Who would have though that the best criticism of social media I’ve found could come from a fantasy book?
“Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation. This is simply the life cycle of how human ingenuity manifests in the material world."
Two chapters in, and I was hooked. Tevanne felt like a well explained magic city, with a shadow version of machine learning serving as the magic creating a believable template for the action. I was excited to learn about the city and the plot kept me turning pages.
The second half of the book seemed to drag a bit for me. There were too many deus ex machina moments, new magical superpowers that seemed to undermine the entire framework of rules set out in the first half, and I felt like the world ended at the city walls, which left me feeling less convinced about the entire exercise.
Still recommended though, makes me want to read more fantasy books. The second half of the above quote serves as the true warning for social media:
“What goes forgotten, though, is that those who partake in this system undergo a similar transformation: people begin as comrades and fellow citizens, then become labor resources and assets, and then, as their utility shifts or degrades, transmute into liabilities, and thus must be appropriately managed. This is a fact of nature just as much as the currents of the winds and the seas. The flow of force and matter is a system, with laws and maturation patterns. We should harbor no guilt for complying with those laws—even if they sometimes require a little inhumanity.”