"Kress, Nancy - Steamship Soldier on the Information Front" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

"Hello, Allan." She sounded tired, as well she might. It was half past one. "I didn't expect to hear from you till morning. But you might as well know now. We've had a temporary set-back."
"What kind of set-back?"
"The robots have stopped functioning. No, that's not true -- they only look like they're not functioning because they're not gathering chips any more, as they were programmed to do. Instead, they've speeded up massively the amounts of data they're pulling off the Net, and processing it in parallel non-stop. And they're ..." Her voice stumbled.
"They're _what_?"
"They're just huddled together in a ring, touching sides, their visual and auditory and infrared sensors shut down. Just huddled there, blind to their environment."
He didn't answer. After a minute, Skaka's tone changed, and Allan realized for the first time that, despite her glossy competence, she really was a scientist and not an information-front soldier. No entrepreneur would have said, as she did next, "Allan -- I know your firm is small, and that you've invested a lot of money in Novation. We can get another grant, but if this project flops, are we going to bring _you_ down?"
"Don't worry about it. We'll be all right," Allan said, which was true. He wasn't ever insane enough to commit all of his resources to the same battle.
_Commit all of his resources to the same battle ..._
"That's good," Skaka said. "But it doesn't touch the real issue. Allan, I don't know what the bots are _doing_."
"I do," he said, but so softly she couldn't hear him. Dazed, he managed to get out, "It's late. Talk in the morning." He cut the connection.
And sat on the edge of the bed, naked legs dangling over the side, staring at nothing.
_Commit all of his resources to the same battle_ ... That's what they all had been doing. Many different skirmishes -- solar panels, robots, high-resolution imaging, nanotech, smart autos -- but all part of the same war. Stone Age, Bronze Age, Age of Chivalry, Space Age ... _Information Age_. The only game in town, the scene of all the action, the all-embracing war. _Uncle Sam Wants You!_
But no age lasted forever. Eventually the struggle for bronze or gold or green chips -- or for physical or digital terrain -- would come to an end, just as all the other Ages eventually had. One succeeding the other, inexorable and unstoppable ... _When it's steamship time_, went the old saw, _then nothing can stop the steamship from coming._ And when the Age of Steam was over, it was over. Civilization was no longer driven by steam. Now it was driven by information. Gather it in, willy-nilly, put it in electronic buckets, give it to the owners. Or the generals.
Why?
_What if they gave a war and nobody came?_
That's why the robots had stopped. That's why they stood staring into space, only their brains active. They had at their command all the data on the Net, plus the complex-and-growing human neural circuits of their biochips. They were on top of it all, wired in, fully cued for the next stage. Not _how can we gather those chips with max-effish_ but rather _why should we gather chips at all?_
Not the Age of Reason. The Reasons Age.
Things changed. One day steam, then steam is over. One day you can't imagine wanting to kiss a girl, the next day you pant after it. One day you rely on your frontier neighbors for survival of your very home, the next day you don't know your neighbors' names and don't have a settled home.
One day the mad rush after information and chips, the next day you sit and stare trance-like, far more interested in why you were interested in chips and information than in the commodities themselves. Not that the information itself wouldn't continue to accumulate. It would. But the center was shifting, the mysterious heart of each Age where the real emphasis and excitement were. The front.
Charlie must sense it only dimly. Of course -- he was a child, and he didn't have Allan's honed instincts. But that Charlie sensed it at all, the coming change, was probably _because_ he was a child -- this was the world he would inherit. Charlie would be an integral part of it. But integrated more slowly than the bots, which were riding the advance wave of the human Net, shock troops racing toward where the info-wars gave way to the next step in the long, long march of humanity's development.
Which would be ... what? What would the Reasons Age actually be like?
Allan shivered. Suddenly he felt old. He had evolved in the Information Age, had flourished in it ... He was a natural as a scout on the high-tech front. Would there be a place for him when the guns grew more muffled, the pace slowed, and the blaze of battle gave way to the domestic concerns of the occupation? Could he adapt to whatever came next?
Then his confidence returned. Of course he could! He always had. The Information Age might end, the Reasons Age arise, but he could make it. In fact, there was probably a way to turn the whole thing to his own profit. All he needed was the right approach, the right allies, the right strategy.
The right _data_.
Tomorrow, he'd start to gather it.
Smiling, Allan slept.

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