Accelerated Evolution

I really like the concept of a gigantic intergalactic Noah’s Ark. It’s like Titan AE. That’s kind of how I envision Jacob’s Ladder in the book. One big difference is that Jacob’s Ladder is designed to perpetuate evolution. Apparently the ship was designed to evolve gods as it travelled to colonize interstellar worlds. This strikes me as a radical notion. I wonder how the morals of society today would take this. It seems that the “builders” just provided the tools for accelerated evolution and then set it loose. I don’t get the feeling that they designed the exalts the way they are now.
The colonies in the book are pretty cool. I’m not sure I fully understand how the work, but they seem to turn the means into exalt superhumans. The characters often refer to “their colony” but they are never named or anything. However they “ask their colony” or “their colony told them”. Kinda like a kickass conscience. I liked Rien’s description of being exalted. It seems that the changes in levels of consciousness are a theme in the book. Rien gets exalted, Percival combines intelligence with an angel, and the resurrectees are given the memories of dead souls. Also, Hero Ng is ingrained into Rien’s consciousness. I wonder if Bear is trying to make a statement about technology here, that it will someday become a part of us (as if it weren’t already). I find parallels here between Dust and Postsingular. When Percival became ingrained into Dust, her newfound consciousness reminded me of the Orphidnet. She can see herself from new points of view, and think on multiple levels with expanded intelligence. This advancement radically changes the style of fighting, in the beginning of the book they experience traditional combat (or so we are told), and at the end they are fighting angel-to-angel. The unblades adapt to this change in the fighting. They originally are used as blades that are especially deadly and prevent healing. However, by the end of the novel, the unblades are used more as programs to combat the angels. Just like the virus dogs in Postsingular, the swords lose much of their physical and literal uses and fight in a virtual sense.
Postsingular also takes the reader to many different planes of consciousness. Within the span of a few paragraphs, the reader has been in real life, the orphidnet, and to the accelerated learning state of the Big Pig. It’s strange to find that getting high on knowledge is portrayed as a bad thing. I feel that society today emphasizes that people can get their kicks out of being productive and learning things, but in Postsingular, this is shown as an addiction. I think that in a sense, druggies are really seeking knowledge by expansion of the mind, and the Big Pig seems to be that in a nutshell. That’s what makes it so addicting. I liked what one blogger (nlacount) said about technology becoming an addiction. It is, if you don’t keep up with the technology, you cannot function in society. I think that a few people in this class had never blogged before. Now they have no choice, they either blog and plurk or fail the course. It’s kill or be killed. I think that technology is our forced evolution. We are constantly designing gadgets that make our lives more quick, easy, and accessible. Our capabilities are evolving at an exponential rate. I think that this is a major tie between Dust and Postsingular. Dust introduces the concept of forced evolution through technology, and Postsingular shows its results. In my mind, that’s what the Nano is all about. Four thousand years ago, humans build pyramids. A hundred years ago, we build cars. Fifty years ago, we went to the moon. Twenty years ago we connected the world with the Internet. What does the future hold?