Scan barcode
glenmowrer's review against another edition
2.0
A story for millennials I think. Really, too much and too long trying to convince us that we can love AI if we feel guilty about abandoning a product made for corporate profit and then abandoned for the lack thereof. Not my kind of thing. Sort of gave up and short circuited the story out of boredom.
katturkey's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
chloebethx_'s review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
mara_martins's review against another edition
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0
epersonae's review against another edition
4.0
Very short novel, more like a novella -- I read most of it during a lunch break. But clear, clever, delightful and thoughtful. The two protagonist develop in somewhat different but parallel ways in their relationships with each other and with the digital creatures that they adopt. The whole thing feels very naturalistic and plausible. The illustrations and faux maps are a nice touch, too.
joelevard's review against another edition
3.0
Remember virtual pets? Those little electronic animals that lived in keychains, and you had to feed them and clean up their poop
and they were really neat for about two weeks, before everyone* realized that pressing buttons to pretend to feed and play with something is totally boring?
*except Japanese people, who apparently still buy them in great numbers, but when it comes to adorable tchotchkes, they're always outliers anyway.
Ted Chiang's novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects will very likely remind you of virtual pets: in the near-future, a company creates a breed of adorable digital creatures that exist only online in virtual worlds (it seems in the near future social networking will be less "Facebook wall" and more " elf avatars walking around" a la Snow Crash, which just sounds annoying to me and my slow internet connection). The creatures (called digients) are really advanced, and can learn and adapt and even speak, but they also need a lot of love and attention, sort of like the Tamagotchi whose screen will fill up with poop, causing him to evolve into an angry blob, if you don't pretend to take him for a walk three times a day god those were the stupidest toys.
So for a few years, digients are the hip new fad, but then most users realize that it's a lot of work caring for a pretend animal thingy, and put their programs on pause or stop using them altogether. But are the digients really pretend creatures? A select group of designer/users, who have had their digients the longest, become extremely dedicated to seeing how far they will evolve, paying for tutoring, watching real-life relationships fall apart in favor of time spent in the virtual world, and dealing with software obsolescence issues that require them to make some unsavory choices about the future of the virtual "species."
This is a book of ideas, not a book of characters -- the humans have stock personalities and conflicts that won't interest you too much, and the majority of this short book spends its time setting up a bunch of interesting what-if? scenarios that are futuristic but not far-fetched, like if a computer program could somehow be programmed to experience discomfort, would we be morally obligated to protect it from harm? What is the line between programmed intelligence and actual self-awareness -- and if a computer program is arguably as self-aware as a cat, do we have any moral responsibility toward it? Am I a total ass for making my underfed Digimon fight to the death and then abandoning them until their batteries ran out? If a software program can be programmed to love you in a sexual way, is that gross? (Yes.)
Then there's all the commentary on The Way We Live Now, i.e. wtf, internet? Because the main characters spend so much of their lives focused on and caring for these creatures (the book spans a decade) that they are hooked up to their computers virtually all the time, which seems excessive, but then there are those people who clock literal months worth of real time playing online role playing games, spending hours of time that could be spent racking up real money and life experience making fake gold and earning magical experience or however it works. Also there are huge farms of people in Asia who do nothing but earn virtual currency all day so nerds in the U.S. can pay real money for fake on eBay, and isn't that weird? Exactly how real are these interactions? How much value do they have compared to the face-to-face communication humanity has had to rely on for the last 6,000 years?
That's a lot of interesting material for a slim little book like this. It even has funny pictures. It's more fun than a litter of Pikachus.
and they were really neat for about two weeks, before everyone* realized that pressing buttons to pretend to feed and play with something is totally boring?
*except Japanese people, who apparently still buy them in great numbers, but when it comes to adorable tchotchkes, they're always outliers anyway.
Ted Chiang's novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects will very likely remind you of virtual pets: in the near-future, a company creates a breed of adorable digital creatures that exist only online in virtual worlds (it seems in the near future social networking will be less "Facebook wall" and more " elf avatars walking around" a la Snow Crash, which just sounds annoying to me and my slow internet connection). The creatures (called digients) are really advanced, and can learn and adapt and even speak, but they also need a lot of love and attention, sort of like the Tamagotchi whose screen will fill up with poop, causing him to evolve into an angry blob, if you don't pretend to take him for a walk three times a day god those were the stupidest toys.
So for a few years, digients are the hip new fad, but then most users realize that it's a lot of work caring for a pretend animal thingy, and put their programs on pause or stop using them altogether. But are the digients really pretend creatures? A select group of designer/users, who have had their digients the longest, become extremely dedicated to seeing how far they will evolve, paying for tutoring, watching real-life relationships fall apart in favor of time spent in the virtual world, and dealing with software obsolescence issues that require them to make some unsavory choices about the future of the virtual "species."
This is a book of ideas, not a book of characters -- the humans have stock personalities and conflicts that won't interest you too much, and the majority of this short book spends its time setting up a bunch of interesting what-if? scenarios that are futuristic but not far-fetched, like if a computer program could somehow be programmed to experience discomfort, would we be morally obligated to protect it from harm? What is the line between programmed intelligence and actual self-awareness -- and if a computer program is arguably as self-aware as a cat, do we have any moral responsibility toward it? Am I a total ass for making my underfed Digimon fight to the death and then abandoning them until their batteries ran out? If a software program can be programmed to love you in a sexual way, is that gross? (Yes.)
Then there's all the commentary on The Way We Live Now, i.e. wtf, internet? Because the main characters spend so much of their lives focused on and caring for these creatures (the book spans a decade) that they are hooked up to their computers virtually all the time, which seems excessive, but then there are those people who clock literal months worth of real time playing online role playing games, spending hours of time that could be spent racking up real money and life experience making fake gold and earning magical experience or however it works. Also there are huge farms of people in Asia who do nothing but earn virtual currency all day so nerds in the U.S. can pay real money for fake on eBay, and isn't that weird? Exactly how real are these interactions? How much value do they have compared to the face-to-face communication humanity has had to rely on for the last 6,000 years?
That's a lot of interesting material for a slim little book like this. It even has funny pictures. It's more fun than a litter of Pikachus.
yearofbluewater's review against another edition
4.0
A great work of speculative fiction that asks thought-provoking questions about the humanity of artificial intelligence and the ways it will be both used and exploited by future generations.
sagali's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
2.5
Do not know what to think of this novella. It was short but felt too long for what it's doing. I felt removed from all the protagonists, AI included and lost interest in the discussion it was trying to posit.
Maybe this story was not for me.
Maybe this story was not for me.
dani005's review against another edition
3.0
This story -although short– raises a lot of intriguing questions. I believe that Chiang wrote the nature of the story in a manner that was meant to be short, to poignantly drive his narrative home, but it also leaves it feeling a little clipped at times, which I think jarred the flow of ideas. All the same, I did feel that a lot of the philosophical questions around the construct of consciousness, maturity and even consent were well delivered if even unnerving at times in their chilling delivery.
The world of artificial intelligence holds a maelstrom of existential and moral dilemmas which can be a lot to digest at one time. This story integrated an endearing storyline of creating a sentient being, one which can cognitively grow much in the same way that a child or pet would. However, the idyllic ideas of a pet who can be "suspended" for the purposes of convenience carries a dark edge to it. This idea falls prey to the ministrations of a synthetic genome which could theoretically give rise to a being that neurologically can learn to feel emotions, understand languages and comprehend abstract concepts beyond crude understanding. This begets the reality that this level of comprehension would constitute a level of sentience that is on parr with our own. Ethically, this poses the question, would turning a sentient being "off" and "on" at the emotional whim of another being be morally justified; taking away their right of choice? And as time passes and they experience the world around them, when do you draw a line of that being becoming mature enough to make their own decisions, of them being on parr with a person within their own independence or is it simply a projection of simulated ideas and thoughts being reciprocated back to you? By their own ministrations of learning and experiencing the world, they are just as exposed then to theoretically develop their own disorders to, whether it be a design flaw of their own synthetic genome or was curated by their environment. Who is responsible then for these beings then? The people who programmed them, the people who raised them? Or are they simply a failed experiment, their emotions and experiences a byproduct and they are better off to be deleted?
There was also a subtler theme that seemed to be running its course through the premise of the action of this story; one of fanaticism. A reoccurring theme seemed to be of those who would become so involved in what was happening in their "digient's" (AI beings') lives that they would forget to live in the world right in front of them. This perspective would shift the characters' priorities. Whether these were unhealthy priorities served as its own moral dilemma, as such a priority was founded on whether or not the person believed that the digient was sentient enough to be recognized as an equal to a human being. Choices were made accordingly, and often times it would be hard to recognize them as morally right or wrong, depending on how you viewed the "personhood" of these digients.
I enjoyed the intriguing questions of this story, although I did feel a lot of it was rushed, and that there were a lot of various questions which were being proposed with little effort made in regards to delving into any specific one. Then again this was a novella submitted alongside others, as I believe it, and perhaps this novella was meant to be digested alongside others that experimented with similar ideas such as this. It was an enjoyable read; thought-provoking if a little chilling in terms of how such beings might be brought into existence at our own hands only to wind up as little more than another opportunity for abuse and an enactment of misguided ethical principles.
The world of artificial intelligence holds a maelstrom of existential and moral dilemmas which can be a lot to digest at one time. This story integrated an endearing storyline of creating a sentient being, one which can cognitively grow much in the same way that a child or pet would. However, the idyllic ideas of a pet who can be "suspended" for the purposes of convenience carries a dark edge to it. This idea falls prey to the ministrations of a synthetic genome which could theoretically give rise to a being that neurologically can learn to feel emotions, understand languages and comprehend abstract concepts beyond crude understanding. This begets the reality that this level of comprehension would constitute a level of sentience that is on parr with our own. Ethically, this poses the question, would turning a sentient being "off" and "on" at the emotional whim of another being be morally justified; taking away their right of choice? And as time passes and they experience the world around them, when do you draw a line of that being becoming mature enough to make their own decisions, of them being on parr with a person within their own independence or is it simply a projection of simulated ideas and thoughts being reciprocated back to you? By their own ministrations of learning and experiencing the world, they are just as exposed then to theoretically develop their own disorders to, whether it be a design flaw of their own synthetic genome or was curated by their environment. Who is responsible then for these beings then? The people who programmed them, the people who raised them? Or are they simply a failed experiment, their emotions and experiences a byproduct and they are better off to be deleted?
There was also a subtler theme that seemed to be running its course through the premise of the action of this story; one of fanaticism. A reoccurring theme seemed to be of those who would become so involved in what was happening in their "digient's" (AI beings') lives that they would forget to live in the world right in front of them. This perspective would shift the characters' priorities. Whether these were unhealthy priorities served as its own moral dilemma, as such a priority was founded on whether or not the person believed that the digient was sentient enough to be recognized as an equal to a human being. Choices were made accordingly, and often times it would be hard to recognize them as morally right or wrong, depending on how you viewed the "personhood" of these digients.
I enjoyed the intriguing questions of this story, although I did feel a lot of it was rushed, and that there were a lot of various questions which were being proposed with little effort made in regards to delving into any specific one. Then again this was a novella submitted alongside others, as I believe it, and perhaps this novella was meant to be digested alongside others that experimented with similar ideas such as this. It was an enjoyable read; thought-provoking if a little chilling in terms of how such beings might be brought into existence at our own hands only to wind up as little more than another opportunity for abuse and an enactment of misguided ethical principles.