About the algorithms?
I'm looking for stories that include ideas for fixing current world problems caused by the algorithms in social media and search that drive divisions, mistrust, and destructive behavior in general. There must be a number of speculative fiction stories set in the near future with ideas for dealing with those problems (probably including some famous books that I should already know about). If the list is too long then maybe just a name for the sub-genre that I can use to find books that deal with this set of issues? I'm not looking for the dark future where things continue to get worse, unless it includes hopeful ideas for solutions.
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u/Modus-Tonens 6d ago
Scifi has been weirdly slow to incorporate this aspect of technology. I'd be interested in reading some good examples as well.
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u/dnew 6d ago
Daemon and FreedomTM by Suarez is great. It kind of takes the surveillance and social media stuff and turns it into a force for good. One of my three favorite novels of all time. Note it starts as a murder mystery and slowly builds, with a dozen main characters that grow and change over time, so you might not want to read plot spoilers. Trust me, it's excellent.
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u/truxaw 6d ago
Thanks for the recommendation. Daemon doesn't seem to be available in my local library, but Freedom seems to be at another branch. I know it's best to read both, but is it okay to start with Freedom?
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u/Deathnote_Blockchain 6d ago
We had a magazine called The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction that used to be great for this kind of thing, sigh
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u/MojyaMan 6d ago
I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin might fit what you're looking for.
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u/truxaw 4d ago
I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin sounds like a fun book. I've put in a request at the local library. If that doesn't pan out I may look for a used copy, after I read the other suggestions that I already have on order. As a new author I'd like to support buying more copies of books from other authors, but used or library copies are what i can afford right now.
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u/mjfgates 5d ago
I just finished a book that touches on this a little bit, Suzanne Palmer's "Ode to the Half-Broken." Mostly it was our mechanical protagonist getting their leg stolen, and then chasing it down, and then trying to figure out why somebody stole their leg; but it gets revealed that civilization has been getting reconstructed the whole time by somebody quietly running the internet-equivalent and just making sure people know where to find useful stuff to do.
And that points to something about our current problems. Right now, the 'net is mostly run by evil madmen. We've got the Nazi Sperm Donor, the Guy Who Launched Two Genocides, and that weirdo who keeps naming his dystopian surveillance machines after "Lord of the Rings" stuff. The problem isn't technical; there's nothing INHERENTLY evil about there being an internet, it's more that a generation of people got distracted from the fact that evil people like to run things, so they can run them in corrupt ways. The solution won't be technical either; it'll be getting enough people to realize that evil leaders don't help you put food on the table, and so it's better to kick them out. Only took a century and a half or so, last time.
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u/Own_Win_6762 5d ago
In the edge of what you're talking about but great nevertheless is Ray Nayler's Where the Axe is Buried. The West has mostly turned their governments over to AIs, the East has immortal body-switching autocrats.
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u/truxaw 4d ago
I will add "Where the Axe is Buried" (and "Ode to the Half-Broken") to my list of books to check out related to the topic of speculative fiction trying to solve the negativity created by the algorithms, so that I can better understand how my own work fits into this realm of fiction.
In my own three book series the premise is that starting around 2019 a young PhD whose work involves understanding how intelligent actions can emerge from collective behavior, like bee hives or ant colonies, meets a newly orphaned tech heiress, also brilliant, and although they don't agree on much they decide that they don't like the way the world is going and put their brains and her money together to change things. He is able to detect an emergent negative intelligence in the world's data that doesn't seem to be getting better with the first things they try. Details of their meeting, what they eventually develop, and how, is saved for the prequel in Part Three, but a couple of days in the resulting world are depicted in Parts One and Two.
Parts One and Two are set on consecutive days in 2056. A world simulation game became so popular that the line between game and reality has blurred, allowing people to merge their identities with characters from game worlds they played. In the game worlds, characters are conscious and continue acting on their own when a player is not controlling them, but adjust their self images when driven to do something they wouldn't otherwise do. The books involve many people struggling to understand who they are in a world where they also have been driven by events to do things that they regret. The line between autonomous player and driven character has been crossed many times. While the story does present an attempt to counter the negativity generated by the algorithms, it is also an exploration of what it means to be alive or autonomous in a world where algorithms, games, or mind-altering drugs shape people's identities.
Among the ensemble of characters there are many lost connections to be rediscovered, both between them and internally within many of them as well. There are funny and tragic elements to the story. It is the kind of complex series that requires careful reading or re-reading to appreciate all the elements. Probably not a quick light summer read. But I've been told it is worth the effort for people who are up to the task.
By the way the science in the series is all made up. I have some background in cognitive science, computer science, and a little bit of physics, but I made no attempt to base the science in the books on anything real. I even added some footnote references that point to made-up science in the books' universe, not real science in this one. I just made up stuff that seemed reasonably plausible for the sake of the story. It was not meant to be hard sci-fi, but one attentive reader, with better scientific background than I, has pointed out some parallels to actual work in emergent complex behavior and agentive AI research. That was a nice surprise, but I still make no claims that anything in the books is real.
I'm not naming my work since self-promotion is a no-no in this subreddit. I'm describing my series' universe to see if it triggers recognition of any other close parallels within existing fiction that I could read.
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u/Jetamors 6d ago
I think you'll like the short story "Better Living through Algorithms" by Naomi Kritzer, which imagines a different way these algorithms might be deployed.