Rancid

Neuromancer by William Gibson My rating: 3 of 5 stars My thoughts on Neuromancer. Neuromancer was written by William Gibson, of course, if one looks up Google and Goodreads you would probably see all the all reviews about the story. This is your classical cyberpunk story. Wiki defines cyberpunk: "Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of low-life and high tech"[1] featuring advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order" In fact, Neuromancer actually throws cyberpunk into a subgenre of science fiction. Cybernetics is a way of life, the interconnection of the artificial and the organic is combined very well. The author creates new terminology to define certain aspects of a cybernetic world. For example, the term 'Construct' is used to describe the person...

Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book remind me of the biblical account of Joseph. Which brings up the age-old question where do science fiction authors get their ideas? Doing some research, Heinlein said he was inspired by Rudyard Kipling. I made the comparison with the biblical account of Joseph because of the similarities. Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and he passed from owner to owner until he became the slave of the Pharaoh and later on became an important person... the second in command of all of Egypt. The main character of Heinlein was sold into slavery at a very young age was also passed from owner to owner and with time he was the heir of space ship construction company. The sub genre of this type of science fiction story is called juvenile, I guess today it is known as young adult science fiction like The hunger Games or Divergent. It is a good story and it is entertaining I would definitely recommend it to young adul...

Now back to the issue of moderation and censorship which I did not even touch in the first part. There's one basic rule on the internet. "Nothing is private." The second rule is, everything is logged and recorded. The social networks of today are private entities; the technical name for them is Intranets. simplified it's just a big large chat room with a sophisticated name. Its sole purpose is communication. What about advertisers? If you think about it, they are communicating with you with the prospect of selling you a product. The advertisers pay good money to companies that are running social networks. Not all social networks are funded by advertisers. I am not going to get into the complexities of these companies. I do know how they work and function because as you know I worked in a company that was the backbone of the internet for many years. There is no such thing as freedom of speech in these companies, not one. They may claim it to get people to join the...

On the issue of censorship and moderation. Most of you know I've been working on the internet or have worked on the internet before the internet became public and commercial (1989-2001), during my time with Sprint international that later became Alcatel. I created the JW mailing list known as The_folder. It was the second oldest JW mailing list on the internet. Most of the friends on the list worked and were heavy into technology; they knew how the technology worked. The membership exceeded 500. Many of the members were from different Bethels around the world; we had brother who had privileages and were prominent on that list some still are others dropped away. Those were the good old days when we kept just spiritual guidelines and the people who were on the list are mostly as I mentioned before, engineers and technicians with a certain focus and mindset. I was an Systems Test Commmunication Tech and network administrator. Not like today's definition of the network administra...

The Far Shore of Time by Frederik Pohl My rating: 3 of 5 stars "The Far Shore of Time is a science fiction novel by American writer Frederik Pohl. It concludes The Eschaton Sequence and the adventures of Dan Dannerman, an American government agent of the near future who becomes involved with the discovery of advanced and warring aliens." (wiki) The focus again is the technology, which is described in my last two review of the series or sequence is the ability to make copies of anything and transmit that information to reconstruct the object elsewhere at FTL almost as fast as Quantum Entanglement, the method used is Tachyons. Think of it as a 3D printer/startrek transporter. The difference is one can make multiple copies of living or inanimate objects. Some copies can be sent to different parts of the universe, the only set back is that there must be a receiver at the destination. The conveyance carrying the receiver doesn't have FTL capabilities. The Question here is h...

The Siege of Eternity by Frederik Pohl My rating: 2 of 5 stars This book continues the Eschaton series, yeah you going to see that in the header. There really isn't much to say in this second book. All we know that two civilization is at war and the earth is just one of many civilizations where it has been targeted for assimilation to the "Beloved Leaders" empire. the interesting part is thru out the series is the Eschaton. I decided to look it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_time At least 2 advanced races/species are fighting to see who will rule... eternity. Frederick Pohl apparently believed in the Big Crunch theory and expressed his concept in this series the advanced species have given religion to the subjected races or species the other side's beliefs are not so credible. Their religion is very similar to Human beliefs of an afterlife which are present in the majority of cultures on our planet. In the end, the winning species and their allies or subject...