What is Jame5?
Having been introduced to the concept of the Singularity by reading the works of such brilliant authors as Ray Kurzweil and Charles Stross about 2 years ago I started to wonder how a super intelligent artificial intelligence would reason about good and evil. The result is the book “Jame5 – A Tale of Good and Evil”.
Jame5 is a “Sophie’s World†for futurists and singularitarians in which I take you trough a hard take off technical singularity with all its philosophical consequences. What is good and what is evil? Where are we coming from and where are we going? What are happiness and the meaning of life? What do prophets have in common with dictators? All of these questions and more are being touched in Jame5 and in the end form my very personal description of the world and the future.
“Guido is an IT professional based in a
The book can be downloaded directly from this blog as PDF and will be published under the creative commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license real soon now 😉
al medina said,
October 25, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
Hey, there-
I read your PDF in one sitting. Thank God consciousness cannot be created, cannot be measured, cannot be detected and cannot be uncovered from the encasement of the mind/body. . .that it, not without real help. Humans should strive to find that help for we are not who we think.
Stefan Pernar said,
October 25, 2007 @ 10:32 pm
Great to hear from you Al.
“Humans should strive to find that help for we are not who we think.”
Totally agree with you here. It is a mostly pleasurable illusion though – at least to me.
ANHP said,
May 29, 2009 @ 10:48 pm
Good read. I read the entire book in one afternoon.
It opened my eyes to the future in a way that didn’t seem too far-fetched. And if you’re familiar with Kurzweil’s theories of technological advancement, you’ll see that we are really not that far off from this being reality. 2001 and The Matrix are futuristic but I can’t see them happening nearly as well as I can see Jame5 happening.
Jame5 is sort of a mix of philosophy, biology, economics, sociology, physiology, and the internet all in one. It tries to realistically capture a future Zeitgeist – or at least the result of artificial intelligence in that future setting. It lays out a case for artificial intelligence in a logical and scientific way, while grappling with what is ‘good’ and what is simply a human construct.
I buy it well as I am not religious. But any religious readers would say that the idea of ‘uploading’ yourself isn’t going to fly. They would think that transferring electronic synapses into a computer’s electronic processing ignores the soul that is left behind. But that doesn’t bother me.
Jame5 cleverly intertwines religion and Singularity in a brilliant way, one which I am sure to read and re-read.
However, the book falls short in a few ways. If it is trying to be a narrative or a novel, it could have had a bit more character development. Early on, I identified nicely with the main characters, but they sort of got lost as the story continued.
Once the real analysis of the technology began, the personalities disappeared. It might have been nice to have a few chapters on the characters’ real lives interspersed within that technical discussion to lighten the content and maintain the humanity of these characters. After all, that’s what we’re talking about.
I loved the setting in China and would have liked to see more real-world settings. For example, during the discussion over the steak and Caesar salad, I couldn’t tell where they were. In a restaurant, obviously. But tell me more about their surroundings.
There were quite a number of typos as well, but I understand the book does not have a publisher. So that’s understandable.
Also, in one part, it mentioned that if the Yellowstone Caldera exploded, Americans in the east would have a problem, but Yellowstone is in the west!
I realize these criticisms are secondary, when the point of the book is elsewhere, but better surroundings would make the book more digestible for the mass market.
In fact, Jame5 could, and should, be made into a film. It is convincing, stimulating, compelling, and I dare say, realistic!
Great work, Stefan, and I hope you either write a second edition or write another book. I will buy it.