Name: Fast Times at Fairmont High
ISBN: 9781469281254

What Hacker News says

jodrellblankFeb 2026

I wouldn't say that founding companies satisfies the conditions of the Singularity, the relevance there is that companies are superhuman and sociopathic, therefore the dream of superintelligences to be empathic, cooperative, and aligned with human interests doesn't seem likely.

> The version I described is the only one I've ever heard anyone else referring to.

In 2008 the IEEE magazine Spectrum did a series on the Singularity and one article [0] says "Like paradise, technological singularity comes in many versions, but most involve bionic brain boosting." Another article had this "Who's Who"[1] cheat-sheet of famous Singularity discussers for and against; one of the columns is "Kind of Singularity", and there's more than one kind. Kevin Kelly has "singularities are pervasive changes in the state of the world that are often recognizable only in retrospect. As a result, the singularity is always near". Bill Joy was a more general "computer science, biotech and nanotechnology event horizon". Marvin Minsky had mind uploading as well as machine intelligence.

Vernor Vinge named 'The Singularity' in 1983 and popularised the ida, and here are talk slides from him in 2005 after he had twenty years of thinking about it[2]:

    Why call this transition the "Technological Singularity"?

    By analogy with the use of "singularity" in Math
        A place where some regularity property is lost
        Not necessarily a place where anything becomes infinite 
    By analogy with the use of "singularity" in Physics
        A place where the rules profoundly change
        What comes beyond is intrinsically less knowable/predictable than before 
    The apocalyptic endpoint of radical optimism :-)

and

    Singularity futures
    Possible paths to the Singularity

    What if: AI (Artificial intelligence) research succeeds?
        I.J. Good, "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine"
        Hannes Alfv�n, The End of Man? 
    What if: The internet itself attains unquestioned life and intelligence?
        Gregory Stock, Metaman
        Bruce Sterling, "Maneki Neko" 
    What if: Fine-grained distributed systems are aggressively successful?
        Karl Schroeder, Ventus
        Vernor Vinge, "Fast Times at Fairmont High" 
    What if: IA (Intelligence Amplification) occurs
        As the radical endpoint of Human/computer interface research?
            Poul Anderson, "Kings Who Die"
            Vernor Vinge, "Bookworm, Run!" 
        As the outcome of bioscience research?
            Vernor Vinge, "Fast Times at Fairmont High"
            Vernor Vinge, "Win a Nobel Prize!"

A place where the rules profoundly change because of bioscience research, human/computer cyborging, or distributed systems emergent complexity, is compatible with Vingean Singularity ideas, or at least used to be before the current LLM/AGI hype cycle.

The 'attractor at the end of history' is from Terence McKenna: "[he] saw the universe, in relation to novelty theory, as having a teleological attractor at the end of time, which increases interconnectedness and would eventually reach a singularity of infinite complexity. ... The universe is not being pushed from behind. The universe is being pulled from the future toward a goal ... our ever-accelerating speed through the phenomenal world of connectivity and novelty is based on the fact that we are now very, very close to the attractor."[3]

> "doesn't mean it's reasonable to say that must, or even could, have been the definition the person I was replying to was using."

Okay, but your "LLMs are not a path to AGI and tech bros are dumb" doesn't lead to anything interesting, it's just a mic-drop end of discussion.

[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-consciousness-conundrum

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/who-is-who-in-the-singularity

[2] https://edoras.sdsu.edu/~vinge/misc/ac2005/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna#Novelty_theory...

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mastoMar 2024

Vernor Vinge has an outstanding catalog of invention and accomplishments. One of that's threaded through many of his stories and has become even more relevant lately is ubiquitous computing and networking, and in particular augmented reality.

To truly understand the transformative potential of something like a VR headset if technology allowed it to be unobtrusive and omnipresent, one must read Vinge. The idea of consensual reality as portrayed in, e.g., Fast Times at Fairmont High, is kind of mind-blowing.

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sxpApr 2023

> This article was for the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-31, 1993.

> Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

Impressive timing on that prediction assuming GPT-4's release on March 14th counts as "superhuman intelligence".

I read Vinge's essay in college and it was a critical factor in affecting my career choices and transhumanist views. His sci-fi Fire Upon the Deep/Deepness in the Sky and Fast Times at Fairmont High/Rainbows End were also critical in affecting my career path into AR/VR. I highly recommend reading this essay and any of his other sci-fi. He work could be classified as "hard computer science fiction" because it is heavily influenced by his career in CS. When I was at Google X around 2011, I realized that almost all the stuff they were working on in secret at the time (AR glasses, Drone delivery, self-driving cars, balloon Internet with lasers, computers embedded in fabric, etc) were copied directly out of Fast Times at Fairmont High. Fast Times and Rainbows End aren't available online but I suggest Synthetic Serendipity which is set in the same universe and has concepts such as a gig economy (called "affiliate tasks"): https://spectrum.ieee.org/synthetic-serendipity

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EdwardCoffinDec 2021

I’ll second Rainbows End, and add in its earlier incarnation, the novella Fast Times at Fairmont High.

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lbarrettDec 2019

This reminds me so much of Vernor Vinge's story "Fast Times at Fairmont High". It's set in the near future, and one plot point is that high school tests cover this skill--to read through the manuals quickly and get things done with new tools. I recommend it, and the related book "Rainbows End".

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joshstrangeApr 2015

Love that book, it also reminded me of his book/short story Fast Times at Fairmont High where they use small devices like this as breadcrumbs to keep them connected to the grid (a mesh network).

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