Mind (The Culture)
In Iain M. Banks' Culture series, most larger starships, some inhabited planets and all orbitals have their own Minds: sentient, hyperintelligent machines originally built by biological species which have evolved, redesigned themselves, and become many times more intelligent than their original creators.
These Minds have become an indispensable part of the Culture, enabling much of its post-scarcity amenities by planning and automating society (controlling day-to-day administration with mere fractions of their mental power). The main feature of these Minds—in comparison to extremely powerful artificial intelligences in other fiction—is that the Minds are (by design and by extension of their rational, but "humanistic" thought processes) generally a very benevolent presence, and show no wish to supplant or dominate their erstwhile creators. Though this is commonly viewed in a utopian light, a view where the human members of the Culture amount to little more than pets is not unsupportable.
Banks always capitalizes the term in his novels to distinguish it from the more general meaning of "mind".
Read more about Mind (The Culture): Overview, Minds' Names
Other articles related to "the culture, minds, mind":
... Main article List of spacecraft in the Cultureseries Minds(and,as a consequence,Culture starships)usually bear names that do a little more than just identify them ... The Mindsthemselves choose their own names,and thus they usually express something about a particular Minds attitude,character or aims in their ... Some examples are Sanctioned Parts List a habitation factory ship So Much For Subtlety a habitation factory ship All Through With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff a warship Attitude ...
Famous quotes containing the word mind:
“Disease can never be conquered, can never be quelled by emotion’s wailful screaming or faith’s cymballic prayer. It can only be conquered by the energy of humanity and the cunning in the mind of man. In the patience of a Curie, in the enlightenment of a Faraday, a Rutherford, a Pasteur, a Nightingale, and all other apostles of light and cleanliness, rather than of a woebegone godliness, we shall find final deliverance from plague, pestilence, and famine.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)