Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.

How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.

In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.

Pham Nuwen plunked himself down, stretching indolently.

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.

Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.