Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge
Vernor Steffen Vingeis a retired San Diego State UniversityProfessor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels and novellas A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, Rainbows End, Fast Times at Fairmont High, and The Cookie Monster, as well as for his 1984 novel The Peace War and his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that the creation of superhuman artificial intelligence will mark the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth10 February 1944
CountryUnited States of America
All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.
Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.
Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.
Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all - no one's around to write horror stories.
And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.
What we have is a data glut.
One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.
I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.
He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.
In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.
We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.
Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.
The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.
The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.