Jeanette Winterson - the stone gods

A good summer book. With its classic approach it almost feels like the perfect bedtime story for children in the 21st century. The fact that the challenges we face are not a matter of technology or economy, but ethics, is well captured when she in a few sentences describe many of the "visions" that mainstream thinkers propose today:

"the West will race ahead - we are the new clean green machine, and the developing worlds will stay the way we wanted it to stay - raw materials and cheap labour"

"take a Buy-me-Buy-me world and turn it into a Rent-me-Rent-me world. I rent the apartment and the furniture in it. Carbon-rationing means that all of my household appliances - fridge, washing machine, etc. - must be state-of-the-art or, rather, sate-of-the-tech, which changes roughly every six months.... Consumerism looks ugly, these days. Renting is genius: we still pay, but we don't own."

For many CEOs and politicians this book could be a helpful reminder that behind all the rhetoric we face some very interesting challenges. Instead of only thinking about the most immediate challenges and needs we should also discuss the kind of society we need. Many who will waste their time reading “The necessary revolution” by Peter Sage looking for any new ideas would be better of reading this book… (more about The necessary revolution in a separate blog).

The idea of a silicon life form taking over after our carbon based is a thought that I think many of us encountered in Asimov's different stories, a few of my favorites can be found in X stands for Unknown. A sign of the rimes that "Spike" (the "Robo sapiens") in the stone gods is the character that provide some hope?