Blog all kindle-clipped locations: Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson

moleitau4 Comments

Really, really enjoyed this. First of KSR’s books I’ve read – arrived on my radar as I was finishing my talk on Time, and it’s a lovely meditation on time, science and humanity. Recommended.

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 1497-1502 | Added on Tuesday, January 05, 2010, 08:33 AM

“Materials and power available are terrifically advanced compared to your time. And there is a principle called redundancy at the criticalities, do you know this term? Replacement systems are available in case of failures. Bad things still sometimes happen. But there you are. They do anywhere.’ ‘But on Earth,’ Galileo objected, ‘on Earth, in the open air, the things you make don’t have to work for you to survive.’ ‘Don’t they? Your clothing, your language, your weapons? They all have to work for you to stay alive, right? We are poor forked worms in this world. Only our technologies, and our teamwork, allow us to survive.’”

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 2182 | Added on Thursday, January 07, 2010, 11:24 PM

“analepsis”

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 3535-38 | Added on Thursday, January 21, 2010, 08:48 AM

“Humans sensed only a small part of reality. They were as worms in the earth, comfortable and warm. If God had not given them reason, they would not by their senses know even a minim of the whole. As it was, however, by the cumulative work of thousands of people, humanity had slowly and painfully built a picture of the cosmos beyond what they could see; and then had found ways to use that knowledge, and move around in the cosmos.”

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 3676-82 | Added on Thursday, January 21, 2010, 08:49 AM

The present is a three-way interference pattern.’ ‘Like chips of sunlight on water. Lots of them at once, or almost at once.’ ‘Yes, potential moments, that wink into being when the three waves peak. The vector nature of the manifold also accounts for many of the temporal effects we experience, like entropy, action at a distance, temporal waves and their resonance and interference effects, and of course quantum entanglement and bilocation, which you yourself are experiencing because of the technology that was developed to move epileptically. In terms of what we sense, fluctuations in this manifold also account for most of our dreams, as well as less common sensations like involuntary memory, foresight, déjà vu, presque vu, jamais vu, nostalgia, precognition, Ruckgriffe, Schwanung, paralipomenon, mystical union with the eternal or the One, and so on.’

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 4853-57 | Added on Sunday, January 31, 2010, 11:07 PM

“Really there was nothing but asynchronous anachronism. Time was a manifold full of exclusions and resurrections, fragments and the spaces between fragments, eclipses and epilepsies, isotopies all superposed on each other and interweaving in an anarchic vibrating tapestry, and since to relive it at one point was not to relive it at another, the whole was unreadable, permanently beyond the mind. The present was a laminate event, and obviously the isotopies could detach from each other, slightly or greatly. He was caught in a mere splinter of the whole, no matter how entangled with the rest of it.”

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 4870-72 | Added on Sunday, January 31, 2010, 11:17 PM

But in the garden he would sit still, and think. It was possible, there, to collapse all the potentialities to a single present. This moment had a long duration. Such a blessing; he could feel it in his body, in the sun and air and earth sustaining him. Blue sky overhead-it was the part of the rainbow that was always visible, stretching all the way across the dome of sky.

Galileo’s Dream (Kim Stanley Robinson)
– Highlight Loc. 8926-40 | Added on Tuesday, March 09, 2010, 09:59 AM

“Reality is always partly a creation of the observing consciousness. So I’ve said what I like; and I knew him well enough to think I got it mostly right. I know he was like us, always looking out for himself; and unlike us, in that he acted, while we often lack the courage to act. I wrote this for Hera, but no matter what time you are in when you read it, I’m sure that the history you tell yourself is still a tale of mangled potentiality, of unnecessary misery. That’s just the way it is. In all times people are greatly lacking in courage. But sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they keep trying. This too is history. We are all history-the hopes of people in the past, the past of some future people-known to them, judged by them, changed by them as they use us. So the story keeps changing, all of it. This too I’ve seen, and so I persist. I hope without hope. At some point the inclined plane can bottom out and the ball begin to rise. That’s what science is trying to do. So far it hasn’t worked, the story has been ugly, stupid, shameful, sure; but that can change. It can always change. Because understand: once I saw Galileo burned at the stake; then I saw him squeak his way clear. You have to imagine how that feels. It makes you have to try. And so when sometimes you feel strange, when a pang tugs you or it seems like the moment has already happened-or when you look up in the sky and are surprised by the sight of bright Jupiter between clouds, and everything suddenly seems stuffed with a vast significance-consider that some other person somewhere is entangled with you in time, and is trying to give some push to the situation, some little help to make things better. Then put your shoulder to whatever wheel you have at hand, whatever moment you’re in, and push too! Push like Galileo pushed! And together we may crab sideways toward the good.”

Blog all kindle-clipped… umm… LOCATIONS!: The Diamond Age.

moleitau4 Comments

Kindle

Mike points out that in theory that Kindle-reading should make it easier to ‘dog-ear-blog’ books and articles…

“I purchased a Kindle in late spring, and I think this has much to do with how this activity has petered out for me. Specifically, the Kindle and its good friend Instapaper have largely eaten my nonfiction reading, which means that there are no longer any pages to dog-ear. The counterintuitive part is that Kindle actually has an incredibly easy way to mark and save passages, with everything you highlight using the little joystick being dumped to a plaintext file called “My Clippings”. In theory this should make the activity much easier, but since the medium is the message and all that blah, I’m now reading entirely different stuff than I used to. I read fewer non-fiction books and more non-fiction long-form online writings, the kind of stuff that fits into Instapaper. I’m not unhappy with this change in my intake, but I do like to be a little more demonstrative with the things I’m interested in, so I’m unhappy the change in my output. If there was a way to make the Kindle pump the clippings file back out on some schedule, that would be good. Having to plug it into a computer does not cut it.”

He’s right that it could be way-more simple and seamless, But it sort of does work. Apart from the rather absurdly-specific-and-yet-hopelessly-abstract “locations” references.

I re-read Neal Stephenson‘s The Diamond Age, while working on the Mag+ concept project, and so I notice my clippings somehow reflect my preoccupations at the time…

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The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
– Highlight Loc. 129-35 | Added on Monday, November 09, 2009, 08:08 PM

Three people were waiting. Bud took a seat and skimmed a mediatron from the coffee table; it looked exactly like a dirty, wrinkled, blank sheet of paper.“ ‘Annals of Self-Protection,’ ” he said, loud enough for everyone else in the place to hear him. The logo of his favourite meedfeed coalesced on the page. Mediaglyphics, mostly the cool animated ones, arranged themselves in a grid. Bud scanned through them until he found the one that denoted a comparison of a bunch of different stuff, and snapped at it with his fingernail. New mediaglyphics appeared, surrounding larger cine panes in which Annals staff tested several models of skull guns against live and dead targets. Bud frisbeed the mediatron back onto the table; this was the same review he’d been poring over for the last day, they hadn’t updated it, his decision was still valid.
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The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
– Highlight Loc. 302-3 | Added on Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 07:32 PM

It reminded him of pouring a jet of heavy cream into coffee, watching it rebound from the bottom of the cup in a turbulent fractal bloom that solidified just as it dashed against the surface.
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The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
– Highlight Loc. 691-95 | Added on Thursday, November 12, 2009, 08:59 AM

A gentleman of higher rank and more far-reaching responsibilities would probably get different information written in a different way, and the top stratum of New Chusan actually got the Times on paper, printed out by a big antique press that did a run of a hundred or so, every morning at about three a.m. That the highest levels of the society received news written with ink on paper said much about the steps New Atlantis had taken to distinguish itself from other pnyles.
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The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
– Highlight Loc. 733-36 | Added on Thursday, November 12, 2009, 09:03 AM

The Judge’s other gofer was a tiny little Amerasian woman wearing glasses. Hardly anyone used glasses anymore to correct their vision, and so it was a likely bet that this was actually some kind of phantascope, which let you see things that weren’t there, such as ractives. Although, when people used them for purposes other than entertainment, they used a fancier word: phenomenoscope.
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The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
– Highlight Loc. 964-72 | Added on Thursday, November 12, 2009, 08:11 PM

“Is this the smart makeup?” Hackworth said, nodding at the screen. “The next step beyond,” Cotton said. “Remote-control.” “Controlled how? Yuvree?” Hackworth said, meaning Universal Voice Recognition Interface. “A specialised variant thereof, yes sir,” Cotton said. Then, lowering his voice, “Word has it they considered makeup with nanoreceptors for galvanic skin response, pulse, respiration, and so on, so that it would respond to the wearer’s emotional state. This superficial, need I say it, cosmetic issue concealed an undertow that pulled them out into deep and turbulent philosophical waters—” “What? Philosophy of makeup?” “Think about it, Mr. Hackworth—is the function of makeup to respond to one’s emotions—or precisely not to do so?” “These waters are already over my head,” Hackworth admitted.
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The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
– Highlight Loc. 1162-66 | Added on Sunday, November 15, 2009, 02:41 PM

The universe was a disorderly mess, the only interesting bits being the organised anomalies. Hackworth had once taken his family out rowing on the pond in the park, and the ends of the yellow oars spun off compact vortices, and Fiona, who had taught herself the physics of liquids through numerous experimental beverage spills and in the bathtub, demanded an explanation for these holes in water. She leaned over the gunwale, Gwendolyn holding the sash of her dress, and felt those vortices with her hands, wanting to understand them. The rest of the pond, simply water in no particular order, was uninteresting.
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The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
– Highlight Loc. 1166-71 | Added on Sunday, November 15, 2009, 02:41 PM

We ignore the blackness of outer space and pay attention to the stars, especially if they seem to order themselves into constellations. “Common as the air” meant something worthless, but Hackworth knew that every breath of air that Fiona drew, lying in her little bed at night, just a silver glow in the moonlight, was used by her body to make skin and hair and bones. The air became Fiona, and deserving—no, demanding—of love. Ordering matter was the sole endeavour of Life, whether it was a jumble of self-replicating molecules in the primordial ocean, or a steam-powered English mill turning weeds into clothing, or Fiona lying in her bed turning air into Fiona.
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The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
– Highlight Loc. 6435-44 | Added on Monday, November 30, 2009, 08:41 PM

“I think I will choose to interpret your question as part of a Socratic dialogue for my edification,” Carl Hollywood said carefully, “and not as an allegation of insincerity on my part. As a matter of fact, just before I encountered you, I was enjoying my cigar, and looking about at London, and thinking about just how well it all suits me.” “It suits you well because you are of a certain age now. You are a successful and established artist. The ragged bohemian life holds no charm for you anymore. But would you have reached your current position if you had not lived that life when you were younger?” “Now that you put it that way,” Carl said, “I agree that we might try to make some provision, in the future, for young bohemians—” “It wouldn’t work,” Finkle-McGraw said. “I’ve been thinking about this for years. I had the same idea: Set up a sort of young artistic bohemian theme park, sprinkled around in all the major cities, where young New Atlantans who were so inclined could congregate and be subversive when they were in the mood. The whole idea was self-contradictory. Mr. Hollywood, I have devoted much effort, during the last decade or so, to the systematic encouragement of subversiveness.”
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“He has to make what he is thinking in order to express it.”

moleitau3 Comments

Charles Holland at Fantastic Journal with a brilliant assessment of CE3K and, for that matter – design and material exploration:

“The film is obsessed with issues of representation and non-verbal communication. The famous five-note score that the scientists use to communicate with the aliens, for example, effectively replaces speech. The chief scientist is a Frenchman (played by film director François Truffaut) who makes no more than one or two gnomic utterances and is accompanied throughout the film by an ineffectual translator. The fact that none of the Americans can understand him seems to imbue him with some special understanding of what is going on.

Roy can’t communicate his obsession through conventional language and is forced into non-verbal communication. He has to make what he is thinking in order to express it. And he’s not alone in his obsession. Another character – Gillian Guiler – is also obsessed with Devil’s Tower. She draws it over and over again. In a brilliant scene the two of them converge on Devil’s Tower aware that it’s the location for the alien spaceship’s landing. Trying to work out how to scale the mountain Roy reveals that his knowledge of its topography is vastly superior to Gillian’s. “You should try sculpture next time”, he deadpans.”