An E-Book well worth reading

[tribaal]

Hi all!

For all you science fiction fans out there, I stumbled across this very nice book available for free in html: Manna (http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm), by Marshall Brain.

Interesting view of the future, which is not that far-fetched (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/09/1848250) (at least for the first part).

I wish such utopias can someday come closer to reality :)
Enjoy!

- trib'

[bonzodog]

Have just read it, and have to say, that it is perfectly possible that this could come to pass - this to me is the very essence of the difference between Open Source and propretry ownership. But one thing that the Australia project does require is a lack of greed. Unfortunately, there are far too many greedy people in this world with no imagination - these people would end up in the US of the future, where it is all driven by greed and profit.

[Yossarian]

I read up till chapter five or so. Not a fan.

It started off as a long-winded first person narrative, with a pretty good idea behind it. Not strange wine, more like a light beer. It's an interesting idea, computers managing us. I was optimistic as to where the author was going with it.

The first warning was when he mentioned something about 64-bit processors, and went into too much detail concerning his speculative technology. That sort of set the stage for his 'perfect society' business. He rides roughshood over the entire history of civilization, completely ignoring what has worked and what has not in favour of some enlightened gated community. But forget all that, it commits the worst possible sin for a story: it's boring to read.

Reads like some of RMS' stories, actually, except RMS is better at getting to the point.

EDIT: Edited the last sentence for readability.