You likely know who Ted Chiang is, even if you don't recognize his name; his short story, "Stories of Your Life," formed the basis for the Oscar-nominated movie Arrival.
The genre of science fiction is uniquely suited to programmers. Especially for those of us who started decades ago, web developers witness from an inside perspective the possibilities of technology and its social implications.
Ted Chiang is particularly fair to the ubiquitous rise of the internet and technology in ways his fellow science fiction writers aren't. He examines with patience and fairness the potential - both good and bad - of technology, and its ever-encroaching impact on our lives.
One of Ted Chiang's primary fixations in his novels is free will, and its relation to what we know about science and our universe. He was quoted by the New Yorker as saying, "I believe that the universe is deterministic, but that the most meaningful definition of free will is compatible with determinism."
I believe that the universe is deterministic, but that the most meaningful definition of free will is compatible with determinism.
As web developers, we are constantly edging toward predictive behavior technology - algorithms that predict, adapt to, and even train peoples' behaviors. Personalization, we call it. Paradoxically, it seems the more choices we have - we sift through thousands of products, signals, and stimulants each day - the less choice matters.
But Chiang's exploration of science fiction extends beyond theory; a writer for programmers by trade, Chiang's stories are frequently rooted in present (or near-future) settings, in which technology we have now isn't far off from what's in his stories.
In his extremely prescient story, "Liking What You See: A Documentary," Chiang explores the phenomena of social media and its impact on our perceptions of others. His study of this theme began before the imminent rise of social media. For perspective, "Liking what you see" was published in 2002 - Instagram was launched in 2010. The short story is true to Chiang's style: patient and multi-faceted. It makes the infamous episode of Black Mirror, Nosedive, feel like an oversimplified and predictable one-liner by comparison.