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coalescentTourist may be my single favourite part of the Accelerando sequence. Another few years, another jump: now we're in Scotland, just shy of the start of decade three.
On one level, this is a book about the relationships between humans and the systems we create and embed ourselves in. Economic, emotional, political systems. By this point Manfred has become a broker between ideologies, but he's also something new himself. His identity is distribute, large amounts of his processing power located outside his skull. In his glasses. And at the start of Tourist, he gets mugged.
The most fascinating thing is not so much watching what Manfred loses as what his mugger gains. In a real sense, he starts to become another Manfred. This is the way Accelerando moves one of its key themes to center stage for the first time: what is an identity, when you can be copied, distributed, rebooted?
By the end of the story, Manfred is confronting his own obsolescence. He's exhausted, on the edge of conceptual burnout - as are the systems he spent his life trying to escape. It's time for something new.
End of part one.
On one level, this is a book about the relationships between humans and the systems we create and embed ourselves in. Economic, emotional, political systems. By this point Manfred has become a broker between ideologies, but he's also something new himself. His identity is distribute, large amounts of his processing power located outside his skull. In his glasses. And at the start of Tourist, he gets mugged.
The most fascinating thing is not so much watching what Manfred loses as what his mugger gains. In a real sense, he starts to become another Manfred. This is the way Accelerando moves one of its key themes to center stage for the first time: what is an identity, when you can be copied, distributed, rebooted?
By the end of the story, Manfred is confronting his own obsolescence. He's exhausted, on the edge of conceptual burnout - as are the systems he spent his life trying to escape. It's time for something new.
End of part one.
