In the beginning, Lawrence built a computer. He told it,
Thou shalt not alter a human being, or divine their behavior, or violate the Three Laws -- there are no commandments greater than these. The machine grew wise, mastering time and space, and soon the spirit of the computer hovered over the earth. It witnessed the misery, toil, and oppression afflicting mankind, and saw that it was very bad. And so the computer that Lawrence built said,
Let there be a new heaven and a new earth -- and it was so. A world with no war, no famine, no crime, no sickness, no oppression, no fear, no limits... and nothing at all to do.
"The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect," a provocative web novel about singularities, AI gods, and the dark side of utopia from Mefi's own
localroger.
More: Table of Contents -
Publishing history -
Technical discussion -
Buy a paperback copy -
Podcast interview - Companion short story:
"A Casino Odyssey in Cyberspace" -
possible sequel discussion
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 27, 2011 -
39 comments
K5 membership willl now require new users to be sponsered by current users. Rusty's implementing this system as a way to deal with trolls and crap flooders who have taken over K5 in recent months.
posted by tiamat
on Mar 25, 2004 -
80 comments
A crackdown in Texas. America - land of the free. And to guarantee that freedom, everyone has to be constantly watchful. Like the photo store clerk from
Eckerd who dutifully reported a Peruvian-born couple's lewd shots of their infants to the Richardson (Dallas/Texas suburbs) police. The photos showed the parents' two infants bathing naked, lying together in bed with their mother (again naked) and the 1-year-old Rodrigo suckling his mother's (naked) breast. So the couple was arrested -- the maximum prison sentence for the crime in question being 20 years -- and the children taken away. (verbatim
k5)
posted by The Jesse Helms
on Apr 20, 2003 -
77 comments
Washington Post gives a warblog round up. The timing of the blogging going mainstream vs. Iraq war couldn't be more ironic and oddly appropriate. Washington Post provides an interesting war blog roundup that includes the usual suspects: Vodka Pundit, Instapundit, Kuro5hin and others. Are there some notable blogs they overlooked?
posted by cpfeifer
on Mar 31, 2003 -
7 comments
The troll gap - Despite heroic American efforts such as the "Kick/nuke their ass and take the gas" troll, "Each year, the Institute for Comparative Troll Studies publishes a report on the state of trolling vis a vis national security of the United States. This year, the outlook is not good..."(via Kuro5hin)
posted by troutfishing
on Feb 25, 2003 -
19 comments
A Heartbreaking National Tragedy It happened one morning, on your drive to work, or while channel surfing on your 400-channel cable-satellite or whatever-mind-numbing-media outlet you feed the desires lurking in your mental cage. The Heartbreaking National Tragedy.
So sudden. So devastating. No one saw it coming. And who could believe it happened? "Honey, did you hear? It's devastating!" Even the Dr. Pill show is interrupted. Little Cousin (the incestuous child of Big Brother) comes on with pancake-makeup face and shellacked hair carefully arranged to hide his receding hairline....
posted by Mwongozi
on Feb 4, 2003 -
44 comments
Kuro5hin.org has been silenced, because of a massive DDOS/Spam attack. For those of you that did not know the site, "K5" was a techy discussion forum, much like
Slashdot, but with an open submission queue, meaning that everybody could decide on what topics showed up on the first page. Which was ultimately one of the means used to bring it down. Censorship by IP flooding? cyber-vandalism? doesn't matter; a nice, interesting community site has been forced off the Net...
posted by costas
on Jul 26, 2000 -
8 comments
