Funny I should see this here, having just reread the book two days ago. Apart from the Sci Fi elements, of which Vinge is rightfully lauded, I love how much depth there is in the book w/ regard to individuals’ scheming and how layered the conversation is. At one point two factions of humans are listening to a live-translation of an alien radio show debate between rivaling aliens. The scene simultaneously moves forward the plot for each of the human factions, each of the alien factions, and the translators themselves, all of whom extract important info unnoticed by the others. Later it’s revealed the situation was /even more complicated/ than anyone thought as misinterpretations occurred across the board.
Does anyone else have recommendations for sci fi or otherwise with such complex intrigue?
I believe the sensors are used more prominently and are actually an essential element of the plot in "A fire upon the deep".
In that book, giant ships are being powered by computer systems that are so complex, nobody fully master them and you need computer archeologists who spend their entire life studying how those system works to maintain and improve them. The hero of the book is actually one of those archeologists. If I remember correctly, he's the only one to know the meaning of the "unix epoch".
Edit: got my wires crossed. Indeed the book I am refering is actually the one mentionned in the article.
As the article refers to, the technology demo 20 years ago got as far as deploying the sensors from a radio-controlled airplane, and then driving a tank nearby, and receiving and processing the sensor data received. I can only imagine how far this technology has developed in the meantime.
I'm vaguely disappointed I can't go down to Costco and buy a 100-pack of localizers to sprinkle around my own property.
Ubiquitous sensors would be a great thing for owners of large parcels of property ... such as farmers and ranchers.
But maybe not such a good thing for civil liberties.
I love how Vinge explores these issues in his books. He's really underrated. When The Expanse was announced, I was excited ... but a bit disappointed that that series made it to the screen as the first hard sci-fi book across the line, before Vinge's work.
Vernor is a proponent of ubiquitous sensors as an alternative or as an adjunct to AI; the example he likes to use is what he calls the "localizer", a simple sensor that can detect its position relative to other nearby sensors of the saem type.
So instead of complex vision systems to find, say, a part in a bin in a warehouse, a locator attached to the item would inform the network that it was "Two items down and three across in bin #243. Oh, and I am upside down", allowing a robot to quickly retrieve the item. It's an interesting approach to what Robert Forward called "artificial stupidity".
"The QHL is not depicted as being able to move itself; it is moved passively around its environment by riding on humans, air currents, etc. However, at least a bit of mobility is implied by the presence of a magnetic actuator and by the QHL’s ability to create a gritty surface on a switch."
The way I imagined this while reading the book was that the sensors are ubiquitous, so it's not about making them move so much as selecting the sensors in a specific area to view imagery from or enable grit attraction on.
One of my favorite sci-fi books. I had a lot of fun thinking about how I would implement the localizers. I don't have the relevant background so I later found out that my ideas, some of which I put into a blog post[0], were rather naĂŻve.
Anyway, great timing to see this posted over the Christmas break. I wanted to reread The Witcher, but this has revived my desire to read more of Vernor Vinge. Recommendations welcome.
Linda Nagata is another author worth reading for ideas about sensors, nanotechnology, and autonomous aircraft.
at long last we have created the torment nexus
There are some technologies that should not be created.
"The main thing we know about the QHL’s software is that it is large and complex enough to defeat a years-long “software archeology” effort directed at determining whether the nodes can be trusted (in the end, they cannot)."
"cheap, effective sensor nodes lead to a government with the capacity for ubiquitous surveillance, which leads to a police state, which leads to societal collapse or worse."
It feels helpful to reframe "can it be trusted?" as "who knows more about its emergent runtime behavior?" This makes it more obvious that there are answers that can't be found by staring at the source code. Vinge was likely aware of the unanticipated behavior of the Morris worm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm) when he wrote Deepness. In the years since this book, we've seen more examples (stuxnet[1], ethereum[2]) of software with behavior unanticipated by -- and even weaponized against -- its creators.
(I'm very interested in this subject, and research ways to prevent unanticipated runtime behavior. My approach can be summarized as, "keep software small and simple to stay out of dark forests[3].")
[1] "accidentally spreading beyond its intended target" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet#History
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum#The_DAO_event
[3] https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest