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"[Science fiction] has become big business, where books are merchandised and promoted and distributed and placed on sale like slabs of bacon or cans of soup."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Culture Mind | ||
| A highly advanced, space-borne entirely autonomous intelligence. |
| “What does this thing actually look like? I mean you never see them by themselves, they’re always in something… a ship or whatever. And how did it—what did it use to warp with?”
“Externally,” Jase said in its usual, calm, measured tones, “it is an ellipsoid. Fields up, it looks like a very small ship. It’s about ten meters long and two and a half in diameter. Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper; those are what make it so heavy because they’re so dense. It weighs nearly fifteen thousand tons. It is fitted with its own power, of course, and several field generators, any of which could be pressed into service as emergency motors, and indeed are designed with this in mind. Only the outer envelope is constantly in real space, the rest—all the thinking parts, anyway—stay in hyperspace.” |
| Technovelgy from Consider Phlebas,
by Iain M Banks. Published by Macmillan in 1987 Additional resources -
|
In Looking to Windward (2000), Iain Banks has a Culture Mind describe itself this way:
I am a Culture Mind.
We are close to gods, and on the far side. We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. And, as you might imagine, I consider that I have an obligation to discharge. I fully intend to spend the rest of my existence here as Masaq’ Hub for as long as I’m needed or until I’m no longer welcome, forever keeping an eye to windward for approaching storms and just generally protecting this quaint circle of fragile little bodies and the vulnerable little brains they house from whatever harm a big dumb mechanical universe or any consciously malevolent force might happen or wish to visit upon them, specifically because I know how appallingly easy they are to destroy. I will give my life to save theirs, if it should ever come to that. And give it gladly, happily, too, knowing that the trade was entirely worth the debt I incurred eight hundred years ago, back in Arm One-Six.”
“Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Consider Phlebas
More Ideas
and Technology by Iain M Banks
Tech news articles related to Consider Phlebas
Tech news articles related to works by Iain M Banks
Culture Mind-related
news articles:
- Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
| Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish |
| Will An AI Found A New Religion? |
| Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass |
| RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans |
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'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
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'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
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'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
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