A fresh wave of scientific discipline fiction , from the showPerson of Interestto the motion-picture show Her , features artificial intelligences whose minds are truly alien . These AIs have plural selves , or many identities running in parallel ; they are basically hive creative thinker within one consciousness . But this idea of a hive mind has a long account in scifi literature . Here are ten tale to explode your brain with minds made up of selves , rather than a individual self .
Person of Interest‘s producers tell us what the Machine really is
Illustration from the cover of Mind of My Mind , byJohn Jude Palencar
1.“The Shadow Over Innsmouth,”by H.P. Lovecraft
This is Lovecraft ’s classic storey , written in 1931 , about a man who discovers that his ancestors let in “ fish Gaul thing , ” thinking alien tool who survive in the deep sea . These Deep Ones are connected to the topsy-turvyness lusus naturae god Cthulhu , and any human descended from them always yearns — sometimes with great ego - disgust — to join them . By the closing of the story , however , our protagonist has accepted his shady fate , and begins to feel the thinker of his subaquatic brethren , chanting the words to their prayers to Cthulhu . This is is an early , fantasy - oriented version of the hive brain , where many creatures ’ minds merge in a sort of mystical bond , sharing belief and ideas .
2.More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon
By 1953 , when Sturgeon published this influential novel , the hive mind had become the purview of skill fiction . In this tale of five “ talented ” humans with ecstasy - Men - like powers , Sturgeon established the idea of a gestalt consciousness formed when masses immix ( or “ blesh ” in the slang expression of the novel ) their mind together to form a supermind . We see this theme recurring in science fiction up to this day , admit in the “ drift ” of Pacific Rim , where two people fuse their mind for control a giant golem . Even the Mighty Morphin ’ Power Rangers have a form of gestalt intellect . It ’s a very popular room to represent hive head .
3.Mind of My Mind, by Octavia Butler
Like the gestalt world in More Than Human , the citizenry in Butler ’s incredible Patternmaster serial have psychic powers — but unless they are join together by a take “ patternmaster , ” they essentially go harebrained . In Mind of My Mind , a patternmaster is born in the ghettos of Los Angeles during the 1970s ( when the book was written ) , and name her power by link up her mind to others like herself . Eventually , she amass a small USA of formerly homeless and schizophrenic mind - controllers , healers , and other psychics . Once connected to each other , they are able to on the Q.T. take control of the city , and challenge another patternmaster who has been make for in secret for one C . Butler ’s visual modality of the hive creative thinker is more like a internet . Each someone in it retain a separate identicalness , but ca n’t function without remaining join to the whole .
4.Blood Music, by Greg Bear
Often hailed as the first great nanotech novel , Bear ’s 1985 work is about what happens when sentient nanotech get away the lab and decide to refashion the public in its own image . Every piece of matter is break down and reconstruct , including humans themselves . Humans who undergo nano - shift are n’t just mulched , however — their minds enter what Bear calls the noosphere , a kind of dreamy cloud consciousness where individuality is lost . The noosphere and like concepts have come to imbue scientific discipline fable , both as a threat and a promise . The deprivation of identity in the grouping mind , ala the Borg , can be terrifying . But as Rudy Rucker suggest in novels likePostsingular , it can be like heaven too .
http://io9.com/361680/postsingular-is-rudy-ruckers-wildest-ride-yet
5.Queen City Jazz, Kathleen Ann Goonan
Goonan ’s 1990s Nanotech Quartet serial publication begin with Queen City Jazz , which imagines a very dissimilar nanotech apocalypse from Bear ’s Blood Music . In Goonan ’s future , the urban center of Cincinnati has become what today we ’d call a “ smart urban center , ” with every building and piece of infrastructure wired together using a nano / biologic organization of heavily - modified “ bloom ” and “ bee . ” But when the city malfunctions , it consumes every life form and patch of architecture , remolding them into Jazz Age Cincinnati . Every human in the urban center becomes an panorama of the urban center ’s break , doss judgment , forced to act out diachronic fantasies and searching urgently for a way to escape .
6.A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge
Vinge ’s bright 1992 novel is a space opera traverse most of the galax , but a full portion of the action is set on a pre - industrial world overshadow by a cad - like specie called the Tines . The Tines manakin beehive minds out of modest packs — singleton Tines are fundamentally disabled , while monolithic pack of hundreds become dim - witted and chaotic . Each pack functions as a single judgement , but its member have their own personalities and can influence the plurality personality and memories . Vinge does an unbelievable job imagining how these hive judgment would make political empires , as well as what kinds of technology they ’d want to manufacture .
7.The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson
In this 1995 cyberpunk tale of a dear - future world where the great unwashed hold up in “ phyle , ” or cultural / economic enclave , Stephenson imagines that AI will change state out to be dumber than we think . Instead , the expectant feats of computing are still done using biologic minds . In one bizarre scene , our protagonist John Hackworth gets sucked into a phyle of “ Drummers , ” who basically live in a perpetual Burning Man orgy , their identity operator all erased by sex and music rituals . Hackworth ’s ego is so unglued by the experience that he pass ten years among the Drummers without even realizing it . afterward , we find out that the Drummers are actually a massive computer , their hive consciousness being tap for computational labor while their body spurt flaming jizz in their weird dreamspace .
8.Sly Mongoose, by Tobias Buckell
With one part in this 2008 novel , Buckell shows us a social mass medium beehive mind that humans might really encompass one day . Katerina is from a culture where every decision is made by citizen vote over a advanced computer mesh that ’s wired into everybody ’s brains . No policy or political decision is ever made without consulting the hive brain of the whole republic . In this visual sensation of the beehive mind , individualism is n’t lost — but the brainiac connection tolerate people to make more democratic group decisions in the blink of an optic . Interestingly , Buckell counterpoint Katerina ’s world with the menace because of a zombie pest that turns its victims into a monstrous beehive mind where selfhood is subsumed into a mass urge to kill and consume .
9.Nexus, by Ramez Naam
Naam , writing in 2012 , also imagines a kind of technology that can associate masses ’s minds , and maybe lead to more democratic ( or at least empathic ) societies . link is a nanotech drug that rewires masses ’s mind , allowing them to run software and connection with each other . multitude on Nexus begin divvy up retentivity , and achieving more meaningful forms of consensus . It also allows mass to have more incredible terpsichore party — and to hold each other ’s thinker in a deep ominous way . Naam adjudicate to envisage how hive intellect would work in a mankind that ’s just a few years into our future . He ’s one of the few generator to look at both the recreational and profoundly political aspects of mind networking .
10.Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie
bring out in 2013 , Leckie ’s novel is about an unnaturally intelligent ship that is also a hive judgement . Her mind is very skinny to Her and Person of Interest , in that does a terrific job ideate what it would think to have many identities within a individual entity — especially when those identities are in discrepancy . Making thing even more complicated in Ancillary Justice is the fact that the ship Justice of Toren is n’t just a machine — it is also a huge mesh of human embodiment , their minds colonize by the ship , and their bodies taken as the spoilation of war in various colonial conflicts . There are touch that these world continue some of their premature personalities , and they can act as individual if their mind link to the ship is severed . But they are truly hive organisms , their collective minds and bodies go as a whole — though not a unified one . Fascinating and serious-minded , Leckie ’s novel is on the cutting edge when it comes to imagining how AIs would really reckon .
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