Fast Times at Fairmont High
by Vernor Vinge · first published 2013
56% recommend44% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Near-future novella set in a high school where students must quickly master new tools and manuals, and where consensual reality and mesh networking feel plausible. A short, entertaining read that sparks thinking.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…as "superhuman intelligence". I read Vinge's essay in college and it was a critical factor in affecting my career choices and transhumanist views. His sci-fi Fire Upon the Deep/Deepness in the Sky and Fast Times at Fairmont High/Rainbows End were also critical in affecting my career path into AR/VR. I highly recommend reading this essay and any of his other sci-fi. He work could be classified as "hard computer science fiction"…
on “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era” ↗I much preferred the novella Fast Times at Fairmont High, which had many of the same characters and setting.
on “Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End fails to thrill” ↗This reminds me so much of Vernor Vinge's story "Fast Times at Fairmont High". It's set in the near future, and one plot point is that high school tests cover this skill--to read through the manuals quickly and get things done with new tools. I recommend it, and the related book…
on “A hiring test I'd like to run” ↗…understand the transformative potential of something like a VR headset if technology allowed it to be unobtrusive and omnipresent, one must read Vinge. The idea of consensual reality as portrayed in, e.g., Fast Times at Fairmont High, is kind of mind-blowing.
on “Vernor Vinge has died” ↗…intelligence? Gregory Stock, Metaman Bruce Sterling, "Maneki Neko" What if: Fine-grained distributed systems are aggressively successful? Karl Schroeder, Ventus Vernor Vinge, "Fast Times at Fairmont High" What if: IA (Intelligence Amplification) occurs As the radical endpoint of Human/computer interface research? Poul Anderson, "Kings Who Die" Vernor Vinge, "Bookworm,…
on “(AI) Slop Terrifies Me” ↗Love that book, it also reminded me of his book/short story Fast Times at Fairmont High where they use small devices like this as breadcrumbs to keep them connected to the grid (a mesh network).
on “Michigan Micro Mote – World's Smallest Computer” ↗There are a far few novels that cover this - for example: Fast Times at Fairmont High/Rainbow's End (near-future) and The Golden Age (far-future). The latter is interesting because covers the automated mediation of the interactions of people experiencing different realities.
on “Mobile outdoor augmented reality” ↗…advanced Googling & result interpretation. People have recognized that the ability to formulate the proper query is almost as important as being able to understand the results. Check out his short story Fast Times At Fairmont High[1] and the short Synthetic Serendipity[2]. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collected_Stories_of_Vernor... [2]: http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/synthetic-serend...
on “I Google everything” ↗I’ll second Rainbows End, and add in its earlier incarnation, the novella Fast Times at Fairmont High.
on “Sensor Network Technology in Vinge’s a Deepness in the Sky” ↗"Fast Times at Fairmont High" is an entertaining short read about this issue.
on “How should we deal with cognitive-enhancing drugs?” ↗1. Fast Times at Fairmont High, Vernor Vinge Or 2. Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson Any others?
on “Ask HN: Future of Education: Which SciFi setting resonates?” ↗…assignments. I remember being surprised years later to find how recent they were, as well as how uncontroversial their inclusion in the curriculum was. On that note, kinda sad that they chose "True Names" over "Fast Times at Fairmont High" for Vinge's entry. Though I haven't read the former, the latter reads like TN's description, except for phenomena that haven't fully unfurled their existence and possibility yet. AR glasses, anyone?…
on “50 authors, 50 science fiction stories shorter than novels” ↗…far fetched an idea. Note that a more scholastic form of incubator is, to my mind, a very different concept from what I'll call Vingean Scholastics. This is the vision put forward by Vernor Vinge in Fast Times at Fairmont High in which building startups is a part of the curriculum for all young people and at least ramen-level economic success is necessary for graduation at a high school level. Building a business, or at the…
on “Are you building a company, or your credentials?” ↗Vernor Vinge described a similar rocket-based delivery system in his short story "Fast Times at Fairmont High", which eventually became the novel Rainbows End. Crazy to see this actually happening in the real world.
on “Amazon Prime Air” ↗These seem like the beginnings of the localizers in Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, or maybe his earlier Fast Times at Fairmont High.
on “Stanford engineer aims to connect the world with ant-sized radios” ↗