EDCMOOC discussion

This short story is in two parts (see https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... - available online).

The chat will be Saturday (Sunday for NZ/Australia) 3rd January 2015 at 21:30 (Uk Time)

Please post comments or thoughts below.

K

I finished the story last night. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm posting just to encourage the rest of you to spend an evening reading this short story. It's well worth the time.

As we get closer to the chat date I'll post my questions/comments.
Rick

I will be happy to Moderate this chat unless someone else had already signed up to do it.
Rick

brilliant!

I'll be pulling together any questions we have about the book. Please feel free to post your ideas and comments here.

Looking forward to tomorrow's conversation.

A brilliant read.

Who are the "appropriate authorities"? What is the point of a society like this?

The parallels to 1984 were striking, even down to the ending.

The theme of language and humanity raises question about AI, what it means to live a human life.
Something posted on Twitter by Fred Bartels today struck me as relevant to this:

"I'd argue that those pushing for artificial intelligence largely fail to understand that "natural" intelligence is inherently collaborative."

The quote about solving "the serious problems caused by anonymity on the Web" rang home as Facebook suspended my account a couple of weeks ago because I didn't have a proper name!! What are these problems, or, do they outweigh the right for us to be who we want to be?

Might put a few more thoughts down later

K

This work reminded me of "The Machine Stops" where human contact is limited and people live isolated lives connected via the web. Although in The City of Silence the web is limiting rather than open.

I kept thinking as well about the connections with modern China. Are there any? Was Ma Boyong hinting about something here?

"The city of silence" is part of the Anthology "Apex book of world SF 3" that contains two explanatory footnotes.
One is about the Arvardan's encounter with the swearing man whose name (Hiroshi Watanabe) "is also the name of a present-day Japanese animator". (I should watch some animes to understand)

The second - "Wang Er is the name of the protagonist in stories by the Chinese writer, Wang Xiaobo" - has more meanings after some research, as it directly refers to the Cultural Revolution and to the themes elaborated by Wang Xiaobo in the novels "2015" (!) and "the Golden Age" : http://www.popmatters.com/review/wang...
One more link to an essay of Wang Xiaobo called "The Silent Majority" (as a pdf here and the reference here :http://paper-republic.org/authors/wan...)