A Return to The Diamond Age

Years ago, I read a book by Neal Stephenson: The Diamond Age. I thoroughly enjoyed it back then (I’m a Stephenson fan in general. His books can get pretty heady at time, but I like the way he explores concepts through his plots.) One of my favorite parts about the book was how it handled artificial intelligence, and I wanted to see if it stood up to how AI seems to be shaking out at the moment, so I went back and reread it.

The Diamond Age presents a future where nations have pretty much disappeared, replaced by tribes. (People realized that where a person lived stopped meaning nearly as much as what that person allied themselves with, if that makes sense. The actual borders on a map kind of . . . dissolved, replaced by much more immediate boundaries where like-minded people lived together. There were still classes and treaties and politics, but it’s on a different scale than what we’re used to now.)

One of the main protagonists is a young girl named Nell. She’s a product of the street. Her mother is a prostitute, her father is long since dead, and she’s in a very precarious situation as a five-year-old. Through a series of events, she comes into possession of a very high-tech book jam-packed with learning software. It’s programmed to imprint on a young girl and then essentially do its best to teach that girl everything it can. It does this through a storybook vehicle, teaching through narrative. Answering any questions the girl may have.

It’s wildly successful.

I remember reading it the first time and wondering what it would be like to have a book like Nell’s. Something that could explain anything in terms I could understand it. Something focused on making the world make sense and helping me become more informed and more intelligent. It seemed like real science fiction then, but reading it today? It seems like not such a big stretch at all.

I still really enjoyed the novel, though I’d forgotten how out there some of it was. (There’s a whole subplot about a tribe called the Drummers, who basically operate as one huge mind, exchanging information through bodily fluids. It gets kind of . . . bizarre.) But I think the concept of the “Illustrated Primer for Young Girls” (the name of Nell’s book) is worth reading the novel all on its own.

There’s a lot of focus on how AI might ruin everything. How it might even ultimately destroy our civilizations. And while I can definitely see how many ways it could go wrong, I can also see the many ways it might go right. How it might end up doing far more good than harm. How it might disrupt a ton of what we know, but in the end bring something much better to replace it.

To me, AI is an innovation like any other. And when I think of all we’ve accomplished as a species without AI, I’m very excited to see what we can do with it. What sort of innovations and advancements we can make. Because it really does feel like a huge stepping stone that can help many people advance much more quickly than they might have otherwise done.

I suppose none of this is news in terms of what I’ve already been posting on the blog for quite some time. But it was fun to return to a book that presented something that felt impossible only a few years ago, only to now read it and see how close to within reach it felt now.

If you like science fiction, give it a shot.