True Names

Today I read TRUE NAMES by Vernor Vinge, as recommended by Andreessen.

It really is a a good novella. I’m am shocked and amazed that it was written in 1984, as it has elements not seen until much later in authors like Charles Stross (Accelerando) and David Brin (Earth). The Afterword (by Marvin Minsky) is also quite good and contains such elements as:

Now it is easy enough to say that the mind is a society, but that idea by itself is useless unless we can say more about how it is organized. If all those specialized parts were equally competitive, there would be only anarchy, and the more we learned, the less we’d be able to do.

I’m also quite surprised that anything written in 1984 about technology would seem very dated and drab by today’s standards, but it remains scant enough on details and strong enough on philosophy that it shall continue to be applicapable for a long time yet.