cecità
tecnologia
nascita IA ( )

How have I missed reading Sawyer all these years? The man has won so many awards for his writing, and based on my first reading I can see why. Although not all the multiple storylines are left in a satisfactory state (in my opinion) in this first volume of the trilogy, they are all nonetheless peopled with well-fleshed characters. The pacing is good, the details (both technical and cultural) are plentiful. Best of all, Sawyer uses the story to examine questions on the nature of intelligence/consciousness: human, primate, and computer. This is one of the best examinations of the emergence of artificial intelligence I have read. I look very much forward to reading the next 2 volumes.

[UPDATE: Still enjoyable the second time around. And the multi-reader audiobook is excellent.] ( )

A story of a blind girl into whose life a miracle comes, sight, but with sight comes a vision of the internet and also a vision of something else in the corners, a glitch that may not be a glitch but something growing, a possible inhuman friend.

Part of the start of this story involves an highly transmissible H1N1 flu variant that starts in rural China... written in 2008/9; this edition published in 2019. Honestly that part and how the Chinese government handled it made the hackles rise on the back of my neck. There are parts that are a bit outdated (like hardly anyone outside of Russia uses LiveJournal -moment of silence - anymore) but glossing over that I can see how this handles a lot of the issues and is quite prescient. I'm curious where things are going to go from here. How Caitlin is going to survive, what's going to happen to Webmind, Hobo and in China. ( )

Robert J Sawyers latest novel reads like the novelization of a film. Quick paced, but without a lot of meat. It seems like he just takes snippets from the latest scientific discoveries and wraps a story around them. ( )

Meh. Not really horrible but stunningly tone-deaf to the inner mind of a teenage girl in this information age.
The back stories of bird flu in China and the painting hybrid chimp were never properly completed or set up for the next book.
Why do I keep on reading this guy's books? ( )