“Despite all our propaganda attempts to convince you otherwise, AI is alarmingly easy to produce; the human brain isn’t unique, it isn’t well-tuned, and you don’t need eighty billion neurons joined in an asynchronous network to generate consciousness. And although it looks like a good idea to a naive observer, in practice it’s absolutely deadly.”
Antibodies – Charles Stross
Every since Lawrence Lessig‘s “The future of ideas” and the Creative Commons movement, different writers have been experimenting with different ways of offering you, dear reader, free books. And it is of course you that profits, as long as you don’t mind reading a book on the screen. If you plan on reading the dead tree edition, I would suggest the library, bookstore, or company printer.
As it sort-of fits the subject, you will find mostly Science Fiction and in particular cyberpunk on the net. The most prolific author is undoubtedly Cory Doctorow, who offers all his books for download.
You might have guessed it by the intro, but also Charles Stross has shared one of his books, Accelerando. The book is certainly worth the read, although you might find it a bit dated in some aspects. I guess that’s the danger with cyberpunk, reality catches up pretty fast. For Charles, this free book was a one-time occurrence. Maybe the book didn’t sell that well due to downloads, maybe he prefers to only offer paper versions? In any case, he does have an interesting weblog if you want more free reading material.