I remember reading a book in my youth about a kid that lived in a shielded city with an AI controlling it with the assignment to keep everyone ‘happy’ (= docile). He/she breaks protocol and gets ejected through a trash chute. Meets an old man. Crossed a wasteland and finds old ruins, learns something and then blows up the shielding of the city to make it free again.
In the Dutch translation either the old man or the main character was called ‘gull’ or ‘sea gull’. I’ve posted on a few subreddits and forums with people pretty much ignoring, and I have scoured Google without much results neither.
There's a very popular young adult novel out called Scythe written by Neal Shusterman. In this novel there is a benevolent cloud-based AI in charge of ruling over the whole world named The Thunderhead ( because The Cloud wasn't impressive enough).
It's cool to see part of this fictional world coming to life
Oh cool - I read this as a kid and think of revisiting it from time to time, but couldn't remember what it was called, nor enough google-able details to find it. Thanks for mentioning it!
This is insanely cool. Reminds me of a certain book (by a certain author who I wouldn't be surprised to find on HN) but I don't want to say which one because it would spoil the ending.
I found and lost a similar story. There were no mentions of human characters, only programs that were evolving in their own digital space. It was a standard HTML page amongst a collection of other works, not a book.
What's the little book of his about a man and a woman trapped on an island where they geekily explain things to each other? I might be misremembering the setting...started it once but it was pretty cheesy.
Reminds me of the Primer from Neal Stephenson's A Diamond Age. Passage from Nell's first experience with the Primer:
The book spoke in a lovely contralto, with an accent like the very finest Vickys. The voice was like a real person's- though not like anyone Nell had ever met. It rose and fell like slow surf on a warm beach, and when Nell closed her eyes, it swept her out into an ocean of feelings.
"Once upon a time there was a little Princess named Nell who was imprisoned in a tall dark castle on an island in the middle of a great sea, with a little boy named Harv, who was her friend and protector. She also had four special friends named Dinosaur, Duck, Peter Rabbit, and Purple. Princess Nell and Harv could not leave the Dark Castle, but from time to time a raven would come to visit them..."
"What's a raven?" Nell said.
The illustration was a colorful painting of the island seen from up in the sky. The island rotated downward and out of the picture, becoming a view toward the ocean horizon. In the middle was a black dot. The picture zoomed in on the black dot, and it turned out to be a bird. Big letters appeared beneath. "R A V E N," the book said. "Raven. Now, say it with me."
I remember reading a book in my youth about a kid that lived in a shielded city with an AI controlling it with the assignment to keep everyone ‘happy’ (= docile). He/she breaks protocol and gets ejected through a trash chute. Meets an old man. Crossed a wasteland and finds old ruins, learns something and then blows up the shielding of the city to make it free again.
In the Dutch translation either the old man or the main character was called ‘gull’ or ‘sea gull’. I’ve posted on a few subreddits and forums with people pretty much ignoring, and I have scoured Google without much results neither.
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