I don’t have time to read books anymore unless they’re about parenting/kid’s health or needed for work. It’s really starting to drive me a little bonkers, but I don’t see windows of time+energy+inclination opening anytime soon. Eventually, yes, but not soon. But I can still scan the intarwebz in my little sliced up moments of time here and there and recently skimmed this post by Robert J. Sawyer over at Scalzi’s about his upcoming WWW trilogy. Sounds interesting!
Wake’s main story is about the World Wide Web waking up — but I counterpoint that with several other plotlines also about the nature of consciousness: a blind 15-year-old girl learning to see; a sign-language-using chimpanzee-bonobo hybrid who has started making representational art; and an autistic genius trying to cope in a world of neurotypicals. Consciousness, it seems, is a many-splendored thing.
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Wake will be followed by Watch and Wonder making this — hee hee — the WWW trilogy. I’ve actually just finished Watch — which tackles the question of what consciousness actually is for and why it’s worth having from an evolutionary perspective — and am starting the third volume. Collectively, I’m hoping they’ll provide an uplifting scenario in which good old Homo sapiens survives the advent of superintelligence without being subjugated or eliminated, and without us losing our essential humanity and individuality.
I’m going to pop it onto ye olde Amazon wishlist and maybe get around to reading it one of these years.
