词条 | Manna (novel) |
释义 |
Manna is a 2003 science fiction essay by Marshall Brain that explores several issues in modern information technology and user interfaces, including some around transhumanism. Plot summaryThe fictional story is set in 2050 and takes place in Cary, North Carolina before the narrator flies to Australia. The narrator starts at a minimum wage job at Burger-G before being laid-off, primarily due to the Manna, a computer management system, replacing people in the service industry. He then takes a bus to a small government provided welfare dormitory where he meets a friend. Soon after, he is visited by two girls who tell him that he's invited to live in Australia because his father bought stock in the Australia Project years prior. The narrator then goes on to discover the many aspects of the Australia Project. In the US, which has a libertarian economic system, most Americans are unemployable and live in cramped housing projects, where they are fed and kept safe like farm animals. Birth control medicine in the water prevents them from having children. In contrast, in Australia, everyone has access to the goods provided by automation.[1] ThemesManna is meant to be a thought-provoking read or conceptual prototype rather than an entertaining novel (see exploratory engineering for more on such writing). The novel shows two possible outcomes of the 'robotic revolution' in the near future: one outcome is a dystopia based around US capitalism and the other is a utopia based upon a communal and technological society in Australia. Essentially, the two differ in that lower-class humans in the dystopic society have been left unmodified and are controlled by AI "managers" to the point of slavery, while humans in the utopian society more directly and efficiently participate in the management of the society as a whole and most or all willingly accept implanted AI aids. Some technological and social themes explored :
Positions and assumptions presented in the novel include:
The book can be read online for free (see link below). See also
References1. ^{{cite news|last1=White|first1=Mark|title='I wasn't interested in just following the rules': Data scientist Jeremy Howard and the 'next internet'|url=http://www.smh.com.au/technology/innovation/i-wasnt-interested-in-just-following-the-rules-data-scientist-jeremy-howard-and-the-next-internet-20160419-go9rps.html|accessdate=30 November 2017|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|date=29 May 2016}} External links
10 : 2003 science fiction novels|Cyberpunk novels|Transhumanist books|Works about automation|Robots in literature|Artificial intelligence in fiction|Dystopian novels|Utopian novels|Cyborgs in literature|Social science fiction |
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