Review: The Truth Machine (a speculative novel) by James L. Halperin
From: Aaron McBride (amcbride@jps.net)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 11:20:40 MDT
No spoilers here. Please put "SPOILERS" in the subject of
any message that contains them.
Title: The Truth Machine: a speculative novel
Author: James L. Halperin
Publishing Date: Sep. 1996
The Truth Machine is a story about a guy who invents a machine to
save the world (yeah, that's new ;-) ). It's only SL2 to SL3 (there
are only vague references to the Singularity), but it nevertheless covers
many important topics. Probably one of the best things about the
book is how it makes the point that humanity will kill itself off in the
next 100 years if we don't make some big changes. The solution that
they come up with is to create a truly open society. Once the truth
machine (a device that can detect with 100% accuracy if someone is lying)
is invented and deployed, nobody can plot to release grey goo, let alone
cheat on their spouse, without getting caught. Eventually, as people get
used to having the truth machine around, they don't even try to
lie. Most people even stop doing things that they would have to lie
about later. I'm not going to tell you the ending, but as you
guessed, things don't work out as well as they had planned.
The Truth Machine is very accessible to readers of all shock
levels.
Topics covered:
end of
humanity (both the possibility of extinction, and by changing ourselves
into something different)
cryonics
nanotech
medical
immortality
near human
level AI
and a slew
of social issues (police state, death penalty, privacy, etc...)
While it's doubtful that this book with introduce anything new to the
people on this list, it is a good way to bump up your family and friends'
shock level.
-Aaron
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: Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:40 MDT