minor:
host: c-71-58-49-72.hsd1.pa.comcast.net
username: Escha Ton
revision: 1
summary: =Accelarando Notes= Major Themes – Progress vs. Change – Meaning of the human – Competition in an era without scarcity – No Future: the . . .
This book is easily one of the most depressing science fiction novels I’ve ever read. Ultimately, it ends up with humanity living in a series of galactic subdivisions outside of the hot core of post-humanity (who are too busy making money and will go extinct soon enough).
The book ultimately takes very seriously the naturalization of exchange that Marx found so troubling (which, given how hip this book is to Marx, is rather puzzling). For Stross, here, there is no escaping capitalism, even after the need for exchange has long since passed.
Overall, the book also suggests that Utopia is going to be very, very boring, and takes very seriously the prospect that humans are ill-adapted for the future. Ambivalent on the question of the transhuman, and incapable of seeing it outside the context of capitalism.