My rating: 4 of 5 starsAfter reading the first two books in the trilogy I wasn’t sure how the story of Webmind and Caitlin Decker who discovered him would finish. I was worried that I might be disappointed by the outcome. Webmind is an artificial intelligence that evolved from the internet. Caitlin Decker is a young girl who was once blind until she was given sight by a device that she calls an EYE pad. The device was originally meant to fix problem with her sight that she had had from birth, giving her vision back in one eye but Caitlin discovers that she can actually see the internet itself.
These books ask the question of what would happen if there was a form of artificial intelligence running the internet? The US government security services do their best to shut it down after failing once before to close it down. Colonel Peyton Hume cannot see that Webmind is a force for good and uses all means necessary to eliminate it. China has already raised a firewall once before to cover up the outbreak of a virus and the killings of those infected to control the spread of the virus. They are seeking to make the firewall permanent again but they have a hacker in their midst who has already opened up holes in the firewall.
These series of books have some interesting ideas. There are many examples of the benefits of crowd sourcing: people coming together to write open source software, seek help in building new devices from off the shelf electrical parts and scientists sharing ideas. This book seeks to take it further by the idea of people making decisions instead of government. However, sometimes I think that Sawyer is rather too positive about the benefits of technology. Social networks have been growing stronger but can we rely on groups of people making decisions on important subjects that affect us all? E-democracy has been used to seek individual’s opinions in focus groups before but it doesn’t meant that everyone’s voice is heard as their representatives may just be interpreting the results to achieve their own ends. The recent Egyptian revolt in 2010 used social media to challenge the government and has been a positive force for change. On the other hand only those who have access to this technology can participate. Equally popular polls could end in controversial decisions such as capital punishment being re-instituted after years of informed debate and legal precedent outlawing it in most western democracies.
What would also happen if an artificial intelligence could find a cure for Cancer and other complex issues through the co-operation of scientists, doctors and experts? This could be a positive thing but I could also see there being a backlash by the multinationals that manufacture and control the supply of drugs and products in a capitalist free market. Software companies would equally be upset if an artificial intelligences started putting 'verified by Webmind' on safe searches instead of their own security software.
Robert Sawyer continues to speak about technology subjects across the world and has consulted for companies like Google and Motorola. He has managed to keep my attention over this series of books through the interesting characters he has created and I hope he continues to write more thought provoking future science fiction stories.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment