Thanks for sharing it here Linch, I really enjoyed the review (and Iāve been enjoying Tomasās fiction).
Counterpoint to the āour last great talentā thingāTomas seems like a success story in that heās found a pretty finite niche that he excels in. His stories depend on a shared knowledge base that we share, but that most of e.g. Ted Chiangās readers do not. I think thatās kind of fine and Tomas should just double down on that rather than trying to reach a wider audience.
If in the future there are still sub-cultures (and in all but the most nuts AI transformed worlds there would be), then there will still be Tomases.
Iām a bit confused by this. Bjarturās most sub-culture-friendly story, naively (in the sense that itās chockfull directly of in-group references) is The Company Man, which also happens to be his most popular story, by a considerable margin.
Most of his other stories are only particularly subculture-specific in that they tend to have as their foundational basis a hypothesis like āAI will be a big dealā, which I expect to be much less subculture-specific in the future to the extent this hypothesis is correct.
Seems reasonable, Iād have to reread the stories. My guess would be that after that Iāll still think that the particular flavour of āAI will be a big dealā is still subculture-specific and likely enough to remain so. I.e. a particular view of what AI is, what a future with AI might look like, the capabilities we imagine it having, whatās horrifying about it etcā¦
Thanks for sharing it here Linch, I really enjoyed the review (and Iāve been enjoying Tomasās fiction).
Counterpoint to the āour last great talentā thingāTomas seems like a success story in that heās found a pretty finite niche that he excels in. His stories depend on a shared knowledge base that we share, but that most of e.g. Ted Chiangās readers do not. I think thatās kind of fine and Tomas should just double down on that rather than trying to reach a wider audience.
If in the future there are still sub-cultures (and in all but the most nuts AI transformed worlds there would be), then there will still be Tomases.
Iām a bit confused by this. Bjarturās most sub-culture-friendly story, naively (in the sense that itās chockfull directly of in-group references) is The Company Man, which also happens to be his most popular story, by a considerable margin.
Most of his other stories are only particularly subculture-specific in that they tend to have as their foundational basis a hypothesis like āAI will be a big dealā, which I expect to be much less subculture-specific in the future to the extent this hypothesis is correct.
Seems reasonable, Iād have to reread the stories. My guess would be that after that Iāll still think that the particular flavour of āAI will be a big dealā is still subculture-specific and likely enough to remain so. I.e. a particular view of what AI is, what a future with AI might look like, the capabilities we imagine it having, whatās horrifying about it etcā¦