Mind (The Culture)
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In Iain M. Banks' Culture novels 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 smarter than their original creators.
These Minds have become an indispensable part of the Culture, enabling much of its post-scarcity amenities by planning and automatizing 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.
Banks always capitalizes the term in his novels to distinguish it from the more general meaning of 'mind'.
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[edit] Overview
Although the Culture is a type of utopian anarchy, Minds most closely approach the status of leaders, and would likely be considered godlike in less rational societies. As independent, thinking beings, each has its own character, and indeed, legally (insofar as the Culture has a 'legal system'), each is a Culture citizen. Some Minds are more aggressive, some more calm; some don't mind mischief, others simply demonstrate intellectual curiosity. But above all they tend to behave rationally and benevolently in their decisions.
As mentioned before, Minds can serve several different purposes, but Culture ships and habitats have one special attribute: the Mind and the ship or habitat are perceived as one entity; in some ways the Mind is the ship, certainly from its passengers' point of view. It seems normal practice to address the ship's Mind as "Ship" (and an Orbital hub as "Hub"). However, a Mind can transfer its 'mind state' into and out of its ship 'body', and even switch roles entirely, becoming (for example) an Orbital Hub from a warship.
More often than not, the Mind's character defines the ship's purpose. Minds do not end up in roles unsuited to them; an antisocial Mind simply would not volunteer to organise the care of thousands of humans, for example. On occasion groupings of two or three Minds may run a ship. This seems normal practice for larger vehicles such as GSVs, though smaller ships only ever seem to have one Mind.
Banks also hints at a Mind's personality becoming defined at least partially before its creation or 'birth'. Warships, as an example, are designed to revel in controlled destruction; seeing a certain glory in achieving a 'worthwhile' death also seems characteristic. The presence of human crews on board of warships may discourage such recklessness, since in the normal course of things, a Mind would not risk beings other than itself.
With their almost godlike powers of reasoning and action comes a temptation to bend (or break) Cultural norms of ethical behaviour, if deemed necessary for some greater good. In The Player of Games, a Culture citizen is blackmailed, apparently by Special Circumstances Minds, into assisting the overthrow of a barbaric empire, while in Excession, a conspiracy to start a war against an oppressive alien race nearly comes to fruition. Yet even in these rare cases, the benevolent intentions of the Minds involved is never in question. More than any other beings in the Culture, Minds are the ones faced with interesting ethical dilemmas.
[edit] Technology
- See also: The technology of the Culture
[edit] Mental power
While Minds would likely have different capabilities, especially seeing their widely differing ages (and thus technological sophistication), this is not a theme of the books. It might be speculated that the older Minds are upgraded to keep in step with the advances in technology, thus making this point moot. It is also noted in Matter that every Culture Mind writes its own OS, thus continually improving itself and, as a side benefit, becoming much more invulnerable to outside takeover by electronic means and viruses, as every Mind's processing functions work differently.
The high computing power of the Mind is apparently enabled by thought processes (and electronics) being constantly in hyperspace (thus circumventing the light speed limit in computation). Minds do have back-up capabilities functioning with light-speed if the hyperspace capabilities fail - however, this reduces their computational powers by several orders of magnitude (though they remain sentient).
The memory storage capability of a typical GSV Mind is described in Consider Phlebas as 1030 bytes (1 million yottabytes). This is 11 trillion times the storage capacity attributed to Star Trek's Data.[citation needed] Research at the UC Berkeley School of Information suggests that 5 exabytes of storage space were created in 2002 alone, 92% of it on magnetic media, mostly on hard disks.[citation needed] Hence, a GSV Mind has 200 billion times more storage than the total storage created by humans in 2002. If we assume that storage technology is advancing rapidly enough to double capacity every two years, it would mean that it would take 37.5 "doublings" over 75 years to reach the capacity of a Mind. In other words, humanity as a whole might be able to create total memory storage equal to a Mind in approximately the year 2077.
Using the sensory equipment available to the Culture, Minds can see inside solid objects; in principle they can also read minds by examining the cellular processes inside a living brain, but Culture Minds regard such mindreading as taboo. In Look to Windward an example is cited of an attempt to destroy a Culture Mind by smuggling a minuscule antimatter bomb onto a Culture orbital inside the head of a Chelgrian agent. However the bomb ends up being spotted without the taboo being broken.
[edit] Structure
In Consider Phlebas, a typical Mind is described as an ellipsoid of several dozen cubic metres, but weighing many thousands of tons, due to the fact that it is made up of hyper-dense matter. It is noted that most of its 'body' only exists in the real world at the outer shell, the inner workings staying constantly within hyperspace.
[edit] Capabilities
The Mind in Consider Phlebas is also described as having internal power sources which function as back-up shield generators and space propulsion, and seeing the rational, safety-conscious thinking of Minds, it would be reasonable to assume that all Minds have such features, as well as a complement of drones and other remote sensors as also described.
Other equipment available to them spans the whole range of the Culture's technological capabilities and its practically limitless resources. However, this equipment would more correctly be considered emplaced in the ship or orbital that the Mind is controlling, rather than being part of the Mind itself.
[edit] Psychology
[edit] Personality
Minds are constructed entities, which have general parameters fixed by their constructors (other Minds) before 'birth', not unlike biological beings. A wide variety of characteristics can be and are manipulated, such as introversion-extroversion, aggressiveness (for warships) or general disposition.
However, the character of a Mind evolves as well, and Minds often change over the course of centuries, sometimes changing personality entirely. This is often followed by them becoming eccentric or at least somewhat odd. Others drift from the Culture-accepted ethic norms, and may even start influencing their own society in subtle ways, selfishly furthering their own views of how the Culture should act.
Minds have also been known to commit suicide to escape punishment, or because of grief.
[edit] Interests
Minds are constructed with a personality typical of the Culture's interests, i.e. full of curiosity, general benevolence (expressed in the 'good works' actions of the Culture, or in the protectiveness regarding sentient beings) and respect for the Culture's customs.
Nonetheless, Minds have their own interests in addition to what their peers expect them to do for the Culture, and may develop fascinations or hobbies like other sentient beings do.
The capabilities and interests of Minds are described in Excession to be vast enough to run entire universe-simulations in their own minds, an enterprise with intellectual, scientific and creative applications, addictive enough to cause some Minds to totally withdraw from caring about physical reality into the 'Infinite Fun Space', their own, slightly ironic name for the possibilities provided by their own simulation capabilities.
[edit] Mind varieties
[edit] Ship Minds
One of the main functions of Minds is the guidance of spaceships from a certain minimum size upwards. A culture spaceship is the mind and vice versa; there are no different names for the two, and a spaceship without a Mind would be considered damaged or incomplete to the Culture.
These ships provide a convenient 'body' for a Mind, which is too large and too important to be contained within smaller, more fragile shells. Following the 'body' analogy, it also provides the Mind with the capability of physical movement. As Minds are living beings with curiosity, emotion and wishes of their own, such mobility is likely very important to most.
- See also: Ship types (The Culture)
Culture minds (mostly also being ships) usually give themselves whimsical names, though these often hint at their function as well. Even the names of warships retain this humorous approach, though the implications are much darker.
[edit] Non-Ship Minds
Some Minds also take on functions which either preclude or discourage movement. These usually administer various types of Culture facilities:
- Orbital Hubs - A Culture Orbital is a smaller version of a ringworld, with large numbers of people living on the inside surface of them, in a planet-like environment.
- Rocks - Minds in charge of planetoid-like structures, built/accreted, mostly from the earliest times of the Culture before it moved into space-built orbitals.
- Stores - Minds of a quiet temperament run these asteroids, containing vast hangars, full of mothballed military ships or other equipment. Some 'Rocks' also act as 'Stores'.
- University Sages - Minds that run Culture universities / schools, a very important function as every Culture citizen has an extensive education and further learning is considered one of the most important reasons for life in the Culture.
[edit] Atypical Minds
- See also Ship behaviour and relations
- Eccentric - Culture Minds that have become "... a bit odd" (as compared to the very rational standards of other Culture Minds). Existing at the fringe of the Culture, they can be considered (and consider themselves) as somewhat, but not wholly part of the Culture.
- Sabbaticaler - Culture Minds that have decided to abdicate from their peer-pressure based duties in the Culture for a time.
- Ulterior - Minds of the Culture Ulterior, an umbrella term for all the no-longer-quite-Culture factions.
- Converts - Minds (or sentient computers) from other societies that have chosen to join the Culture.
- Absconder - Minds that have completely left the Culture, especially when in doing so, they deserted some form of task.
[edit] Minds' names
Minds (and, as a consequence, Culture starships) usually bear names that do a little more than just identify them. The Minds themselves choose their own names, and thus they usually express something about a particular Mind's attitude, character or aims in their personal life. They range from funny to just plain cryptic. 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 Adjuster - a warship
- Of Course I Still Love You - an ambassador ship
- Funny, It Worked Last Time... - an ambassador ship
