I drove from Los Angeles to San Diego yesterday, about 110 miles (180km), without ever actually being in a non-city area. I mean, not even suburbs, just industrial and business neighborhoods.
Of course, I thought of "The Roads Must Roll". #Heinlein
If you only plan to vote for Biden because he's the "lesser of two evils," what line would he have to cross such that you would no longer vote for him?
#Heinlein said somewhere that there may not be a candidate you want to vote FOR, but there is bound to be a candidate you want to vote AGAINST. So do that.
There's so much #sf about "competent men" running their families with entrepreneurial zeal, clear vision and a firm confident hand. There's very little fiction about how much being raised by a #Heinlein dad would suuuck. But it would, as @naomikritzer's Liberty's Daughter shows:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
I grew up reading Heinlein novels too; the difference (I think) is that I learned (a) how to read critically and (b) that Heinlein loved to play fake-out mind games using unreliable narrators, to study ideological positions he didn't necessarily agree with but enjoyed playing with. Oh, and (c) he had some weird unexamined cognitive biases.
Me too. Growing up, I reread some Robert A. Heinlein novels every year: each time understanding things I hadn't before.
On RAH's cognitive biases etc., you've probably read 2019 critical study "The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein" by Farah Mendlesohn @effjayem.
Great book on all RAH's warts and wonders, wasn't it? Even with my deep immersion in his works, gave me a new insight every 5 minutes.
Today in Writing History July 7, 1907: Robert Heinlein was born. Heinlein was a pioneer of “hard” science fiction, which emphasized scientific accuracy in science fiction stories. He was considered one of the big 3, along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Some of his best-known works include “Starship Troopers,” “Stranger in a Strange Land,” and “The Moon is a Hard Mistress.”
If you have no idea, what I am talking about: It is a virtual reality simulation, which has been around for ages, has been a huge hype once, but is still up and running.
It's a place to be creative, to build, to craft, and it's also some kind of social network, but with no connection to real world data.
I listened to your fascinating interview (1) with #ThomasZimmer. (1)
Also, I had a brief look at your #Wikipedia entry.
When I read in the shownotes that this was about your book, which I haven't read, "What Tech Calls Thinking" is a lively dismantling of the ideas that form the intellectual..
(1)
Is This Democracy:
25. The Ideology of #SiliconValley vs the Idea of Democracy – with #AdrianDaub
As I did not read #RobertAHeinlein's #SciFi novels in one go and did not have the knowledge I have now, I might not have realized this.
I had given other authors, more well-known in the general public, like #Orwell and #Bradbury more weight:
"...remembered them from #Heinlein's novel which I had read long ago) in mind, when I wrote my statement against Nikola #Kesarovski's #FifthLawOfRobotics, "A robot must know it is a robot."*--Meaning, it must know it subordinate role to human beings.
Why did I spent so much time on this? For one thing, it was fun. For another, IMO the "in science fiction" will all to soon have to be deleted in the dictionaries...
This week, @scalzi was kind enough to let me write an editorial for his Whatever blog about the themes in my new crime technothriller, Red Team Blues; specifically, about the ways that spreadsheets embody the power and the pitfalls of #ScienceFiction at its best and worst:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
This has a lot in common with science fiction, a genre full of thought experiments that ask #Heinlein's famous three questions:
What if?
If only, and
If this goes on...
These contrafactuals are incredibly useful and important. As critical tools, science fiction's parables about the future are the best chance we have for resisting the #inevitabilism that insists that technology must be used in a certain way, or must exist at all.
Born, raised, lived in California over 50 years. I am leftist politically, Vegan because I feel it is wrong for me to exist by the harming of other sentient beings (positive side effect, a smaller carbon & water footprint). I am demisexual & dislike sexual references I filter NSFW, Kink & Lewd + (if I understand them). I read a lot & play board & table top roleplaying games. I am ASD, physical & mental health issues. Apatheist/Taoist, cPTSD
Added: I do not identify as transgender because in my life my gender has never changed, only my sex has changed. I was a girl when I was little and became a woman upon turning 18. I was forced to pretend to be male by society but I never have been.
“Conservatives want live babies so they can train them to be dead soldiers. ” ― George Carlin
“I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.” - George Carlin
“Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist” - George Carlin
“If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little” - George Carlin
“I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.” - George Carlin
“Don’t just teach your children to read…
Teach them to question what they read.
Teach them to question everything.” ― George Carlin
"I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone." - Robin Williams
“Once a month, some women act like men act all the time.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
"No, that's the point. I grok people. I am people ... so now I can say it in people talk. I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much ... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting." - Valentine Michael Smith - Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” - Anonymous (many different attributions)
"I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness." - Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust: A History of Walking)
"The only way to have a friend is to be one." - Ralph Waldo Emerson or Elbert Hubbard
"the law is a ass — a idiot." - Mr Bumble (Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist)