Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories

by qntm

I suppose 'driver' is rather a strong term for the person who just happens to be behind the steering wheel, doesn't it? Poor soul's been asleep for almost ten minutes. I'm sorry, I'll start over. The occupant's comfort is something of a high priority for me. Not the highest, obviously! Not by a very long way. Aha. But quite high.

Humanity finally reached that magical point which had been anticipated since the dawn of mass media: the day when it was quicker, cheaper, safer and easier to go to the stars and look at them up close than to peer at them through telescopes. It was then that the second, real Space Age began.

they did this thing where if you gave it access to your emails it would scan them and figure out which of your contacts had died, and then silently create profiles for them these were people who died before Google People launched?? And they'd show up in searches —mcnx

my conjecture is that after a while they started moving people sideways onto the project as a like a constructive way to force them to quit

They were just computers. They were just faster. This was beyond that, and beyond that and beyond that too. To be sure, a lot of quantum mechanical interactions were involved, but a lot of quantum mechanical interactions were involved in eating a piece of toast.