Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories

by Hugh Howey

With science fiction, we dream about what’s around the corner. We use the genre as a warning, or as a way to explore time, space, and progress.

There is a wastefulness to humankind that we ignore when we assume it’s a contemporary and temporary problem. Instead of worshipping a past that never happened, we should look to a future that we might avoid.

The parts of our brains wired for kids were long ago appropriated by dogs and cats to win them scraps. How long before our machines prey on the same weaknesses? When will we see an app telling owners which restaurants are robot-friendly? Isn’t it funny that we call the acquisition of new technology “adopting”?

Moments spill through hands idling away at nothing To puddle in years

It was all about getting through each moment, getting through the day to enjoy the nights, faking his real life so he could live his fake one.

I dream of a world in which pacifists board planes first.

To tell anyone what you are reading is pointless. You have to wait. You can only comment on your sense of the thing when studied from some distance.