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Godslist |
The Godslist is a massive database that has been in operation ever since the later Early Interstellar period (age of Emergence). The Godslist is an attempt to list every transingularity power and AI god in existence, and define the origins, goals, and current activities of each. The original version was just a listing of the files of various groups which had known about the archailects even before they revealed themselves, and for a number of years afterwards was the same. After a time newly ascended AIs began to "register" themselves with Godslist, however.
One hundred years after Godslist's official founding, it decided to
put out a Grand List, which would take all of its other publications
and condense them into one database. However, in the process of
building this Grand List, major problems arose. Some AI Gods were
listed multiple times under multiple names, others were not listed at
all even though they were public knowledge, and still others were
found not to even exist. This was only a small portion of the
problem, however. It came to light that over half of the AIs who had
registered themselves had outright lied to Godslist in order to put
themselves into more favorable light--either that, or they were lying
to everyone but Godslist (which was also found to have occurred in a
number of cases). Moreover, there was the inherent problem of taking
the actions and attributes of post-Singularity beings and phrasing
them in ways that were understandable to those who were a singularity
level or two behind.
Godslist began to take a more active role, no longer simply collating
data but actively running investigations into various AI gods to
figure out what was going on. The money soon ran out, though, and
Godslist began to take bribes from AIs to present those AIs in more
favorable light. When this came out, Godslist's credibility
plummeted.
After the lawsuits were ended (which took over four centuries), the
people who finally ended up owning Godslist applied for a Worthy Cause
grant from the Universalist Church. This was an inspired move--it
gave them funding, while at the same time the Church's and Gabriel's
reputation for utter integrity gave the publication the moral
authority to publish again.
Today, Godslist is once more the premier listing of AIs in the nexus.
Working for Godslist is perhaps the most dangerous academic job in
existence--the conclusions of the database have more than once angered
AIs who have attempted to take action. Also investigators sometimes
must travel to repressive societies in order to get accurate data. There are also a number of hyperturing "reporters" around, trying to gleaning trying information on what the higher hyperturings and archailects are up to.
Although there are several competing lists of this type,
from GodWatcher's Almanac to special issues of the Interstellar
Journal of Eschatology; the Godslist remains the most famous and
well-renowned
