Postsingular

For me what really stuck out in the beginning of postsingular is how the man Jeff Luty wants to create a virtual world for him to live in. It's an obsession, even though we're reading the book through a person other than Jeff Luty we (the readers) still get a sense of his obsession with the loss of his childhood friend and how to, once again, be connected with him. Although I am unclear how a virtual world is going to make this possible because when something is virtual it doesn't mean it can be brought back from nonexistence. The only way he'd be able to be with him again would be if Jeff creates a virtual Carlos in which case he would be spending time with the Carlos he knew and not a real version who Carlos would be today. And, ultimately I think Jeff felt more about Carlos than just a friend, especially from the comment in the first chapter, "...said Jeff, enjoying Carlos's closeness." (17) I think he was in love with Carlos and he was losing more than a friend when he died but the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

I'm a little confused on how the whole nants are eating Mars and how that effects the sky and what not. I also don't really understand the whole concept between the nants growing on their own. I feel as though they're a type of AI yet I don't understand how technology could grow and develope without the input of humans. As for the sky becoming bleached and nighttime being lost I would think that would be chaotic. So much of natural life thrives on night and day; plants have to have the sunlight and the dark to grow naturally, people also are conditioned (or born I guess) in the way that our body rests at night (unless, of course, we condition our selves to sleep when we have time like working a graveyard shift, for example, changes people's sleeping habits). Taking away nighttime is taking away the separation between the two different times of day. How would a world without nighttime function? I see it as chaotic because there would be no order for times of day or when a day starts or ends. When would people know to sleep, would they schedule a certain sleeping time for themselves and how it fit into their lives? Would it even be necessary for a 24-hour period of time from day to day? It would be day all the time, days would run into days and meld together into one big bunch of time. Would business owners be open according to the time they want to as opposed to 10-5? What would nightclubs do? Would people still want to go clubbing when it appears to be daytime? It would seem very out of place... How about Vegas? There would be no point for the lights on the buildings and there would be no such thing as a nightlife, it would all be daylife. And what's even more disturbing to me is the idea of seeing images in the sky as if it's one big huge television -- I love the sky and the stars at night...it's very hard to grasp this idea. The advertising in the sky was also very disturbing because media is something people are exposed to all the time. Through television, internet, signs on the roads and on buildings, but to imagine advertising and media shown on the sky it would be even harder to escape the modern world and the materialistic bullshit. In this case a person couldn't even escape the media in the most remote places (the desert, antartica, and the ocean).

I'm interesting to read more of the book because the ideas and concepts so far are interesting and even a bit disturbing which makes it all the more fun and interesting to read.