Where does emancipation begin? That’s what Ted Chiang seems to wonder about with this collection of short stories, often “illustrative”, similar to illustrations of smoke theories. We swore that this narrative process would be crippling, yet we allowed ourselves the unexpected magic of these stories where we seldom see space and horizon, with characters with bad psyche, but that is imported …

The author also invokes the invention of a robotic nurse, or “diffusion,” a machine that makes it possible to know the other fate of our other person (we have) Parallel ‘), A person who, at the same time, would have made another choice and found himself elsewhere and in another life – where one thinks, of course, of Schrödinger’s cat.

Ted Chiang has a wonderful reflection on our relationship with machines: how, instead of replacing us with certain tasks, they modify our behavior, shaping a new human personality in the process. The automatic nurse, for example, effectively teaches the rules, evading the feelings and torment of the human soul: Rational education will produce rational children ».

In fact, we present it from the human condition and the responsibilities and ethics that it entails. With this process ” memory “ – a camera that we can operate to photograph all the moments of our life – which becomes a kind of prosthesis to replace our natural memory, and the slightest conflict is resolved by the sudden presentation of the scene in the origin of an altercation between a father and his daughter, which proves that the daughter was right … We are thinking here of “Back to Picture,” the third and final episode of the first season of Black Mirror (one of the most successful of the entire series). Or thinking about “selective amnesia” and the fact that without forgetting, human relationships will be more complex.

How to invent extraterrestrial culture?

An iconic genius, Ted Chiang plays on acronyms as much as on wild imagination, pushing the distorted logic of pseudoscientists to their limits. It’s funny, cheek tongue style, down to the supposedly serious notes he makes as a conclusion to see where he got his ideas for the news: Obviously, having AI rights is important, but it is also important for people to make a real effort in their personal relationships with AI systems. ».