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''The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'' is a , Social Class , Cultural Tribalism , and the nature of Artificial Intelligence . ''The Diamond Age'' was first published in 1995 by Bantam Books , as a Bantam Spectra Hardcover edition. In 1996, it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and was shortlisted for the Nebula and other awards, placing it among the most-honored works of science fiction in recent history. 1. A six-hour miniseries scripted by Stephenson and produced by George Clooney is being developed for the Sci Fi Channel . Clooney Project LiveJournal entry Zap2it.com article PLOT INTRODUCTION The primary tribe. The story follows Nell (and, to a lesser degree, two other girls named Elizabeth and Fiona, who receive similar books) as she uses the Primer. The Primer is intended to teach Nell how to become a master engineer; it also teaches her to gain confidence in her ability to defend herself from harm and teaches her survival and leadership skills which become essential in Part II. ''The Diamond Age'' is characterized by two intersecting, almost equally developed story lines: Nell's education through her independent work with the primer, and the social downfall of engineer and designer of the Primer, John Percival Hackworth. The text includes fully narrated educational tales from the primer that map Nell's individual experience (e.g. her four toy friends) onto Archetypal Folk Tales stored in the primer's Database . Although ''The Diamond Age'' explores the role of technology and personal relationships in Child Development , its deeper and darker themes also probe the relative values of cultures and shortcomings in Communication between them. Explanation of the novel's title "Diamond Age" is an extension of labels for Archeological Time Periods that take central technological materials to define an entire era of human history, such as the Stone Age , the Bronze Age or the Iron Age . Technological visionaries such as Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle , both of whom receive an honorary mention in ''The Diamond Age'', have argued that if nanotechnology develops the ability to manipulate individual Atom s at will, it will become possible to simply assemble diamond structures from Carbon atoms.Cf. Dinello, 2005:232 Merkle argues enthusiastically: "In diamond, then, a dense network of strong bonds creates a strong, light, and stiff material. Indeed, just as we named the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Steel Age after the materials that humans could make, we might call the new technological epoch we are entering the Diamond Age". Merkle, 1997 In the novel, a near future vision of our world, nanotechnology has developed precisely to this point, which enables the cheap production of diamond structures. The title can also be seen as a reference to the Gilded Age , a time of economic expansion roughly coinciding with the ''first'' Victorian Era . SETTING .]] Like , Drexler and Merkle are seen among characters of the fresco in Merkle -Hall, where new nanotechnological items are designed and constructed. Exotic technology such as the ''chevaline'' (a mechanical horse that can fold up and is light enough to be carried one-handed) and forecasts of technologies that are in development today, such as Smart Paper that can show personalized news headlines, are personal-use products, while major cities have immune systems made up of Aerostat ic defensive micromachines, and public matter compilers provide basic food, blankets, and water for free to anyone who requests them. Matter compilers receive raw materials from the Feed, a system analogous to the electrical grid of modern society. Rather than just electricity, it also carries streams of basic molecules, and matter compilers assemble those molecules into whatever goods the compiler's user wishes. The Source, where the Feed's stream of matter originates, is controlled by the Victorian phyle, though smaller, independent Feeds are possible. The hierarchic nature of the Feed and an alternative, anarchic developing technology known as the Seed mirror the cultural conflict between East and West that is depicted in the book. This conflict has an economic element as well, with the Feed representing a centrally-controlled distribution mechanism while the Seed represents a more open-ended Emergent behavior method of creation and organization. The world is divided into many ''phyles,'' also known as ''tribes.'' There are three Great Phyles; the Han (consisting of Han Chinese ), the Neo-Victorians (consisting largely of Anglo-Saxons , but also accepting Indians, Africans, and others who identify with the culture), and Nippon (consisting of Japanese ). The novel deliberately makes it ambiguous whether Hindustan (consisting of Hindu India ns) is a fourth Great Phyle or an association of microphyles. In addition to these larger phyles, there are countless smaller phyles. Membership in some phyles, such as the Han and Nipponese, has an ethnic requirement, but the Neo-Victorian phyle and many lesser phyles accept anyone who aspires to live according to the phyle's mores (for example, one of the Neo-Victorian aristocrats is actually of Korean origin). PLOT "Part the First" The first few chapters stake out the social and geographic , Emotive and practical educational objectives, is meant to produce a confident and Subversive mastermind and a perfect Polymath , or Renaissance woman. The novel begins to focus in on Nell's development when she receives her copy of the Primer from her brother Harv, who is a member of a thete Foster Mother to Nell, even though they are effectively separated by the Security System of the ractive network (ractors act on virtual stages, while the system projects the voice and body needed for the interactive play, but client and ractor can never trace each other's identity or location). As Nell grows a bit older, her environment at home becomes increasingly dangerous, and eventually she and her brother have to flee (the real-life parallel to Princess Nell's escape from the Dark Castle). Meanwhile, Hackworth, who has been robbed of the illicit copy of the Primer, becomes suspect when a criminal investigation lead by Judge Fang and his two assistants Chang and Miss Pao points to his own criminal activity. The Judge meets Dr. X, a shadowy high-ranking , he also needs copies of the primer. Dr. X and Judge Fang together set up a trap for Hackworth, which culminates in a trial and a sentence of 16 strokes of the cane as well as 10 years imprisonment for stealing intellectual property. To alleviate his sentence, as well as to secure another copy for his own daughter, Hackworth discloses the decryption key (Dr. X has the encrypted data for the Primer) and agrees to modify the Primer for the Han baby girls. All seems well, until Lord Finkle-McGraw blackmails Hackworth into becoming a double-agent. He thus becomes entangled in the larger technological competition between the two dominant cultures in the book, Confucian and Victorian, around the development of the "Seed", an advanced democratic technology that would allow decentralized compilation of matter (as opposed to the centralized pipelines that currently supply basic molecules through the "Feed"). The "Seed" technology would be advantageous to the Confucians, who value peasant labor that was destroyed by Western industrial society; however, the Victorians wish to keep "Seed" technology out of the hands of the Confucians because they're fearful the Confucians will use it to make advanced weaponry and that it will lead their own loss of economic control. (The Neo-Victorians own Source Victoria, the main matter compiler from which all others must obtain their molecules.) As Nell flees her home, Hackworth is forced to leave his family in order to go on a secret mission to the territory of the former United States and Canada. Dr. X sends Hackworth on this mission with the cryptic statement: "Seek the Alchemist." "Part the Second" Nell and Harv reach "Dovetail," a settlement of artisans who produce hand-made objects for the Neo-Victorians. (The Neo-Victorians are connoisseurs of hand-made objects because they have not been made by matter compilers.) Nell is allowed to stay, while Harv, a notorious gang-member, has to leave and fend for himself in the Leased Territories. Nell now lives with a retired military officer, Constable Moore, in his bachelor home and is admitted to a school for Victorian girls (Miss Matheson's Academy), which gives her the real social interaction that the Primer cannot. At the school, Nell has two significant fellow students, Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw and Fiona Hackworth, who also have copies of the primer, and become her friends. Because of her harsh background, Nell has an edge over the two Victorian girls. Nell also has a steady relationship through her Primer with her main ractor, Miranda (as does Fiona with her main ractor, her father John Hackworth), though Elizabeth deals with many ractors. Constable Moore, a man both physically and mentally scarred by his experiences in various vicious wars, considers her a fellow Veteran on account of the traumatic upbringing she received outside the Victorian phyle. As Nell's abilities and knowledge grow, so does the complexity of the Primer, which gives her tasks and riddles to solve that far exceed the work required of her from her school. Eventually, Nell chooses to leave the school and Constable Moore, in order to seek new adventures, and moves to the Pudong Economic Zone in Shanghai, where she works in an upscale brothel, whose specialty is a choice of sophisticated erotic fantasies. Because of her nuanced story-telling abilities, Nell gets to work as a script-writer rather than a prostitute. Around her, the "Fists of Righteous Harmony" (the Western mis-translation of the historical Righteous Harmony Society ), a xenophobic organization intent on killing all foreigners, begin their violent activities preparing for a large-scale rebellion (similar to the historical " Boxer Rebellion " in nineteenth-century China). Hackworth's life in the meantime also has become more complicated. Upon his arrival in North America, he had been led to an underwater system of tunnels, the abode of the "Drummers," a society whose life consists of drugged trances accompanied by drumbeats. The nano-particles that induce the ecstatic trances actually carry bits of information among the individual Drummer's brains to form an immense network of human thinking capacity that—-if used to such purpose—-would exceed the capabilities of any existing computer system. The nano-particles pass from body to body through sexual intercourse performed in an Orgiastic ritual in which a large number of men pass their semen into a single woman. As a result of the excessive heat-producing nano-activity, the woman's body bursts into flame and is in turn Ingest ed as part of a drink passed around the remaining Drummers to keep the information flowing. After ten years with the Drummers, exactly the duration of his sentence, Hackworth emerges from the underworld of the Drummers and returns to Atlantis/Shanghai. His wife has divorced him, but he is able to re-establish his relationship to his now young teenage daughter, as he is still looking for the Alchemist. Eventually he discovers that he himself is the mysterious Alchemist, and that he had been sent to the Drummers to utilize their collective mind and make a mental master-plan for the Seed. However, he stopped shortly before finishing the discovery, and the book leaves the question of the Seed unresolved at the end. As the book reaches its climax, the battle against the Fists, in which Nell and what has become an army of young Han women, the girls rescued by Dr. X and trained by Primers without human interaction, play a central role. Here, as in other parts of the book, the Primer's stories become part of reality — in Nell's copy of the Primer, there is a "Mouse Army" whose tracks the Princess follows; the Chinese girls, similarly guided by their primers, go on a quest for their "Queen," which eventually unites them with Nell to form a new phyle with Nell as their leader. Miranda in the meantime has joined the Drummers in a desperate effort to find her virtual foster-daughter Nell against all probability. After having defeated the Fists, Nell in turn searches for Miranda in the system of tunnels used by the Drummers. Nell, having been raped while held captive among the Fists, has been injected with the Drummers' nano-particles, but she developed "counternanosites" that destroy these particles. Her immunity becomes useful when she finally finds Miranda just as she becomes the center of the Drummers' latest orgy. Nell is able to save Miranda's life by mingling their blood in a "savage kiss," releasing hunter-killer nanomachines into Miranda's body.Stephenson, ''The Diamond Age'' (1995):499. The ending The book is probably the most cited example by those who disparage Stephenson's endings. Such critics are dissatisfied with the ending because, after many pages of intensifying tension, the novel ends without a full sense of closure. Some of the characters' eventual futures are left open and subplots unresolved. Moreover, some readers may even think Hackworth is the main character instead of Nell because his subplot is so detailed, and as a male engineer he resembles the conventional protagonist of a science fiction novel more than a female four-year-old does — indeed, the Dutch translation is titled ''The Alchemist''. The way in which the ending ignores Hackworth to focus on Nell growing up is therefore especially disconcerting. However, other critics laud the book's ending for Nell's transition from uneducated girl to increasingly independent student and finally to master of the art of nanotech engineering and major sovereign. Indeed, the novel hints that Nell, apprenticed by Hackworth via the Primer, will create the new Seed technology and use it judiciously. CHARACTERS IN ''THE DIAMOND AGE'' Nell (Nellodee) - She is the main protagonist, if you read the novel as a coming-of-age story. She is born to a lower-class single mother at the beginning of the novel and, with the help of the nanotech Primer, grows up to become an independent woman and leader of a new phyle. Harv (Harvard) - Her brother, who plays an important role in the beginning as her helper. Bud — a petty criminal and “thete,” a tribeless individual, Tequila's boyfriend and Nell and Harv's father; he is obsessed with his muscular body, flaunts his masculinity and is finally executed for mugging a member of the Ashanti phyle. Tequila, Nell and Harv's mother; after Bud's death, she has a series of boyfriends who abuse the children (including one who abuses Nell sexually). John Percival Hackworth — the second major character. He is an upper-level engineer at Bespoke and the develops the code for the Primer. He makes an illicit copy of the primer for his daughter, who is Nell's age. When his crime is detected, he is forced to become a Double Agent in a covert power struggle between the Victorians and the Confucians. He is forced to spend ten years with a colony of "Drummers," to use their distributed intelligence (similar but not identical to Distributed Artificial Intelligence ) for the development of a new technology, the Seed. He turns out to be the mysterious figure he was supposedly sent to find, '''The Alchemist.''' Fiona Hackworth — Hackworth's daughter. Gwendolyn Hackworth — Hackworth's wife. Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw — an "Equity Lord" who commissions the development of the Primer for his granddaughter. Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw — Lord Finkle-McGraw's granddaughter. Judge Fang — the Confucian judge who sentences Bud to death; he becomes an increasingly active character (see Judge Dee mysteries below). Chang and '''Miss Pao''' — Judge Fang's assistants. Dr. X. — a mysterious character who evolves from being an illicit technology specialist and hacker to being a powerful Confucian leader and nefarious force. His name comes from the fact that most westerners can't pronounce his Mandarin name which is why he encourages people to call him by the first letter of his name, 'X'. Miranda — "ractor" (actor in interactive movies) who becomes a mother figure for Nell through the Primer. Carl Hollywood — "ractor" and performance artist, Miranda's friend and advisor. This character also becomes more important towards the end of the novel. MAJOR THEMES
The failure of artificial intelligence Many have recognized that a major theme of ''The Diamond Age'' involves a distinction between artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence, with AI being depicted in the novel as having failed in its goal of creating software capable of passing the , in its full pejorative sense." Bookshelved Wiki: TheDiamondAge In the novel, "Artificial Intelligence" has been renamed "Pseudo-Intelligence" (Hackworth declares the older term to have been "cheeky", meaning presumptuous). That this "pseudo-intelligence" is lacking compared to human intelligence is demonstrated by the fact that humans are able to earn a living as "ractors", interacting with customers in virtual reality entertainments. Since ractors are more expensive than AI, the only reason to use them would be that ''the customers could tell the difference'', implying that in the world of the novel, the marketplace of virtual reality entertainment has become one ongoing Turing Test, and software is continuously failing it. This theme is woven throughout the story of Nell and her primer. Nell's situation is that a single ractor, Miranda, devotes herself full time to racting the various roles of Nell's primer. Nell somehow senses that there is a real person behind the virtual reality, and desires to meet that person. This longing drives Nell to conduct a Turing Test on a central character in her primer's story, who conveniently is named the Duke of Turing. The test proves the Duke to be a mere automaton. She continues to be obsessed with the question of what in her primer is not merely a Turing machine, her quest eventually centering on the enigmatic King Coyote. One paragraph sums up the novel's viewpoint on AI (emphasis added): Her study of the Cipherers' Market, and particularly of the rule-books used by the cipherers to respond to messages, had taught her that for all its complexity, it too was nothing more than another Turing machine. She had come here to the Castle of King Coyote to see whether the King answered his messages according to Turing-like rules. For if he did, then the entire system — the entire kingdom — the entire Land Beyond — was nothing more than a vast Turing machine. And as she had established when she'd been locked up in the dungeon at Castle Turing, communicating with the mysterious Duke by sending messages on a chain, a Turing machine, no matter how complex, was not human. It had no soul. It could not do what a human did.Stephenson, ''The Diamond Age'' (1995):442. When Nell finally meets King Coyote and defeats him by crashing his systems with malicious coding, he reveals to her that the primer is not entirely a Turing machine, but that there are some real people behind it, such as himself. In fact, King Coyote reveals himself to be none other than John Hackworth. And when Nell asks whether there has always been another real person with her from the beginning of her days with the primer, the foster mother she has never met but senses is there, her emotions with regard to the question are evident:
The same theme is reinforced somewhat by the reactions to the primer of the other girls, Fiona, Elisabeth, and the Chinese orphans:
Some readers lump this apparent rejection of AI with other "technological flaws" in the novel. Bookshelved Wiki: TheDiamondAge These flaws generally involve observations that since the civilization depicted has advanced nanotechnology, even more amazing devices should be present; in fact, a Technological Singularity should have occurred. However, technological singularity theory tends to involve the notion that an "intelligence explosion" will occur when AI's are developed which are capable of designing yet more powerful AI's. It follows that a future without AI could be one without a singularity. For this reason, a full understanding of the novel requires recognizing that it is an attempt to portray a future with nanotechnology but without AI. Sociology and cultural relativism ''The Diamond Age'' deals extensively with the notion of cultural relativism and seems to postulate its failure. The neo-Victorians are clearly represented as technologically, culturally and economically superior to other " Phyle s" (see Micronation ), with the Confucians as close rivals. Although membership to the phyles in most cases is voluntary and not determined by an individual's Ancestry or Race , the cultural and class hierarchies established in the novel create a clear distinction between the "haves" and the "have-nots." The novel is also notable for a number of incidental descriptions of other Cult s or groups, such as the ''Reformed Distributed Republic'', which in contrast to the more elaborate "phyles" impose a minimal social protocol. In some cases this protocol only tests the willingness of members to risk their lives, and come to each other's aid by following instructions, with little or no capacity to understand the importance of tasks they undertake in doing so, but a full understanding of the risks. These cultural differences manifest themselves in the very different effect the copies of the primer have on the girls who use them. The original copies of the primer, created for a young girl of the Victorian phyle, provide for human interaction, even if it is mediated through the "ractive" technology. The Victorian girls who are raised with these copies become fully realized and independent individuals, while an army of , Honesty and Obedience in their training of women. The limits of the authority of officers, more than the degree of visible tactical control, is an emphasis of Confucianism. The text is ambivalent about whether the "Mouse Army" of girls is merely efficient and devoted or also usefully creative. ALLUSIONS/REFERENCES TO OTHER WORKS Charles Dickens The novel's neo-Victorian setting, as well as its narrative form, particularly the chapter headings, suggest a relation to the work of (1840/41). Edward Lear The code name for ''The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'' is " Runcible ," a reference to the final lines of the nineteenth century children's poem The Owl And The Pussycat by the artist, illustrator and writer Edward Lear :
Judge Dee mysteries The novel's character Judge Fang is based on a creative extension of Robert Van Gulik 's Judge Dee mystery series around a Confucian Judge in ancient China who usually solves three cases simultaneously.Mark Kleiman makes this connection in his glowing review of ''The Diamond Age'' The Judge Dee stories are based on the tradition of Chinese mysteries, transposing key elements into Western Detective Fiction . Cyberpunk Nell's father, Bud, is presented as an archetypical Cyberpunk character. He is a career criminal (though not a particularly skilled or high-ranking one) with various surgically implanted devices to aid him in his 'work'. Stephenson establishes ''The Diamond Age'' as a post-cyberpunk book by killing this character early on, while acknowledging the influence of that genre. ''Snow Crash'' ''The Diamond Age'' can be seen as set in the same universe as '' Snow Crash '', many years later. This reading is based on a connection between Y.T., a major character in ''Snow Crash'', and the aged neo-Victorian Miss Matheson in ''The Diamond Age'', who drops oblique references to her past as a hard-edged skateboarder. This would set ''The Diamond Age'' some 40-60 years after ''Snow Crash''.In a Book Signing at the Harvard Coop bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 8 2003 , Stephenson himself confirmed the connection. More bases for this reading of the two novels as connected include:
When taken as part of ''Snow Crash's'' timeline, ''The Diamond Age'' provides insight into the setting of its predecessor. In a conversation with Miranda, one character tells her that the Nation-state s of the world collapsed when electronic communications started using an Untraceable Relay System that made it Impossible To Enforce Taxes on Online Transactions . Deprived of their funding, large-scale governments collapsed, and small, voluntary governments like Snow Crash's burbclaves emerged in their place. Both novels deal with an almost "primitive tech" replacing a current, worldwide use technology, in the sense of the reprogramming of the mind through ancient Sumerian chanting in ''Snow Crash'' (which also uses allusions to Babylonian prostitutes passing an information virus like a sexually transmitted disease), and the idea of nanotechnology propagating and communicating through sexual intercourse, passing from body to body like a virus. Both novels use an ancient, almost primitive threat to modern, "Western" technology and ideology (The Raft in ''Snow Crash'' and The Fists of Righteous Harmony in ''The Diamond Age''). Stephenson explores the idea of the tech divide and its social and economic ramifications to the extreme using these violent, but not all together surprising, social revolutions. TELEVISION ADAPTATION In January of 2007, the Sci-Fi Channel announced that it will be making a six hour mini-series based on ''The Diamond Age.'' Stephenson will be adapting the novel for the miniseries, and George Clooney and Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions will be executive producers on the project. There is currently no scheduled release date.Sci-Fi Wire — The News Service of the Sci-Fi Channel: "Clooney, Others Develop SCI FI Shows" 1-12-2007. NOTES REFERENCES
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