In recent years (or at least since the end of the previous century) a new strain of Science Fiction has been propagating in the literary biotope. It is a new variant that appears to be written by comuter geeks for computer geeks.

The sub-genre is characterized by frequent use of concepts an terminology from the field of computer science, such as object oriented programming. One or more of the following themes are usually present:

• cryptography
• copyright and intellectual property
• artificial intelligence
• nanotechnology
• the Singularity

There is definitely an overlap with the sub-genre postcyberpunk, and many of the authors can have either tag. However, the level of technological understanding expected of the reader is usually higher.

Examples of works that fit this label are Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, Accelerando by Charles Stross and many short stories by Cory Doctorow. Since copyleft, open source and free software are highly regarded in the geek community, many of these stories are available under Creative Commons licences. I’ll link to a few at the end of this post.

I guess it’s not surprising that there has evolved a genre that caters to the tastes and interests of compuer geeks. Classic science fiction, with robots and space ships, has always had a large following among engineers and scientists. This is simply the next logical step. And the target group is growing steadily.

There’s one thing I’m curious about, however: Would anyone who’s not a computer geek appreciate this type of literature?

Thankfully, at least Stross’ Accelerando has a technical manual written by its fans: Accelerando Technical Companion

Links:

• True Names by Cory Doctorow &  Benjamin Rosenbaum
• Accelerando by Charles Stross
• 0wnz0red by Cory Doctorow
• When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth by Cory Doctorow

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Jag kom att tänka på det påstådda CIA-sabotage som orsakade en sovietisk gasledning att explodera 1982.

Missa för övrigt inte Konflikts utmärkta extramaterial i Konflikt Podd Plus!

SR P1 Konflikt: Har cyberkriget börjat nu?

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Voddler Search Engine Plugin

(Or make your own plugin)

(http://blogg.wonderfulcomics.com/?p=657 Today EFF and the Tor Project are launching a public beta of a new Firefox extension called HTTPS Everywhere. The extension tells the browser to always use the encrypted https protocol if it is available.

This is a small but important step towards protecting your privacy. It will be effective against the EU’s Data Retention Directive (Datalagringsdirektivet) that is drawing closer every day, and that will force all Internet service providers to save all the Internet traffic from your computer.  (The extension will naturally not protect agains Google’s or Facebook’s snooping).

Install the HTTPS Everywhere extension now!

Fortunaltely, the system is open source so this amazingly stupid setting can be deactivated (comment out a few lines in wpmu-settings.php). It’s just that you have to remeber this change when you update the software.

Read more if this is of any interest to you:

http://wpmututorials.com/hacks/forcing-mu-to-use-www/

(And I don’t think it’s a bad idea to use URLs without www, it’s just that it’s not up to the developers of WPMU…)

I had naïvely been hoping for the iPad to be an open platform, but just like on the iPod/iPhone all applications have to go through the app store and be approved by Apple.

Photo: Michal Zacharzewski

I dagarna lanserades sajten killfrågor.se av föreningen Män för jämställdhet. Det är ett forum där unga killar ska kunna prata om jämställdhet, heteronorm, våld och liknande med någon som är lite äldre. Jag hoppas att det blir en bra sajt som gör nytta.

Jag är själv involverad såtillvida att jag har programmerat ett verktyg som kommer att användas för att handleda volontärerna och utvärdera metoden.

Thanks to: Mattias Elftorp!