as a gift and not something to be afraid of (of course I'm probably too young to say this, but this is how I feel currently). It's another motivation for us to enjoy our lives in a meaningful way and not waste them.

Title should have (1989)

That’s interesting, they use the Singularity to refer to technological explosion in general rather than specifically AI becoming super intelligent. This seems to predate the AI usage.

>"Singularity is a time in the future. It'll occur when the rate of change of technology is very great--so great that the effort to keep up with the change will overwhelm us. People will face a whole new set of problems that we can't even imagine." A look of great tranquility smoothed the ridges around his eyes. "On the other hand, all our normal, day to day problems fade away. For example, you'll be immortal."

What a wonderful way to start my Sunday, to distract from the antics of the rich and powerful, and to pay attention to things that matter.

I found it curious that a novel published in 1989 refers to the future immortal being going through crude pre-singularity historical records and comparing them to cobweb ("An analogy to cobwebs made her smile for a moment."). I thought Berners-Lee wouldn't launch his first "World Wide Web server" for another 2 years, no?

<spoiler> I really enjoyed the story (pretty sure I've read it before, but many years ago, so it's fuzzy) and I know it's not key to the plot, but I really want to know how Jack failed to survive.

I've had this bookmarked for years. It is my vision for the future.

It is more relevant now than ever, when techno-pessimism is on the rise, and people are forgetting the incredible technology that makes their quality of life real - and could guarantee the lives of billions in the future.

I'm in my 30s and probably won't live to see this future. I only hope cryonics can get me there, but I doubt it - so much information is lost.

Didn’t realize we could post short stories on here. This one was really nice :)

I wrote a similar sci fi short story set in the near future if anyone is interested:

https://jarbus.net/blog/growth-and-decay/

What a though-provoking story to read with my coffee.

I've often had the thought that I will probably just miss the singularity due to my age, but people like my nephews will have a greater chance at experiencing it.

That was an intensely compelling read.

Found this similar to ending of Parthenon. Show on netflix. The ending does something similar. Worth watching, the last 2-3 episodes really ramp up to 11.

Also. "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.

I really thought there was going to be a 'let there be light' moment at the end.

I wonder if Ray Kurzweil was inspired by this story, or if there was some other futurist who inspired them both. I had a sort of déjà vu reading this, having been at Kurzweil’s Siggraph keynote in 2000. He was predicting this very scenario - the singularity would bring nanobots that make humans immortal. His talk made an impression on my young mind. It wasn’t until later that I realized Kurzweil was just peddling the fountain of youth, and was somewhat unscrupulous about it…

He has been pitching the idea that human longevity is accelerating. For example, scroll to the very bottom of this essay and check out the plot: https://www.writingsbyraykurzweil.com/the-law-of-acceleratin...

Looks plausible for a minute, but when you start to think about it, you realize he has conflated longevity with average lifespan, and that it cannot possibly be a mistake, he’s not that ignorant or careless. The plot is missing data points that were easily available when it was made, data points that would completely contradict the trend line he put in the graph. Turns out human longevity hasn’t really budged for ten thousand years, but average lifespan has changed a lot, due to infant mortality and sanitation and vaccines and lower infant mortality and less war and more science.

I think a lot of the graphics in that article are equally sketchy when you look a little closer, and a lot of his predictions from 2000 are already orders of magnitude off, so I have no trust in anything Kurzweil writes or predicts. But given the state of the earth today, maybe it’s a good thing that significant longevity or immortality isn’t just around the corner? It’s a fun thought experiment and a nice story though.

The shadow image of this story should be explored just as thoroughly and “seductively”: the incremental descent of humanity into abominable serfdom, witless hypnosis, and hedonic escapism from an increasingly hopeless tomorrow.

Just because someone paints a nice (or frightening) picture of something doesn’t mean it must be accepted. It can merely be contemplated.

This is quite dystopian to say the least, and what's even more dystopian is that there are powerful people who feel like this is a goal somehow…