FROM: So I read ‘Diamond Age'
Addendum:
Even though I think I’ve decided I just don’t really like reading Stephenson (this is the third book of his I've finished, and the fifth I have attempted), I recognize that he’s maybe one of the three or four most important living sci-fi authors (I have a pet theory that everyone who likes this genre is either wired for William Gibson or Stephenson — I am the former).
He is important and he will remain important. There will be English grad students who do PhD’s about his work. Now that we are in the future, one vein of meaning that I think is worth mining in Diamond Age is his conception of the human voice.
A key character in the book serves as the voice of Nell’s primer, because Stephenson writes that AI’s could not convincingly recreate human voices. That is basically already not true. I personally love listening to the Substack voices, though there are moments when they kind of miss rendering certain sentences. Still, they aren’t off-putting. And they will only get better.
What does it mean that Stephenson didn’t believe that computers could simulate our voices, even though they could do a fair job of imitating thinking? Something to mine there. It could be that Stephenson foresaw something true even if he wasn’t precisely right.