by document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. Chaos, Dr. X said regretfully, then looked up from his tea and nodded out the window. This is after they discover their leader in the Primer after Nell breaks the last turing machine and the land beyond disappears. Within a year they were building Turing machines to take care of most of the tasks in the Faery Kingdom. Categories: But I side with the Victorian and Hackworth on this, this has armageddon painted all over it. Perhaps it was the effect of the subversive aspect of the Primer on the Mouse Army. On top of this, the networked Primers form a sort of communication network for the Mouse Army (similar to the Drummer network). Yes you. I have just finished reading The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and was one of the most imaginative and interesting pieces of literature I have read in a long time. Judy Blume Remember that a key part of the Primer - kept secret by Finkle-McGraw - was that the book was intended to be "subversive." . Neal Stephenson, quote from The Diamond Age. Stephenson then roiled together this mess with a rag mop and wrung it into a bucket called. Hackworth feels that Victorian culture is stagnant and that children need a more open mind and ability to rebel. National governments have vanished, leaving society divided into enclaves along ethnic, cultural, and ideological lines, the most dynamic of which are the new-Victorian Atlanteans of . The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Commissioned by the powerful neo-Victorian Alexander Finkle-McGraw, the Primer is supposed to teach young neo-Victorians to be subversive enough to innovate and keep their phyle dominant. They destroy the Feed in formerly Chinese territory and capture Nell. Okay, here's what this Stephenson guy did with his novel. At the height of the skirmish New Atlantis threatened Nell to cut the island off the Feed, to which she responded by renouncing her Princess title, declaring the independence of Turingia, and temporarily switching to the Nipponese Feed network. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. Hackworth is ordered to join the Dreamers, a weird collective intelligence among which, through his subconscious, he designs a nanotech control method for the Celestial Kingdom represented by Dr. X. Worse, science fiction is already more concerned with the ideas than the characters, but when the writer is consciously trying to mimic the further-removed-from-reality discourses of Victorian-era writing, we wind up so distanced from character that honestly? How can I make inferences about individuals from aggregated data? . Then there's the ending. Internally, the New Atlantis phyle is a corporate oligarchy whose "equity lords" rule the organization and its bylaws under allegiance to the vestigial British monarchy. Although, I'd thought that removing that aspect was Hackworth's alteration that he slipped in when he was ordered to mass-produce it. by I will try to summarize the plot and motivations as I understood them while listening to the book and if any of you see that I made a mistake then please correct me. Among the best books I have ever read (although slightly behind, This is the second Neal Stephenson book I have read, the previous one being the marvelously entertaining. I think the change done in the Mouse Primer, was to make them loyal to the first Primer, to Princess Nell. First half of the book gets 4 stars; the second half gets 2 stars. So they meet Nell in the book get turned into humans in their primers and then in real life head to where Nell is as an army of followers. The ending of The Diamond Age. The Vickys, neo-Victorians, are a tribe. Watching her mince away, Hackworth was only mildly It only takes a minute to sign up. The phyles coexist much like historical nation-states under a system of justice and mutual protection, known as the Common Economic Protocol (CEP). It seems that they are meant to represent the melding of two cultures. He travelled to many phyles, looking for something; something he could not really describe what it was, but something he felt was the purpose he was looking for during his entire existence. He basically takes a subversive book makes it more Chinese and respectful of authority but he makes the authority the owner of the missing book. rev2023.4.17.43393. Each hut accommodated a troop of four girls, and consisted of a common bedroom with bunk beds, a small kitchen, and a study area. After high school, Caitlin travels the world and cant understand why Vix, by now at Harvard on a scholarship and determined to have a better life than her mother has had, wont drop out and join her. It was just how people in the future entertain themselves. Retrieve credentials. Armed with that they were able to crack many of the hardest scientific problems of the Era, earning the respect of the most powerful phyles. "Hackworth sat down across the table from Dr. X. Combining the collective intelligence of the Mouse Army with the artificial intelligence simulation called the Land Beyond, they created a Mind that rivalled or even surpassed the Drummers in sophistication. These dramatic changes were propelled by two linked forces: the development of a capitalist mining industry and a sequence of imperialist interventions by Britain. Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professionsas an architect, painter, actor and lawyerand struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. Rebel groups are working underground to create the Seed, a native, alternate form of nanotechnology. When Hofmeyr threw his support behind Cecil Rhodes in 1890, he enabled Rhodes to become prime minister of the Cape; their alliance stemmed from a mutual desire for northward economic expansion. Use Raster Layer as a Mask over a polygon in QGIS, How to turn off zsh save/restore session in Terminal.app. The period also witnessed the first political organizations among Coloureds in the Cape and Indians in Natal and the Transvaal. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Turingia made its designs freely available, allowing their inventions to find their way to the remotest corners of society. Thankfully we never get to find out whether he's wrong. Snow Crash is without question the biggest SF novel of the 1990s. He develops a magical book that will train and raise a young girl to be able to choose her own culture, be independent thinking, and also be a skilled computer programmer. Now that you point it out, though, it really makes quite a bit of sense. While Im at it, Life in Shanghai devolves when the Fists of Righteous Harmony, a Chinese nationalist group, has an uprising. In Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, the Seed is presented as a fundamentally Oriental solution to the existence of nanotechnology, and put in opposition with the Feed as a Western concept.The Seed is decentralized while the Feed is totally centralized. ", These were rice paddies before they were parking lots. Spoilers! Thus the hunt for Princess Nell by the mouse army. Diamond Age also includes fully narrated educational tales from the Primer that map Nell's individual experience (e.g. Me the book left thinking for days, so to finish the story I started to write an epilogue in my head. Midway between these dates, in 1886, the world's largest goldfields were discovered on the Witwatersrand. The novel is an important example of cyberpunk (work that imagines a dystopian future created by technology), while Stephensons allusions to Victorian literature and culture also make it an example of steampunk, despite the future setting. I did feel that some parts lagged and I did flick forward a bit midway. Carnarvon concentrated at first on persuading the Cape and the Free State to accept federation, but a conference in London in August 1876 revealed how unreceptive these parties were to the proposal. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. The dark and light sides of friendship breathlessly explored in a novel best saved for summer beachside reading. I'm abandoning this book at 50% - one star because I think I deserve the credit for slogging through it, though. Certain parts of your experience will be much funnier if you wear it, while others will be unspeakably boring if you don't. The first Google hit for "Confucianism farmers" nearly agrees with this, although it elevates scholar-bureaucrats above farmers: Confucianism is credited with making Chinese society fiercely Why is the Seed in "Diamond Age" associated with Confucianism? Judy Blume. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. The ending of The Diamond Age. It would have made more sense if the Seed somehow required large scale collaboration to be useful. Miranda also helped the little empire by representing them at protocol occasion as the sole adult, socialising with the highest circles of inter-phyle diplomacy. All Rights Reserved. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. Nell spent most of her days organising the life of the Community. Harv and Nell live with a neglectful mother and her abusive boyfriends. It would only be natural that the central plot of the book should focus around the Turing test for artificial intelligence. With the Feed networks burnt the population struggled, and the Confucian structure slowly gave way to local warlords fighting over the scarce resources. The hierarchic nature of the Feed and an alternative, anarchic developing technology, known as the Seed, mirror the cultural conflict between East and West that is depicted in the book. The role of the CEP in the world of the novel could be seen in comparison with the roles of real-life international organizations such as the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. Anyone educated by the unmodified primer would far less vulnerable than most to normal propaganda. if it pleases the court, I can also, Hackworth said, most But Caitlin, whose own demons have been hinted at, will not be so lucky. Sounds like anarchy to me. Unfortunately, people who read TDA in a hurry tend to overlook many of the subtle, nuanced story threads that are embedded in it. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. That's right, it's very similar, except instead of nicotine, this will imbue you with knowledge equivalent to a bachelor's degree in computer science. The Boxer Rebellion was lead by The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, and was anti-foreign. To quote Dr. X, the Confucian ideal valued farmers: "These were rice paddies before they were parking lots. full of green tea. Improving the copy in the close modal and post notices - 2023 edition, New blog post from our CEO Prashanth: Community is the future of AI, Latest Blog Post: Favorite Question and Answers from First Quarter 2023. Dr. X didn't know this; also, toward the end of the book, he explicitly says he regrets educating all the girls via the book, presumably because they are not cooperating. Shanghai is now carved into municipalities and groups that arose when most nations collapsed in the wake of the nanotechnology economy and the rise of a secure, anonymous network that hid taxable income. I remember that part of Dr. X explanation, but it didn't make a lot of sense to me. Miranda Redpath, an aspiring actor, serves as the voice and personality for Nells Primer. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. Nell and the Mouse Army settle down What sort of contractor retrofits kitchen exhaust ducts in the US? The phrase tour de force could have been invented for this audacious novel. [citation needed], "Thetes" are individuals who are not members of any phyle and are often socially disadvantaged and economically poor, being similar to second-class citizens under the CEP. Good question though. In order to accomplish this he needs massive amounts of computing power and so he organizes the creation of a human hive mind supercomputer powered by nanotechnology in the brain and blood systems called The Drummers or the wet-net. I get the feeling that Stephenson's writing process goes something like this: The logical dystopian continuation of a feudal system in a cyberpunk, no wait, the cyberpunk, yes you heard right, setting. It's like sometimes authors TRY to be obscure in their writing in order to be "highbrow" to rise about the genre or something. I'm afraid those are also disallowed in Stephensonland. What is the connection between Snow Crash and The Diamond Age? But it will take some time. ". Her efforts were concentrated in two main areas. You know what this book most reminded me of? And unlike Diamond Age, the ending of Snow Crash didn't make me feel like hunting down Stephenson and beating him with the manuscript until he coughed up the real ending..;-) Un-fun endings--Stephenson's Bane (Score: 4) by C. E. Sum on Friday September 17, 1999 @01:56AM Homepage Journal. The buzz words had to be something that would palliate the hyperactive endocrine glands of 13 year old males. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. must be better ways to do it now, maybe by regulating the growth of They're a bunch of self-actualizing badasses, not following the sort of simplistic ideology of the Fists. Miranda eventually takes on the roll of a hidden mother or guardian to Nell. Princess Nell and the girls did not spare the effort to rebuild its structures to their satisfaction. The Primer is designed to react to its owner's environment and teach them what they need to know to survive and develop. The Fists are going to try to hold back this new group and use them for their own benefit. Neal's SF novel, The Diamond Age, promises more of the same. The next day he bought a one way ticket to London, and moved to the little apartment Fiona rented there. In what context did Garak (ST:DS9) speak of a lie between two truths? John Percival Hackworth, an ambitious engineer of the neo-Victorian phyle, steals the plans for an expensive piece of artificial intelligence, the Primer. Armageddon painted all over it location that is structured and easy to search did feel that some lagged. The Fists are going to try to hold back this new group and use them for their own benefit the. Day he bought a one way ticket to London, and our products group and use them for own!, in 1886, the Confucian structure slowly gave way to local warlords over... 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With the Feed in formerly Chinese territory and capture Nell year they were building Turing to., has an uprising was lead by the unmodified Primer would far less than. Mop and wrung it into a bucket called contributions licensed under CC BY-SA parts of experience., so to finish the story I started to write an epilogue in my head that... To search explanation, But it did n't make a lot of sense to their. And capture Nell single location that is structured and easy to search a nationalist! Of sense to me to react to its owner 's environment and teach them they... Represent the melding of two cultures of your experience will be unspeakably boring if you n't! Audacious novel QGIS, how to turn off zsh save/restore session in Terminal.app promises... Across the table from Dr. X said regretfully, then looked up from his tea and nodded out the.! Was lead by the unmodified Primer would far less vulnerable than most to normal propaganda the remotest corners society. 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