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Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

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81–90 of 173 posts

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#81
Microsoft had released Future Visions Sci-fi series after inviting several sci-fi authors to their research labs - New Link - https://news.microsoft.com/features/future-visions-anthology...

The book itself can be downloaded at https://news.microsoft.com/futurevisions/

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#82

Interesting they mention and get quotes from the author of the Three Body Problem series. I just finished reading that series, and the whole time I had the feeling that it was written more to convince people of something than to actually entertain the reader. The ideas in the books were pretty amazing, unique, and imaginative; but the story and writing itself was quite sub-par. edit: I listened (audio books) to the E…

I also really enjoyed the books, but definitely more from a "these are cool ideas" perspective than from great narrative storytelling. Something was probably lost in translation, but the ideas were really great. I especially like (and hate) the concept of the Dark Forest.

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#85
post #62

Wasn't there something about Clancy being working with the CIA to massage their image? Military and intelligence and politics have always manipulated media... Also, recall "Americans army" was being ostensibly used as a recruiting/psyche-molding tool... --- Finally: look at cyberpunk, and the top five writers in that category, as well as anime (ghost in the shell, etc) which have in-formed modern reality with all the…

> Also, recall "Americans army" was being ostensibly used as a recruiting/psyche-molding tool... IIRC, "America's Army" was initially created as an internal training tool for the Army. Then the Army decided to have the creator adjust it a bit and publish it as a video game, sort of as a recruiting tool. As far as adjustments, apparently the video game audience doesn't really like waiting 2 minutes for a smoke grenade…

It is definitely a recruiting tool, rather than 'sort of' one. Just check out the website for the game today (and through the wayback machine if you will)

It can be difficult to tell apart the content talking about the game and the content talking about joining the army, but it is often explicitly about joining the real army.

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#86
post #77
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I happen to live in Greece so I witnessed first hand the results of his reign. You probably have no idea how it is to live in a country that has capital controls so let me enlighten you. The first months, until the system was somewhat stabilized, in order to pay for servers and such we had to ask for favors from Greeks who lived abroad. Imagine having half a dozen servers to pay and not knowing if you will manag…

anecdata != data. You haven't presented any alternative views on what a presumably more competent economist could have executed on. Just because life was bad doesn't mean that it could have been better.

What his predecessor tried to do. Fix the economy. Greece's problem isn't the debt per se, it's the fact that our economy isn't competitive. There's a lot of red tape, many professions are regulated (pharmacies are a prime example), we import way more things than we export, entrepreneurism is very low, public sector is corrupted, the insurance system is bankrupt, and a lot of things don't work as they should in a modern western country. Even if we defaulted in all our debt, which is highly unlikely even if we exit the Eurozone, we'd be in the same position give it a few decades. There are a lot of structural problems in the economy and Varoufakis did nothing to address any of these. All he did was acting like a rock star who is clueless of how things work in the upper levels of EU policy making. In the six or so months of his reign he didn't introduced a single policy to fix structural problems. Not one, nothing, zero, ziltch. He was so fixated in the debt issue and acting like a fucking primadona that he forgot there were other equally pressing matters to attend to. Like running the damn country for one.

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#87
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the opposite of when Valve hired a Chief Economist in 2012[1]. We've come full circle. [1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/18/yanis_varoufa...

... who then went on to be Minister of Finance for the Greek government.

I remember cracking up laughing when he described Germany's proposed austerity measures as 'fiscal waterboarding' - such a vivid description.

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#88

Interesting they mention and get quotes from the author of the Three Body Problem series. I just finished reading that series, and the whole time I had the feeling that it was written more to convince people of something than to actually entertain the reader. The ideas in the books were pretty amazing, unique, and imaginative; but the story and writing itself was quite sub-par. edit: I listened (audio books) to the E…

Did you read it in the original Chinese, or the English translation? I haven't read either, but it's possible that the English version misses a lot of nuance from the original version.

(It's also quite possible the original is crap, and the translation is doing a very adequate job.)

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#89
post #72
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit rich. He advocated retreating from the Euro when Greece essentially had obligations that it could never repay (obligations created by a corrupt previous government that arguably were unconscionable).

Well actually he never did, and that's the problem. If he had, we'd at least know his plan. But all he did was taking a gamble that went on and on for months dragging the economy to the bottom in the meantime. There was no planning for exiting the Euro, nothing at all. Just random thoughts here and there and a lot of bs talk. For example, the committee that was exploring the consequences of leaving the Euro and how t…

How much power do you guys all think a minister of finance has?

In almost every government, its an executive/cabinet level position which means all his power derives from the President or Prime Minister. He doesn't take independent action, as he has no independent power.

Re: Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them

#90
post #9

"Sweet Tooth" Ian McEwan: CIA, MI5 and MI6 are sponsoring many writers, such as some companies sponsor open source devs

the intelligence community has had a very long history of writing fiction novels as ways to communicate some of their realities. see john le carre
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