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I think a lot of time when the Torment Nexus thing is brought up, people are getting the arrow of causality the wrong way around. It's not that necessarily that Bobby Techbro read "Don't Create the Torment Nexus" and was inspired to make one, even if that's what the marketing tries to sell it as.

No I think that's not giving scifi authors the proper respect as futurists. They looked at how things were going and thought "man, this might lead to a Torment Nexus" and then wrote a story about that.

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in reply to Foone🏳️‍⚧️

silverwizard
silverwizard
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@Foone🏳️‍⚧️ Gibson looked at the 80s and went "this is fucked and bad" and then got invited to talk to orgs telling him "We're trying to build the future of your books"

(I'm not disagreeing with you, but that sticks with me when I hear the Torment Nexus thing)

@Foone🏳️‍⚧️
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FoolishOwl
FoolishOwl
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@silverwizard Part of the force of the joke is that we've had decades of mass media that split the superficial imagery of science fiction from the social criticism at the core of it.
@silverwizard
in reply to Foone🏳️‍⚧️

Ian Douglas Scott
Ian Douglas Scott
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This is definitely true.

Though also, if people are naming their companies things like "Soylent" and "Palantir", they do seem to be somewhat influenced by fiction. And getting the wrong message.

Unknown parent

Foone🏳️‍⚧️
Foone🏳️‍⚧️
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@JonnyT @blogdiva exactly. They're going "someday someone might make a Torment Nexus. Here's my ideas about what terrible shit would happen if someone made it".
@Jonathan T @your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦
in reply to Foone🏳️‍⚧️

Foone🏳️‍⚧️
Foone🏳️‍⚧️
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And they were right. A Torment Nexus did get built, it just got named after the one in their book because of the obvious precedent.

Had they not written the book, the Torment Nexus would still exist, it just would have been called the TechCo.io TortureHub instead.

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Amir Livne Bar-on
Amir Livne Bar-on
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Except if the author said that the service would be provided by the actual Mafia. Then the name is already taken so they must invent some new name like "Uber torments" or something.
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Jeff Grigg
Jeff Grigg
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'We have created The Torment Nexus, inspired from the award winning classic scifi dystopia "Please Don't Build The Torment Nexus".'

is a really odd marketing message for something they would have built anyway.

in reply to Foone🏳️‍⚧️

Rodney
Rodney
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Really, though, the techbros probably did not read these novels, or even watch any films or TV series based on them, but rather have just heard if such plots having once existed in some book. These people aren't smart enough to actually read anything.
in reply to Foone🏳️‍⚧️

Tindra
Tindra
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I remember when Nick Harkaway was writing Gnomon he kept getting frustrated because the things he was writing as “maybe this will happen in a decade or three” kept happening as he was writing it.
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