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Iain Banks would be pleased, were he still alive. To the uninitiated: Musk is quite obviously a fan of The Culture sci-fi series by Iain Banks. This right here device is called "neural lace" in the series. The series is quite possibly the finest example of the genre that I've ever read, and it's way ahead of its time.

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And it has a great quote on the neural lace, from an AI whose hobby is mucking about in humans' heads: "A more exquisite and economical method of torturing creatures such as yourself has yet to be invented."

I remember watching one or maybe two interviews of Mr Musk at one of the iteration of the Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg conferences, I think it was All Things Digital. To the delight of the audience, Mr Musk described two or three technologies right out of Iain Banks’ books including using the term neural lace. At the time I had recently read the books, so I immediately recognized the one book, but it escapes me now. I don’t think Mr Musk acknowledged the connection, but there or another interview he talked about deep conversations with his brother on sci fi topics.

The names of SpaceX barges are inspired by the series as well. One of the central protagonists in the series are enormous sentient spaceships that far outstrip humans in intelligence (and firepower, naturally). They have long names like "Of Course I Still Love You".

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