reflections on online/offline presence

[jrtom]

New Scientist:
"Living online: The end of privacy?"

Has links to a few other items (not all necessarily worth the read), including the following SF:

Bruce Sterling, short-short SF story: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Google"
(I suspect that Bruce had nothing to do with that title; the story really doesn't have a lot to do with Google.)

Presented as a countervailing vision to the above by someone on /., we have this (rather less short) story by Vernor Vinge: Synthetic Serendipity

Comments

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I didn't know the specific origin of the "best minds" phrase, although I knew that it was a reference. The "Google" part was what bugged me--Google wasn't the first search engine and it won't be the last (although it's certainly among the best for most things at the moment).

I tend to have a similar reaction to most poetry. :)