Stories of Your Life and Others: Ted Chiang

William Gibson once said, ‘The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed.’ Right now there are people in the world who, if they’re aware of the computer revolution at all, know of it only as something happening to other people, somewhere else. I expect that will remain true no matter what technological revolutions await us.

And one had to know the initial and final states to meet that goal; one needed knowledge of the effects before the causes could be initiated. I was growing to understand that, too.

Was it actually possible to know the future? Not simply to guess at it; was it possible to know what was going to happen, with absolute certainty and in specific detail? Gary once told me that the fundamental laws of physics were time-symmetric, that there was no physical difference between past and future. Given that, some might say, ‘yes, theoret

Being in the presence of a world-class beauty can be as thrilling as listening to a world-class soprano. Gifted individuals aren’t the only ones who benefit from their gifts; we all do.

No, it wouldn’t. That wouldn’t be maturity; it’d be letting an expert system make your decisions for you. Maturity means seeing the differences, but realizing they don’t matter. There’s no technological shortcut.

Freedom isn’t an illusion; it’s perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it’s simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It’s like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman,

Or was it? What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?

Like physical events, with their causal and teleological interpretations, every linguistic event had two possible interpretations: as a transmission of information and as the realization of a plan.

In 1770, Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour ran aground on the coast of Queensland, Australia. While some of his men made repairs, Cook led an exploration party and met the aboriginal people. One of the sailors pointed to the animals that hopped around with their young riding in pouches, and asked an aborigine what they were called. The aborigine replie