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\title{Readings \#7}
\author{David Golombek}
\date{\today}
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{\large \underline{Neuromancer} by William Gibson}

Perhaps if I hadn't read ``True Names'' by Vernor Vinge before reading
\underline{Neuromancer} I would have been as awed by it as so many
other people have been.  I certainly enjoyed Neuromancer, and thought
that several parts were all too possible future scenarios, but I never
got the same sense of ``a pioneering work in a brand new field.''
Because ``True Names'' covered so many of the computer interfacing
issues that Neuromancer did, the number of new ideas in the book were
far reduced for me.  

To his credit, Gibson managed to create a wide variety of great terms
for concepts, including ``Black ICE'' and a few other terms which have
made it into mainstream culture.  His thoughts on cyberpunk, with it's
bleak outlook on the future, were very well done, and quite diferent
than anything else I've read.  His character classes (ie, console
cowboys and street samurai) were interesting new variations on the
classical science fiction characters, a good mixture of fantasy roles
and war heroes.  His technology is well thought out, and his AI's are
quite well done, an interesting combination of extreme intelligence
and power and childish naivete.

Gibson's predictions for the future sometimes seem overly bleak, with
it's wide gap between rich and poor, constant danger on the streets,
and rough power struggles at all levels, but when I look at the news
some days, it feels like Gibson may have hit more accutately than I
care to believe.  

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{\large ``Aware'' by Omri Schwarz}

I liked the main concept behind the story, finding the concept of
complete body control very intiguing.  I also liked the way the story
explored how this change had effected Chris's development as a child
and the effects it had on him socially.  However, I felt that more
plot was needed and that continued development of Chris's character
would have helped greatly.  Finally, a better feel as to whether this
was chapter one of a larger novel or simply a short story that needs a
better ending would be nice.

The flow of the story aimed towards a style I find very effective,
that of having brief flashbacks interspersed with current action, but
somehow it didn't work for me in this story.  Part of this is due to
the rough flow of the story --- there were several rough transitions
between sentences, and these led to several of the paragraph
transitions not working very well.  Also, several of the flashbacks
were overly like dictionary entries (in particular the beginning of
the high school segment) and were too dry to keep my interest.  I
thought you could have thought a bit more on the social impacts of his
talents and how they effected his mental development.  I can see some
stuff about being mentally overloaded for a while till he managed to
put in some mental filters.

I thought Goodtimes was an interesting character, but he just seemed
randomly thrown into the story.  There was too much character
development on his part for him just to be knocked out by Chris.
Also, Goottimes's ``the creep who did this would soon get his'' quote
is not one you want to just leave hanging --- maybe have Chris
actually kill Goodtimes (accidentally of course), and have the police
find the wallet, get suspicious about cause of death.

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{\large ``Examining Individuality in \underline{Mother of Storms}'' by Sam Hartman}

By the time I got to the end of the essay, I realized how good the
paper as a whole was.  However, until I got to that point, I didn't
have a clear sense of where the paper was headed.   The abstract
gives a few hints, but given its concentration on individuality and
the meaning of being human, I was a bit surprised by the content.  I
thought that the conclusion did a great job of analyzing the themes of
the book, and after reading it, the preceeding few pages made a lot
more sense.  Although an introductory paragraph is not always needed,
in this case either the abstract needs to be rewritten to match the
real subject of the essay, or a real introduction needs to be added.

I thought the section Beginning with Media was interesting, but I
thought it should have gone after the section on XV.  Because XV was
the primary medium for the media, it felt weird trying to discuss
media, especially when the content was now being controlled by the
medium itself.  The XV section was good, although I was surprised by
the lack of comment on the Global Riots, which seemed to illustrate
all of what you were trying to get across in the section.

The Optimization and Privacy section was my best section (other than
the conclusion) and brings up several good points -- I liked the
comments on peoples lack of expectation of privacy.  The Transcendent
section seemed was the only section that seemed in tune with the
abstract, but then felt a bit unconnected with the thesis presented in
the conclusion.  

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