In a sense, it seems Accellerando got a lot more right than not ( reputation markets in this particular case ). We may be arguing over the best way to do it, but it seems that the conclusion was already drawn.
To be fair, it was something of a marketing master stroke to adopt claw as a symbol. Admittedly, it does make me uneasy the same way Kamala's writers dressed her up in Lisa Simpson's clothes ( episode when she is a president ), but... you have a point. We are a weird mix of pop culture memes becoming so intertwined it is hard to separate them at times.
Someone here recommended Accelerando about a month ago - I’m sitting in an airport now reading it. It’s… deep. Probably one of the two deepest sci-fi novels I’ve ever read, beat only by Blindsight.
I’m not finished yet though, so that order could change :)
I read it after Prime Intellect during my AI binge. I think the initial feeling I got from it was the same as I did during first read of Snow Crash. Familiar world, and yet everything is very, very different so you feel more like an explorer than anything else.
How prescient is that?
* http://www.accelerando.org/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.h...