Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Exodus

Wing -

it’s an island that has no trees left on it
the islanders burn peat to make fire - this is something common to SCOTLAND!
however, it could also be something common to Iceland, which also has very few trees
it looks like Wing MIGHT be Iceland - they also burned peat there
stone houses
sinking into the sea (or, more correctly, the sea is rising)
not many people left there
the people have to leave it after there was a killer storm and a tsunami
they use small fishing boats to leave
the tragic thing that happens in Wing when they leave is that Tain and the old people stay behind to die on their home island - He says, I was born here, I will die here.

cyberwizz

this is kind of complex for some people who read the book
there is a big section where Mara goes into a strange kind of imagination space or something
she has a device that uses solar power - she charges it on her window
it is a small device that she has hacked to show on a laptop screen
she kind of “goes into” some space or something
she sees a strange kind of landscape with “infostacks” and towers and then, one day, a “cyberfox”
all of this comes from a kind of fiction that started with a book called Neuromancer (William Gibson) and there is a similar kind of book called The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
these books predicted that computer technology would create imaginary worlds using data and graphics and the Internet and tech that allowed people to see a representation of that data and the network
she’s in a virtual world - she is literally in a big, dead Internet that is like a game, that projects straight into her brain, instead of her eyes
when she sees things, they are all SET - they were designed, and they are left and she figures out that the whole place is like a graveyard - it’s dead - it’s a machine left running somewhere
HOWEVER, when she meets the cyberfox, it’s REAL - it seems to be someone else wandering through that “world”
you know what an Avatar is? That is probably what the fox is

The Weave - the Internet IS the weave
the thing that she goes into is just a graphical representation of the Web
a future Web where you “see” instead of read

Why is the Weave only available to Mara? Why is it gone?