Quotes by David Marusek

Society can serve its citizens only to the extent that it knows them.

What a mistake that had been, to create a construct [AI] that could suffer. He knew that now. Life, pain, death, they were no playthings. Biology was serious business, not for amateurs and foolish gods.

When General Genius built the first mentar [Artificial Intelligence] mind in the last half of the twenty-first century, it based its design on the only proven conscious material then known, namely, our brains. Specifically, the complex structure of our synaptic network. Scientists substituted an electrochemical substrate for our slower, messier biological one. Our brains are an evolutionary hodgepodge of newer structures built on top of more ancient ones, a jury-rigged system that has gotten us this far, despite its inefficiency, but was crying out for a top-to-bottom overhaul.Or so the General genius engineers presumed. One of their chief goals was to make minds as portable as possible, to be easily transferred, stored, and active in multiple media: electronic, chemical, photonic, you name it. Thus there didnt seem to be a need for a mentar body, only for interchangeable containers. They designed the mentar mind to be as fungible as a bank transfer.And so they eliminated our most ancient brain structures for regulating metabolic functions, and they adapted our sensory/motor networks to the control of peripherals.As it turns out, intelligence is not limited to neural networks, Merrill. Indeed, half of human intelligence resides in our bodies outside our skulls. This was intelligence the mentars never inherited from us....The genius of the irrational......We gave them only rational functions -- the ability to think and feel, but no irrational functions... Have you ever been in a tight situation where you relied on your gut instinct? This is the bodys intelligence, not the minds. Every living cell possesses it. The mentar substrate has no indomitable will to survive, but ours does.Likewise, mentars have no fire in the belly, but we do. They dont experience pure avarice or greed or pride. Theyre not very curious, or playful, or proud. They lack a sense of wonder and spirit of adventure. They have little initiative. Granted, their cognition is miraculous, but their personalities are rather pedantic.But probably their chief shortcoming is the lack of intuition. Of all the irrational faculties, intuition in the most powerful. Some say intuition transcends space-time. Have you ever heard of a mentar having a lucky hunch? They can bring incredible amounts of cognitive and computational power to bear on a seemingly intractable problem, only to see a dumb human with a lucky hunch walk away with the prize every time. Then theres luck itself. Some people have it, most dont, and no mentar does.So this makes them want our bodies...Our bodies, ape bodies, dog bodies, jellyfish bodies. Theyve tried them all. Every cell knows some neat tricks or survival, but the problem with cellular knowledge is that its not at all fungible; nor are our memories. Were pretty much trapped in our containers.

Consciousness is the chronic pain of life, and all higher organisms suffer it every waking moment.

In a thousand years, Fred, no one will even know or care we existed.

Imagine, Bishop, that you have a beloved cat, but that your cat is not with you. If you close your eyes and further imagine you are petting your cat, the same neurons in your brains are activated as if you were petting the actual cat. Our minds may know the difference between its models and reality itself, but it prefers its models. So much so that we apprehend reality through our models, rather than directly via the sense. When Im speaking to you, I have a little bishop in my head, and though I speak out load, Im speaking to my little bishop. When you answer, I can only perceive you through my model of you.Mentars also make models, but they dont apprehend reality through them. They end up, not with little people in their minds, but with highly complex rule sets. They relate to their models in the same way we relate to weather models, as things to consult, but not to conflate with external reality.

Capitalism was a marvel, as long as you were a capitalist.

Why do we need so many people on Earth? I ask you. What are they good for? They live out ludicrous lives of pointless desperation. Ninety-nine percent of the human population is so much wasted resources. Stubborn vermin, we humans are.Granted, in the past, the unwashed masses were necessary. We needed them to till our fields and fight our wars. We needed them to labor in our factories making consumer crap that we flipped back at them at a handsome profit.Alas, those days are gone. We live in a boutique economy now. Energy is abundant and cheap. Mentars and robotic labor make and manage everything. So who needs people? People are so much dead white. They eat up our profits. They produce nothing but pollution and social unrest. They drive us crazy with their pissing and moaning. I think we can all agree that Corporation Earth is in need of a serious downsizing....The boutique economy has no need of the masses, so lets get rid of them. But how, you ask? Not with wars, surely, or disease, famine, or mass murder. Despots have tried all these methods through the millennia, and theyre never a permanent solution.No, all we need to do is buy up the ground from under their feet -- and evict them. Were buying up the planet, Bishop, fair and square. Were turning it into the most exclusive gated community in history. Now, the question is, in two hundred years, will you be a member of the landowners club, or will you be living in some tin can in outer space drinking recycled piss?

Be they pharaohs or freeholders, barons or farmers, landowners have been the most capable, most intrepid, and most assertive members of civilized society.