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An Oral History of The End of “Reality”
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“One of the most prophetic things I have ever read.”
– Speaker John Ash, AI engineer
“I’ve just read your novelette with my hair blasting back in frightful (and utterly convincing) revelation the whole time. I’m not surprised that you’ve been not just thinking about but scouting deep down the wormhole of where we may be headed as reality and fiction duke it out (as they, too, fall down the wormhole without a parachute). I know I’ll be pondering your far-ranging conclusions for a while to come. Thanks so much for writing it.”
– Alex Shakar, LA Times Book Prize-winning author of Luminarium
“[An] exceptional piece, which I heartily recommend. There are hints of Boris Vian, and touches of Virginia Woolf, kneaded into a world where Count Zero and Orwell might coexist…and it’s not even written in Newspeak.”
– Jonathan Engel, Former Vice President, M&A at JP Morgan Chase
“We could not keep our hands off of ourselves the entire time (because we are both turned on by the future, and by language)! You should write more!”
– The Teafaerie, famous psychonaut
“This should be required reading by everyone.”
– Ramin Nazer, artist, standup comedian, and podcaster
My first work of fiction, handwritten in 2017 after years of studying the evolution of technology and human consciousness. I didn’t get a chance to write a second draft before it started coming true…
Read the preface here. Listen to the audio version here.
Email me if you want to offer feedback or republish this.
Thanks for reading, and good luck.
I.
Nobody trusts their ears, these days. AI has long since mastered imitation. Your assistant speaks in anybodyʼs voice. Celebrities sell licenses to vocal likenesses, but by a massive margin the majority of users pirate sonic profiles, and train their agents freely as they wish, and all of us are well-accustomed to an advertisement speaking in our loversʼ voices — all the better to get your attention. Audio is inadmissible as evidence. The pioneers of synthesizer music saw it coming, sensitive to those first rays of…