As someone who has geeked out about Pokemon, Digimon, Neopets, Duel Masters, and Yu-Gi-Oh while growing up, I’m fairly accustomed to the common thread linking all of these: mystical/mythical/virtual beings aiding human characters in battle while also acting as companions. It’s interesting to note that an entire generation, which grew up watching multiple iterations of this trope, ranks on top of the charts when it comes to loneliness (it’s often referred to as an epidemic). Perhaps it’s time to roll back the years and make the pet rock cool again.
Ted Chiang’s The Lifecycle of Software Objects takes up a similar premise involving digents (short for digital entities), creatures crafted by artificial intelligence and nurtured in virtual landscapes. Our protagonist, Ana, is a former zookeeper who’s roped in by Blue Gamma, to help with training digents who possess child-like intelligence but with the potential to grow. Her work requires her to work closely with Derek, who’s responsible for designing digents from scratch. While a success originally, boosting Blue Gamma up the charts, digents fall out of favour with the general public and end up with the limited company of a few fanatics. Ana and Derek adopt a few digents of their own which enables their relationship beyond the workplace but is fraught with insecurities on the latter’s part. The last third of the book revolves around moral quandaries and the real implications of AI being utilized for objectives that feel wrong. The ending, while slightly misplaced in terms of storytelling, does pull a few heart strings.
The Read: With its super deceptive title, the book manages to combine strands involving interpersonal relationships, the morality of applied tech, and breeding virtual pets with immaculate ease. It is what Ted Chiang is best at, having enjoyed his collection Story of Your Life and Others in the past. (The movie Arrival is based on the same and The Tower of Babel should have a podium of its own.) I really really wish Chiang wrote in long-form cause there was so much that could have been expounded but I guess he thrives on keeping it curt. I genuinely enjoyed the world-building, pun totally intended, and the journal-like fashion employed to convey different thoughts. What I did not enjoy was how it felt like there was some amount of holding back when it came to character depth, because I feel like I know more about Jax, Marco, and Polo (the digents) than I do about the main characters. Perhaps the lifecycle of human objects is where the real trouble lies.
Trivia: A few years ago, Second Life, a virtual world complete with currency of its own, Linden Dollars, was all the craze. One particular user decided to cash out his remaining stash for bitcoin. I guess he truly has the best of both worlds. Read about it here.s
Documentation:
Book: The Lifecycle of Software Objects
Author: Ted Chiang
Year of Release: 2010
Publisher: Subterranean Press