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A conversation on Bluesky about AI education prompted this. There is no way that anything coming from this current attempt at pseudointelligence (to use Diamond Age’s much better term) can produce competent education for children without adult teachers. The one thing Nell could do was trust her Primer to tell her the truth, teach her facts, and protect her to the best of its ability, either directly or by teaching her to defend herself. Current teaching tools using LLMs can only be trusted to hallucinate and fail. They are not reliable and are dangerous to their users, likely to cause mental health crises and intellectual degradation.
But also, Hackworth is a piece of shambling crap, and is at best an anti-hero.
First point: The Drummers are psychotically misogynist and there is no getting around that. They literally gang-rape then immolate women for the code and practice ritual cannibalism with the ashes. There is nothing redeeming about them. The means do matter, so if your way of breaking capitalism involves ritual gang-rape and sacrifice of women, then figure out another way to break capitalism. It doesn’t matter if it’s one woman a week, a year, a decade. Human sacrifice ruins everything. There is no utilitarian argument if the only people being raped and immolated are women. Which is the textual evidence. It’s just more misogyny and structural femicide.
As an aside, The Drummers also epically poorly built, which isn’t something new in Stephenson’s work. They simply don’t make sense. There is no such thing as total warfare because humans can’t devote 24/7 to anything. Is that a nap for Jesus/The Code? A sandwich for Jesus/The Code? Are you taking a crap for Jesus/The Code? (With apologies to Max Brooks for stealing that idea from World War Z)
But literally, we have no idea of anything about them, from how they keep themselves fed and dosed up for their orgies, to rest and recreation and health care. The best we get is Hackworth waking up as an utterly drugged out, fucked out sloven, with nothing but vague memories and a clear lack of self-care. And apparently spent at least ten years in that condition. (And as an aside to the aside, this is such a typical thought pattern out of Silicon Valley, that being high and sleep-deprived makes better code. This is bullshit, it’s abuse, and in the case of the TESCREALs, it’s a cultic mind control technique to control and harm adherents.)
Point, the second: Nell’s relationship with the Primer starts when she’s about 3, no more than 4, and Miranda’s there pretty much from the start. Miranda stays with her for at least four, if not five years, because Nell’s 8 when she goes to Dovetail and Constable Moore. These years a remarkably formidable time in early childhood, and a consistent carer matters. By eight years old, a child can manage transitions to other carers, if needed.
When Miranda decides to go to the Drummers to find Nell, she doesn’t leave until she is certain Nell is safe with another surrogate parent who is on the ground and better able to protect her. If Harv hadn’t gotten Nell to Dovetail? Miranda probably wouldn’t have left then. Miranda chooses responsibility.
Now, contrast with Hackworth. What we know of Gwendolyn (Fiona’s mother) is nothing, but it doesn’t indicate an attentive, involved mother. We know more about Gwendolyn’s exercise equipment and wardrobe than we do about her. All we really get is her culture forces her to focus on her body and that the status marker of being able to wear Victorian type clothing without Victorian type foundations is valuable to Gwendolyn and the culture. And that she seems to be fine with this tradeoff.
Otherwise, she’s never more than a bit player, never seen having a job or doing much. We do not know how she supports herself and Fiona, but we do know that the Vickies’ social conservatism will condemn Gwendolyn for seeking divorce, and will punish Fiona for her parents.
So when Hackworth leaves Fiona and Gwendolyn for the Drummers, he’s leaving them in worse condition, exactly the opposite of Miranda and Nell. He’s damaging their social and financial stability, and while he seems to WANT to be an attentive father to Fiona, he doesn’t know how to do it when he’s present. Distance will not improve that. Nor will being in a death-rape-drug haze for the next decade (or more) of Fiona’s life. We know that having a parent with addiction issues harms a child.
Also, as an aside, it’s not entirely clear when Fiona gets her copy of the Primer and Hackworth leaves. It’s not congruent with Nell getting her copy, even though Nell, Fiona and Elizabeth are the same age. Nell and Elizabeth get theirs both at around three right after they’re made, but Fiona could easily be 5 by the time all of the investigations and blackmail and discussions have happened.
So Hackworth wasn’t being Fiona’s primary ractor in early childhood because she didn’t have the Primer. And he doesn’t have time or consciousness to be her major ractor after he goes to the Drummers. There is a never a point where he’s spending 8 to 16 hours a day with Fiona on the Primer like Miranda did for Nell, because if he’s doing that, he’s not working on the code that is the Drummers’ murderous, vile purpose. And if he is doing that work, then it’s not Hackworth being Fiona’s ractor most of the time. There’s no way Hackworth could do the intense focus that Miranda did for Nell. It’s simply not possible given that even a drugged out, fucked out Drummer only has 24 hours a day.
Point the third: Miranda was getting paid for her racting work. That she chose to focus on that one contract doesn’t mean she wasn’t working. She was. This was her primary income, and when she logged out at the end of a day’s work, she still had a life, even if she was choosing to spend 8-12-16 hours a day with the Primer. Parenting is exhausting, but it’s a little less awful when it’s a) paid, and b) comes with some time off.
Being a professional, getting paid, means Miranda actually had more emotional spoons to raise Nell in those critical 4-5 years because it was her compensated work. Hackworth’s not getting paid to be Fiona’s ractor after he fucks off to the Drummers. His work is supposed to be whatever the Drummers are doing. Since we don’t know when/how the Drummers even get a snack, it’s unreasonable to expect that Hackworth has time to spend daily, intensive 6-12 hour sessions over years racting for Fiona the way Miranda did for Nell.
I also question how Miranda found the time after she went to the Drummers, but after Nell is in school with the Vickies, that reduces Miranda’s necessary On Call time from 15 hours a day to three to five, after school. And let’s be clear, even through the interface, Nell probably should have noticed the shift. That being the point of the on-going contract — continuity is palpable.
I do note that paying Miranda to be a parental surrogate is one of Stephenson’s rare attempts at correcting his deep structural and textual misogyny that he can’t seem to help putting on the page.
Point the fourth: The Primer works for Nell because she starts as an outsider, it’s her primary and single strongest source of positive reinforcement, and it remains consistent for her. She is never an insider, but is also not Semi-Outcast, like Fiona. Nell learns to codeswitch well enough that she can survive amongst the Vickies, but she’s not one, and doesn’t seem to want to be one. It’s not a longing for her. Her codeswitching is conscious, and she understands why it matters, and how to use it without being subsumed by it.
Fiona, alas, is a partial Outcast, being the abandoned child of a mother forced to divorce a publicly adulterous, substance abusing husband and father. That condemnation is clear and present, even if the Vickies are polite enough to not throw it full in Fiona’s face. But Fiona doesn’t get the invitations to “respectable” children’s parties. This is more subtextual, but Fiona is not getting the full, privileged Vickie child upbringing. And it hurts her, as well as her father’s mostly absence. She’s interacting with a fragment of him, what’s available after he devotes most of his mind and body to the Drummers. And like most children of divorce with a mostly absent, Disneyland Daddy type of parent? She does what a child with an absent father does — idolizes him and projects her needs and wishes into him, whether he can provide emotionally for her or not.
While for Elizabeth, who never has a consistent relationship with someone on the far side of the Primer, the Primer simply didn’t work. Also, she seems to have had rather dismissive parents and even if her parents mouthed the right words, little kids are very good at picking up adult disapproval or contempt, and will act accordingly if they prefer their parents’ opinions over their grandparents, and she’s solidly in the Vickies. She is courted, she is the granddaughter of a prince amongst lords, and nobody is going to snub her at all. What rebellion she exhibits as a young adult is not a product so much of the Primer as it is being a friend of a thete girl and a semi-outcast thanks to having the same tool, and it’s quite likely that Elizabeth is back in the conservative arms of the Vickies before she’s thirty, conforming and luxuriating in her family money, and working out on her Beaux Art weight bench, losing the baby weight. (Yes, you are reading my contempt correctly. The Vickies suck.)
Point the Fifth: Why the Primer shouldn’t work for the Mouse Army? Because they had to make it more Pseudointelligence, and because those little girls do not have anything like enough adult caretakers.
This is another point of Stephenson being far too far up his own ass, but we knew what raising children in regimented orphanages without enough resources or caretakers looked like in 1990. It looked like Romania. It looked like profound failure to thrive. Babies that don’t get a lot of individual attention — several hours a day of touch and talk and face time — don’t hit their developmental marks. They don’t try to play, they just stop crying, their language development fails, they get sick, they die. Even when children have enough material warmth, enough food, enough shelter — which these girls in theory have, thanks to the Matter Compilers, but maybe not, since they aren’t on the Feed and have to supply their own matter, of which seawater is not sufficient — children without sufficient human interaction die. Call it neglect. Call it loneliness. Call it Failure to Thrive. They’re all the same. Babies need people.
There aren’t enough caretakers on those ships for the little girls. There can’t be. There would need to be hundreds more ships, just for the caretakers. Daycare recommendations are 1 adult to 2 babies until they’re 1, 1 adult to 3 babies until they’re 2. And that’s for DAYCARE, which is 8-10 hours a day and everyone goes home.
Whereas in reality, after daycare ends, the babies get another several hours of at least one parent talking, holding, cuddling, and being a face for their child. There is no way the Mouse Army girls are getting enough human interaction to grow up to be effective adults.
We know how the Romanian orphanage kids grew up; many are able to support themselves, but their emotional and educational lives were deeply damaged. And they have had a remarkably high excess death rate from the time they were infants that continues to today. High susceptibility to infectious disease, and to substance abuse, and to suicide. Maintaining relationships are difficult, if not impossible.
I don’t think most of the little girls grow up long enough to even get to the age of using a Primer well, much less into adulthood. In Stephenson’s hands, they’re nothing but little robots to be used as a plot device, completely disposable, yet another piece of misogyny and just failure to think it through.
Which is really the heart of the problem. Stephenson is a goddam misogynist, and yet he thinks he’s a Hiro Protagonist, too smart to be bigoted while being a total dick. And the Diamond Age is one of his worst examples.
But also, Hackworth is a piece of shambling crap, and is at best an anti-hero.
First point: The Drummers are psychotically misogynist and there is no getting around that. They literally gang-rape then immolate women for the code and practice ritual cannibalism with the ashes. There is nothing redeeming about them. The means do matter, so if your way of breaking capitalism involves ritual gang-rape and sacrifice of women, then figure out another way to break capitalism. It doesn’t matter if it’s one woman a week, a year, a decade. Human sacrifice ruins everything. There is no utilitarian argument if the only people being raped and immolated are women. Which is the textual evidence. It’s just more misogyny and structural femicide.
As an aside, The Drummers also epically poorly built, which isn’t something new in Stephenson’s work. They simply don’t make sense. There is no such thing as total warfare because humans can’t devote 24/7 to anything. Is that a nap for Jesus/The Code? A sandwich for Jesus/The Code? Are you taking a crap for Jesus/The Code? (With apologies to Max Brooks for stealing that idea from World War Z)
But literally, we have no idea of anything about them, from how they keep themselves fed and dosed up for their orgies, to rest and recreation and health care. The best we get is Hackworth waking up as an utterly drugged out, fucked out sloven, with nothing but vague memories and a clear lack of self-care. And apparently spent at least ten years in that condition. (And as an aside to the aside, this is such a typical thought pattern out of Silicon Valley, that being high and sleep-deprived makes better code. This is bullshit, it’s abuse, and in the case of the TESCREALs, it’s a cultic mind control technique to control and harm adherents.)
Point, the second: Nell’s relationship with the Primer starts when she’s about 3, no more than 4, and Miranda’s there pretty much from the start. Miranda stays with her for at least four, if not five years, because Nell’s 8 when she goes to Dovetail and Constable Moore. These years a remarkably formidable time in early childhood, and a consistent carer matters. By eight years old, a child can manage transitions to other carers, if needed.
When Miranda decides to go to the Drummers to find Nell, she doesn’t leave until she is certain Nell is safe with another surrogate parent who is on the ground and better able to protect her. If Harv hadn’t gotten Nell to Dovetail? Miranda probably wouldn’t have left then. Miranda chooses responsibility.
Now, contrast with Hackworth. What we know of Gwendolyn (Fiona’s mother) is nothing, but it doesn’t indicate an attentive, involved mother. We know more about Gwendolyn’s exercise equipment and wardrobe than we do about her. All we really get is her culture forces her to focus on her body and that the status marker of being able to wear Victorian type clothing without Victorian type foundations is valuable to Gwendolyn and the culture. And that she seems to be fine with this tradeoff.
Otherwise, she’s never more than a bit player, never seen having a job or doing much. We do not know how she supports herself and Fiona, but we do know that the Vickies’ social conservatism will condemn Gwendolyn for seeking divorce, and will punish Fiona for her parents.
So when Hackworth leaves Fiona and Gwendolyn for the Drummers, he’s leaving them in worse condition, exactly the opposite of Miranda and Nell. He’s damaging their social and financial stability, and while he seems to WANT to be an attentive father to Fiona, he doesn’t know how to do it when he’s present. Distance will not improve that. Nor will being in a death-rape-drug haze for the next decade (or more) of Fiona’s life. We know that having a parent with addiction issues harms a child.
Also, as an aside, it’s not entirely clear when Fiona gets her copy of the Primer and Hackworth leaves. It’s not congruent with Nell getting her copy, even though Nell, Fiona and Elizabeth are the same age. Nell and Elizabeth get theirs both at around three right after they’re made, but Fiona could easily be 5 by the time all of the investigations and blackmail and discussions have happened.
So Hackworth wasn’t being Fiona’s primary ractor in early childhood because she didn’t have the Primer. And he doesn’t have time or consciousness to be her major ractor after he goes to the Drummers. There is a never a point where he’s spending 8 to 16 hours a day with Fiona on the Primer like Miranda did for Nell, because if he’s doing that, he’s not working on the code that is the Drummers’ murderous, vile purpose. And if he is doing that work, then it’s not Hackworth being Fiona’s ractor most of the time. There’s no way Hackworth could do the intense focus that Miranda did for Nell. It’s simply not possible given that even a drugged out, fucked out Drummer only has 24 hours a day.
Point the third: Miranda was getting paid for her racting work. That she chose to focus on that one contract doesn’t mean she wasn’t working. She was. This was her primary income, and when she logged out at the end of a day’s work, she still had a life, even if she was choosing to spend 8-12-16 hours a day with the Primer. Parenting is exhausting, but it’s a little less awful when it’s a) paid, and b) comes with some time off.
Being a professional, getting paid, means Miranda actually had more emotional spoons to raise Nell in those critical 4-5 years because it was her compensated work. Hackworth’s not getting paid to be Fiona’s ractor after he fucks off to the Drummers. His work is supposed to be whatever the Drummers are doing. Since we don’t know when/how the Drummers even get a snack, it’s unreasonable to expect that Hackworth has time to spend daily, intensive 6-12 hour sessions over years racting for Fiona the way Miranda did for Nell.
I also question how Miranda found the time after she went to the Drummers, but after Nell is in school with the Vickies, that reduces Miranda’s necessary On Call time from 15 hours a day to three to five, after school. And let’s be clear, even through the interface, Nell probably should have noticed the shift. That being the point of the on-going contract — continuity is palpable.
I do note that paying Miranda to be a parental surrogate is one of Stephenson’s rare attempts at correcting his deep structural and textual misogyny that he can’t seem to help putting on the page.
Point the fourth: The Primer works for Nell because she starts as an outsider, it’s her primary and single strongest source of positive reinforcement, and it remains consistent for her. She is never an insider, but is also not Semi-Outcast, like Fiona. Nell learns to codeswitch well enough that she can survive amongst the Vickies, but she’s not one, and doesn’t seem to want to be one. It’s not a longing for her. Her codeswitching is conscious, and she understands why it matters, and how to use it without being subsumed by it.
Fiona, alas, is a partial Outcast, being the abandoned child of a mother forced to divorce a publicly adulterous, substance abusing husband and father. That condemnation is clear and present, even if the Vickies are polite enough to not throw it full in Fiona’s face. But Fiona doesn’t get the invitations to “respectable” children’s parties. This is more subtextual, but Fiona is not getting the full, privileged Vickie child upbringing. And it hurts her, as well as her father’s mostly absence. She’s interacting with a fragment of him, what’s available after he devotes most of his mind and body to the Drummers. And like most children of divorce with a mostly absent, Disneyland Daddy type of parent? She does what a child with an absent father does — idolizes him and projects her needs and wishes into him, whether he can provide emotionally for her or not.
While for Elizabeth, who never has a consistent relationship with someone on the far side of the Primer, the Primer simply didn’t work. Also, she seems to have had rather dismissive parents and even if her parents mouthed the right words, little kids are very good at picking up adult disapproval or contempt, and will act accordingly if they prefer their parents’ opinions over their grandparents, and she’s solidly in the Vickies. She is courted, she is the granddaughter of a prince amongst lords, and nobody is going to snub her at all. What rebellion she exhibits as a young adult is not a product so much of the Primer as it is being a friend of a thete girl and a semi-outcast thanks to having the same tool, and it’s quite likely that Elizabeth is back in the conservative arms of the Vickies before she’s thirty, conforming and luxuriating in her family money, and working out on her Beaux Art weight bench, losing the baby weight. (Yes, you are reading my contempt correctly. The Vickies suck.)
Point the Fifth: Why the Primer shouldn’t work for the Mouse Army? Because they had to make it more Pseudointelligence, and because those little girls do not have anything like enough adult caretakers.
This is another point of Stephenson being far too far up his own ass, but we knew what raising children in regimented orphanages without enough resources or caretakers looked like in 1990. It looked like Romania. It looked like profound failure to thrive. Babies that don’t get a lot of individual attention — several hours a day of touch and talk and face time — don’t hit their developmental marks. They don’t try to play, they just stop crying, their language development fails, they get sick, they die. Even when children have enough material warmth, enough food, enough shelter — which these girls in theory have, thanks to the Matter Compilers, but maybe not, since they aren’t on the Feed and have to supply their own matter, of which seawater is not sufficient — children without sufficient human interaction die. Call it neglect. Call it loneliness. Call it Failure to Thrive. They’re all the same. Babies need people.
There aren’t enough caretakers on those ships for the little girls. There can’t be. There would need to be hundreds more ships, just for the caretakers. Daycare recommendations are 1 adult to 2 babies until they’re 1, 1 adult to 3 babies until they’re 2. And that’s for DAYCARE, which is 8-10 hours a day and everyone goes home.
Whereas in reality, after daycare ends, the babies get another several hours of at least one parent talking, holding, cuddling, and being a face for their child. There is no way the Mouse Army girls are getting enough human interaction to grow up to be effective adults.
We know how the Romanian orphanage kids grew up; many are able to support themselves, but their emotional and educational lives were deeply damaged. And they have had a remarkably high excess death rate from the time they were infants that continues to today. High susceptibility to infectious disease, and to substance abuse, and to suicide. Maintaining relationships are difficult, if not impossible.
I don’t think most of the little girls grow up long enough to even get to the age of using a Primer well, much less into adulthood. In Stephenson’s hands, they’re nothing but little robots to be used as a plot device, completely disposable, yet another piece of misogyny and just failure to think it through.
Which is really the heart of the problem. Stephenson is a goddam misogynist, and yet he thinks he’s a Hiro Protagonist, too smart to be bigoted while being a total dick. And the Diamond Age is one of his worst examples.
