Blindsight book king county library system bibliocommons. Mar 05, 2016 a brief video on the phenomenon of blindsight, for bill griesars winter 15 adv. Bold and hardy, dwarves are known as skilled warriors, miners, and workers of stone and metal. Jan 01, 1992 blindsight is the first series of jack stapleton and laurie montgomery. Blindsight by peter watts is a horribly written great story. Space vampires are an interesting concept but the world watts was trying to build was complex enough with the creepy alien life he didnt have to throw in. The themes of the book are repeated in a fractal pattern. Blindsight is one of those rare books that alters the readers perception of the world and of himself, if the reader is brave enough to tackle it headon.
And yes, blindsight is definitely a walk on the dark side. Cook masterfully sets up the characters and makes the reader part of the action. Blindsight explained and conscious perception selfawarepatterns. Blindsight is a delightful book that opens your eyes to the hidden forces behind every decision and every choice in the consumer world. However, the possibility is raised that consciousness is, for humanity.
Humans meet a new species of alien and must figure out what procedures to follow to make. Laurie montgomery, a medical examiner, tries to prove that upscale overdose cases are overdoses. And thats all well and good, but looking back, its not all that good. Blindsight is the hugo awardnominated novel by peter watts, a hard science fiction writer through and through and one of the very best alive the globe and mail two months have past since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the earth, screaming as they burned.
Campbell memorial award for best science fiction novel, and a locus award for best science fiction novel, and won the seiun award for best translated novel. Blindsight is an intense, erotic mystery that kept me turning the pages. Blindsight is a film that combines a new avantgarde artistic idea with challenging cutting edge technology to create an experience that is unique. The necker cube is an optical illusion first published as a rhomboid in 1832 by swiss crystallographer louis albert necker. Blindsight by peter watts a science girl in a fantasy world.
I saw this film at the toronto international film festival. Researcher larry weiskrantz coined the term blindsight in 1974. The second argument involves the cortical basis of blindsight. Two months after the earth is taken over by an alien species, a space probe detects a faint signal from the edge of the solar system and attempts to make contact, despite the dangers the signal hints at, relying on a linguist with multiple personalities to make the first contact and attempt a peace agreement. Raine miller, the blackstone affair adriane leigh never dissapoints with equal amounts of heat and heart with all the sex, suspense and scandal in blindsight. The two main models of consciousness that have been applied to blindsight cases to explain their paradoxical abilities are the workspace model and the phenomenological model. Blindsight is a book about consciousness, and awareness, and sentience. While the origin of vampires were explained, and plausible based on what i understood from the technology this world had, but still they really werent necessary for most of the book. Her film is about erik weihenmayer, a blind american mountainclimber and ultraachiever, who some years ago was. And though there was sex, lo, there was no gender, and life was in balance. Its a dark film and yet because of the very way it is constructed, it is totally absorbing. Mar 28, 2016 blindsight is the ability to respond to visual information without consciously seeing it. The first book, blindsight, is a convoluted trip to the deep space to basically argue about consciousness versus intelligence. Basically, you can download, copy, and distribute to your furry little hearts content.
Besides the bigger picture that this post is about, theres also the details about each character. Set in 2082, peter watts blindsight is fastmoving, hard sf that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mindbending alien encounter is about to unfold. Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind due to lesions in their striate cortex, also known as primary visual cortex or v1, to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see. The book draws on scientific evidence from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and decision science, and makes it fun and relatable to any audience. With combination of linear and nonlinear timelines that knit together an interconnected path created by. Psychologists study blindsight to learn more about how the brain processes visual information. A read is counted each time someone views a publication summary such as the title, abstract, and list of authors, clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the fulltext. Sep 27, 2010 blindsight and other novels and stories are available on peter watts website for free download under a creative commons license. Blindsight subject gy is a 53year old individual who has a large left medial occipital lesion and a rather smaller right parietal lesion, caused by a traffic accident at the age of 8. Jun 25, 2010 the rare phenomenon of blindsight has been known for a long time, but until now has never been understood. Blindsight contributes to this debate by implying that some aspects of consciousness are empirically detectable. And neither he nor the conjoined intelligence he shared with the captain had been able to explain those trajectories as the mere aftermath of some past disturbance. The main thing that blindsight reveals is that there is a difference between.
A brief video on the phenomenon of blindsight, for bill griesars winter 15 adv. Several theorists have proposed unique approaches to the study of sensation and perception. Dragonborn look very much like dragons standing erect in humanoid form, though they lack wings or a tail. Blindsight is a phenomenon that shows that even when the primary visual cortex is damaged or removed a person can still perform actions guided by unconscious visual information. Because based on his blog, ive concluded that hes kind of a jerk. It garnered nominations for a hugo award for best novel, a john w. Dellamonica has a books worth of fiction up here on, including the time travel horror story the color of paradox. Blindsight is a documentary about a group of blind tibetan teenagers who attempt to climb one of mount everests sister peaks.
Its important to understand what a cortically blind person is not able to see before we go on to explore what they can. Peter watts aliens are neither humans in funny makeup nor incomprehensible monoliths beyond human comprehension theyre something new and infinitely more disturbing, forcing us to confront unpalatable possibilities. Jul 24, 2018 blindsight is a challenging book in many ways. Such patches are commonly used to test for blind spots or visual awareness. The presence of type ii blindsight in some patients indeed suggests that v1 may not be required for conscious awareness. Blindsight, set almost entirely beyond the oort cloud on the ship theseus, tells a first contact story thats a mixture of philosophy, narrative confuscation ala wolfes book of the new sun, dystopia, and horror. Another important aspect of blindsight is thatin discrimination taskseven when blindsight patients perform at above chance.
People with blindsight are effectively blind through damage to the. Residual unconscious vision in the absence of v1 could be explained in terms of subcortical regions which continue to process visual information. It is crafted with 100% authentic, locally sourced, gmopesticideherbicidefree science fiction. Watts is one of the two or three best hard sf writers around, and this is his finest book to date. Blindsight is defined by the oxford concise dictionary as medicine. Specifically, the novel supposes that consciousness is necessary for both aesthetic appreciation and for effective communication. I had a hard time with this book at first, because the protagonist was such an insensitive jerk to women, but then i realized that was sort of the point and he grew on me. Top 10 books about consciousness books the guardian. The majority of studies on blindsight are conducted on patients who have the conscious blindness on only one side of their visual field. After the firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self.
Medical examiner laurie montgomery gets some drug overdose cases, which reminds her of her own brother who died because of drug overdose. Another important aspect of blindsight is thatin discrimination taskseven when blindsight patients perform at above chance level, they claim that they are merely guessing. Theres also the ugly woman of castello di putti, the. However, it will soon be evident that much of the literature deals with cases in which the subject acknowledges some perception in the blind region of visual field without actually recognizing the stimulus blindsight type 2 of weiskrantz. Blindsight is a hard science fiction novel by canadian writer peter watts, published by tor books in 2006. May 19, 2012 if blindsight patients set their criterion for detection to be unusually high, then we need an explanation as to why this is the case. Blindsight is the ability to respond to visual information without consciously seeing it. It sure gave me some things to check in internet, like blindsight it is a real life phenomena, and other science stuff appeared in this book. Aug 07, 2008 blindsight b ritish filmmaker lucy walker has found some great material here. Blindsight is a hard science fiction novel by canadian author peter watts. The researchers tested the responses of the monkeys to highcontrast stimuli presented to the part of the visual field affected by the lesion both before and after the injection. After the firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the selfpiloted spaceship theseus hurtles outbound to. The word blindsight is an oxymoron and the phenomenon is a paradox. Blindsight is a phenomenon in which patients with damage in the primary visual cortex of the brain can tell where an object is although they claim they cannot see it.
It is a simple wireframe drawing of a cube with no visual cues as to its orientation, so it can be interpreted to have either the lowerleft or the upperright square as its front side ambiguity. Troubles with the publisher made the novel hard to find in stores, despite having been nominated for a hugo award, so watts put it out on his website for free. Sometimes its asserted to be in the brainstem, other times in the thalamus, sometimes in the parietal lobe, and yet other times in the prefrontal cortex. In the least ambiguous sense, blindsight is the discernment of a visual stimulus in the absence of conscious awareness blindsight type 1 of weiskrantz. Frankly, this has a very similar set up to blindsight. This was interesting enough to make me want to ready what other pathological mysteries would laurie montgomery have to solve. If you like the hardscience stories, grab a copy of blindsight. Spoilers discussion about peter watts new book echopraxia. The heavens have been silent sinceuntil a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Blindsight is a great example of the emotional dividends that careful photography, sensitive editing and an atmospheric score can deliver. Every so often we get into discussions about where in the brain consciousness lies. Im glad i read blindsight before i read peter watts blog. It is a story about a pack of individuals pushing at the very razors edge of what it even means to be human, faced with the truly alien. It is the faculty that allows you to read this sentence, to remember yesterdays events, to enjoy music and art, and to.
Siris own mental state is explained through the story of the beaten bloody friend on a childhood battlefield. Medcram medical lectures explained clearly recommended for you. Mostly, this book is about people sitting around and explaining things to daniel bruks, constantly. As a scientific argument it is difficult and unpalatable, a bitter pill to swallow. Blindsight is very well written and one of the few sf novels which withstands, warrants and rewards repeated readings. Occasionally he gets to explain a thing or two about a thing or two.
Its a dark and cerebral first contact story that deals heavily with issues of sentience and what it means to be an intelligent species. The book is a hard science fiction with a lot of ideas, maybe too much for some people that has no special interest in one or two of the science that mentioned in this book. The results showed that before the injection the monkeys exhibited blindsight responses of eye focusing movements. Blindsight is thought to be due to information flow through secondary neural pathways that bypass area v1 but which nevertheless convey a small amount of. I found blindsight to be a little different than, the typical robin cook book, if you know what i mean. Elves are a magical people of otherworldly grace, living in the world but not entirely part of it. I think one of my favorites is the approach to the gnarly alien space station. Someone complained that games theory was introduced to clutter the story, not so.
A detection theoretic explanation of blindsight suggests a. I loved this, and not just for the obvious reasons. Spoilers discussion about peter watts new book echopraxia i just finished the book and i feel like i came away with more questions than answers. You wont meet jack stapleton in this book yet, but youll meet laurie montgomery, a character who possesed a job as medical examiner. Siris mother, meanwhile, is a selfobsessed aesthete. Blindsight b ritish filmmaker lucy walker has found some great material here. There is a subgenre of science fiction that i like to think of as the alienencounter procedural.
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