{"id":18527,"date":"2013-01-12T21:48:05","date_gmt":"2013-01-12T21:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=18527"},"modified":"2013-01-12T21:48:05","modified_gmt":"2013-01-12T21:48:05","slug":"for-fans-of-daniel-suarez-iain-mcgilchrist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=18527","title":{"rendered":"For fans of Daniel Suarez? Iain McGilchrist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — on, as usual, binocular vision, but this time 2020 as well as 20\/20 ]
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I’m about half way through Freedom(TM)<\/a>, the second of the books in the trilogy by Daniel Suarez<\/strong> which began with Daemon<\/a> and (I believe) ends with Kill Decision<\/a> — I’d have finished all three pretty much as fast as I could lay my hands on them if I wasn’t trying to write quite so much myself. As those who have read or are reading the books know, there’s a lot in there about the difference in perspective between those who have and don’t have “augmented reality” glasses.<\/p>\n

Since I tend to like to have at least two lenses through which to view things — and am interested in general in what William Blake<\/strong> called “fourfold vision” — the topic itself is of interest me, quite aside from its potential to illuminate some pretty obscure corners of near future possibilities.<\/p>\n

Likewise, I’d like to have some roughly parallel universe with which to compare the one Suarez is providing me with — and this video introducing a game called Ingress<\/a> looks like a suitable “second lens” to set up a stereoscopic inquiry and arrive at a measure of depth:<\/p>\n

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I’m not looking to make a qualitative comparison between the books and the game here, just to ask if anyone with access to both would like to discuss what we can learn from juxtaposing them?<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Because juxtaposition is key. Because, as Iain McGilchrist<\/strong> says in his speech The Divided Brain and the Courage to Think Differently<\/em>:<\/p>\n

There’s an oddity about the brain, which is that it makes all its everything that happens — the multifarious beauty of the world — come out of connections. It exists only to make connections.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because, as he also says:<\/p>\n

Relations matter more than things. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So that a marvelous counterpoint to Suarez’ fast-paced action-oriented techno-thriller imagination is McGilchrist’s slow-paced psycho-stiller contemplative approach:<\/p>\n