I always like reading more about future predictions. This book provides a window from the past, in which a prediction of a future with internet dominated society is described. The book covers a great deal of conflicts and problems that are at the core of our technical methodologies used to make cyberspace happen. A good book to have lots and lots of insights about where such a network mechanism is heading. Almost all of the predictions are accurate enough to match what has happened so far. The b...

3.5/5Enjoyed Ready Player One more, but still a quick and interesting read.

What a ride! A good book for everyone who loves science fiction stuff. A bit on the shorter side for me but I think this was meant as a short story so it definitely delivers on that front. Apart from some technical terms which I believe were thrown in just to sound futuristic, I really appreciated the read with its connected world, characters and their short interaction.The one thing which I liked the most was Afterword which explains the nitty gritty and delves into some philosophy (at least th...

Great readA sci fi classic full of visionary ideas, including many that have manifested already. This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand how the world we currently find ourselves in, came to be.

The actual Vernor Vinge story is worth 5 stars. The volume as a whole is really brought down though but the 240 pages of prelude in the form of dated mid 90s era essays on cyberspace. Find the story on its own and read that. If this is the only version you can find, make sure you find it deeply discounted.

The title story, True Names, is the first and, for me, the best cyberspace story. It gets 5 stars.Other stories in this collection are enjoyable as well, mostly 3 and 4 stars.So, overall, a 4 star collection.

Vinge’s later, much longer novels are better written but this story is worth it for historical context - part of the Neuromancer/Snow Crash gang in terms of anticipating the internet/cyberspace (here The Other Plane) but even more interesting in terms of crypto currency and the moral battle between government and personal liberties which is unfolding before us all in 2022. The essays that come with the Penguin reprint (the one with a Hari Kunzru introduction) are helpful too.

"…it was likely that the governments of the world hadn’t caught up to the skills of the better warlocks because they refused to indulge in the foolish imaginings of fantasy."— Vernor Vinge, True NamesTrue Names was a great novella! Highly creative with a great plot twist and the end. The essays preceding it, however, take the cake. Mostly dating from the 1990s, I was fascinated to learn more about the history of the Internet and have a much better understanding of remailing, PGP, public and priv...

skipped the essays, as many did, enjoyed the prefaces/intros and afterwords

I imagine the ideas presented were pretty cool at the time. They've aged a little since, seeing that I read this on a smartphone now. But they make for interesting contemplation. My gripe is with the fact that reading linearly, one has to endure TEN essays praising and hyping Vinge's story before you even get to it, by tech writers who think they're really Cool and CyberPhunky yesI was disappointed when i finally got to Vinge's story. All the excitement about how innovative True Names was becaus...

I skipped over the essays but the title story and the afterword by Minsky are worth the worth the price of admission by themselves. Like many groundbreaking ideas, the cyberspace envisioned by Vinge seems fairly standard today since films like The Matrix have made the basic concepts common knowledge. The impressive part is that he did it in 1981 when the first home computers were 8 bit affairs and a hard drive was an expensive luxury. Considering the way Vinge has data shuttling across satellite...

TODO:~ Difficult to judge a book that includes a brilliant novelette, a good introduction and afterword, and a series of mediocre to bad essays. But, as I do not judge a book by its covers, I decided to judge True Names by its core novelette, which is visionary and smart. Spare yourself of the rest, which includes an anarchist who trades in number of deaths change will take, a mysoginist who talks about something else, and a misplaced engineering chapter softened for the layperson to the point t...

True Names is a prophetic story of what the internet could (and kinda did) become. id picked it be cause the topic of being forced to use your "real name" as opposed to the name people know you by comes up at work. and because it is the inspiration for a lot of cyberpunk.Turns out that it is more than just a story about being on online and living in a synthetic world. oh and being tracked by the NSA. what happens when AI gets away from us? it was a great read, and I highly recommends the story t...

5 stars...only for the vinge short story and its historical significance! Rest of the book is sporadic essays that seemed to be cobbled together so some publisher can sell a novel-length book.

This proto-cyberpunk novella makes for interesting reading after all these years. Some parts (pertaining to the internet) are hopelessly dated, others (related to AI) have remained surprisingly relevant.

The title novella is cited as one of the seminal cyberpunk stories. This addition includes essays from people like Tim May and Richard Stallman. Much of it is year 2000-ish libertarian cyber utopia stuff, inducing Olympic level eye rolls only 20 years later. Actually, to say that Stallman is included isn't 100% accurate; he had an essay in the print edition of this book, but refused to allow it to be included in the Kindle edition.The total story itself holds up much better than the essay materi...

Eerily prescient and applicable to modern times. That we choose or chose, ever, to reveal ourselves online, our True Names, is baffling. We've been conditioned to trust, and in such lost a lot of our magical power.

Only two short stories in this compilation, both very good and well ahead of their time, written in the late 90’s. The rest are articles on web security, crypto analysis and future developments. All a bit dry for me.

Vinge's 1981 prophetic fiction describing a super cyberspace much of which is now a reality. It had a cult following and by 1981, much of what we have now was already envisioned and in the works. Just fascinating to think of the genius, connections and communities that intersected to bring about what we take for granted today.This reprint of Vinge's novella is accompanied by explanatory essays, essays that give depth and reality to the earlier vision. They're academic though and by comparison, t...

Intro was full of dated futurism, many times I asked myself why am I even reading this. “True Names” itself is decent, and while it may be historically significant, it is less and less relevant.