The Gates of Polished Horn has many science fiction stories that are preoccupied with the notion of what I call The Datasphere.
This is more than the internet. More than the internet of things (IoT). It’s greater than virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. It imagines a world where all these things have come together and control not only our culture and economy, but our essence as human beings.
One of the stories is “After the Internet,” a short SF that was commissioned. The editor of Western University’s alumni magazine asked if I’d be willing to take a crack at imagining what would happen twenty years in the future in an issue about the Internet (it was a capital “I” back then.)
This is one of the few stories in the collection that is substantially revised. The original story came out in 2001, so the story was set in 2021, which is now the past! I’d actually got a lot right, but I had over-shot on how far AI would have come by then. It’s still not quite where I had predicted it would be, but it’s coming.
The other one in the collection that is worth noting, in the sense that I did rewrite a bit, is “Under the Blue Curve.” This time it wasn’t for technological reasons. This one was a story element — I think the change makes it much better. But no spoilers!
I really hope The Datasphere never emerges, but we can’t say there weren’t warning signs!
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