Mid-February 2026
I'm exploring NotebookLM (see a collection of links re: NLM) and it occurred to me to try its powers with the full text of Charlie Stross's prescient novel (which I read in about 2006, soon after it was published, but didn't expect it to be so ...prophetic with respect to the questions and circumstances of AI in the mid-20s. Expecting the prophetic is perhaps problematic anyway...)
Charlie Stross made the book available in a free ebook edition, so I could enter it easily as a Source in NLM
...This free ebook edition is made available by kind consent of my publishers, Ace and Orbit, under a Creative Commons license with certain restrictions attached. In particular, you may not create derivative works or use the work for commercial gain...
Accelerando Technical Companion
...The purpose of this companion is to help alleviate any confusions the reader may have, as well as to introduce new confusions by giving the reader an idea of the current state and expected future of the technologies described in the novel...From a recent online interview with Charlie Stross: "Accelerando starts out with a post-dot-com hustler, Manfred Macx. Manfred is already borderline posthuman, and he's struggling to keep up; within a generation he's an obsolete burnout case, his daughter Amber has transmigrated into a simulation space hosted aboard a one kilogram starship, and they're dismantling the solar system to build more brains. A generation later ..."
[a Technical glossary, and a Chapter guide with precis]
Among resonances built in:
...An EXOcortex can best be described as the portion of a trans- or posthuman entity's brain (or cortex) which exists outside of that entity's primary computing structure, usually the brain inhabiting a person's "meatbody." For example, a person's exocortex could very well be composed of all the external memory modules, processor, and devices that the person's biological brain interacts with on a realtime basis [affordances], thereby in effect making those external devices a functional part of the individual's "mind." A METAcortex, on the other hand, is a processing construction built entirely out of the connections between other processing constructions—a sort of "higher brain" composed of lesser brains, all of which contribute to its functionality... encompassing but also transcending (in functionality) the sum of all its parts.
materials produced using NotebookLM
Legacy of the Post-Human Singularity The Agalmic Frontier
Inheritors of the Solar Hearth: The VileOffspring
Self-Bootsrapped Evolution of Aineko
Space Lobsters and Venture Altruism.m4a
Uploaded_Lobsters_and_Smart-Bomb_Kittens.m4a
...color me impressed with the potentials of NLM...
