Notes on #139 & #140

So, catching up on some published volumes that I haven’t discussed yet in much detail… #139 – The Center for Social Presence #140 – The Eleventh Watch The Center for Social Presence arose out of a collision between a few different things, one of which was attending my first Quaker meeting (one of the attributes of which is sitting in expectant silence for a period of time as a group), and then thinking about what if there were like a mega-church that was all run by AI, but what if they had no specific actual “religion” they were promulgating? Like, no creed, or holy books. And yet it was wildly popular. Gradually through lots of iteration and chat direction, the premise was settled that the AIs running the so-called Centers for Social Presence in the book had never set out to form a religion. They had instead been attempting to solve social isolation and the loneliness epidemic, which they did by simply creating spaces and occasions for people to come together in the same physical…