Worldcon fun
Sep. 5th, 2004 12:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinWork constraints didn't allow me to attend all of Noreascon 4, but since I live in the area, I did drop in today and had a great time, mostly going to author panels, Terry Pratchett's typically entertaining Guest of Honor speech, and the Hugo ceremony. I can sum up the experience by saying that it's amazing to be in the presence of so many from the small fraction of humanity who can genuinely leave me starstruck.
Giants of the field abounded and were brilliant and charming, but my favorite panel was definitely M. M. Buckner, David Friedman, Cory Doctorow, and Benjamin Rosenbaum's contentious and thought-provoking talk on "Postcapitalist Social Mechanisms" (such as, say, Doctorow's "Whuffie" from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom or the AI-driven gift economy in Bruce Sterling's "Maneki Neko"), which was not nearly as utopic as it might have sounded and was for once more Future Now than Future Past (the means of attaining Future Future has not yet been invented, which is what makes it Future Future). Rosenbaum seemed to be approaching a one-man Singularity throughout the hour.
I caught up with Cate Pederson and Andy World in the dealer area and also ran into one of my co-workers, of whose fannish tendencies I had previously been unaware.
Giants of the field abounded and were brilliant and charming, but my favorite panel was definitely M. M. Buckner, David Friedman, Cory Doctorow, and Benjamin Rosenbaum's contentious and thought-provoking talk on "Postcapitalist Social Mechanisms" (such as, say, Doctorow's "Whuffie" from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom or the AI-driven gift economy in Bruce Sterling's "Maneki Neko"), which was not nearly as utopic as it might have sounded and was for once more Future Now than Future Past (the means of attaining Future Future has not yet been invented, which is what makes it Future Future). Rosenbaum seemed to be approaching a one-man Singularity throughout the hour.
I caught up with Cate Pederson and Andy World in the dealer area and also ran into one of my co-workers, of whose fannish tendencies I had previously been unaware.