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When I began writing science fiction in the middle 60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

Vernor Vinge

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Vernor Vinge
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: October 2
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Waukesha
Wisconsin
Vernor Steffen Vinge
Like
Middle
Decades
Easy
Began
Science
Seemed
Seems
Lead
Ideas
Took
Find
Months
Percolate
Writing
Fiction
Eighteen
Time
Consciousness
Cultural

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Hexapodia as the key insight...I haven't had a chance to see the famous video from Straumli Realm, except as an evocation. (My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive.) Is it true that humans have six legs?
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Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season.
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One of his greatest talents was empathy no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.
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Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.
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Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.
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How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?
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Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
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Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.
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Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all – no one's around to write horror stories.
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If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.
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We’re long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.
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Well, what do you know, Pham said. Butterflies in jackboots.
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He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.
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But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence.
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The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.
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How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.
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Once upon a time I was such a good liar I could talk the fish right into my mouths.
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The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.
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We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.
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It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.
Vernor Vinge