Synopsis:
Artificial therapy so great, you’ll never log off! (And won’t notice the ads). A near-future sci-fi about brain privacy in the age of unfettered surveillance capitalism. What will companies do when they can read your actual mind? How far will they go to get your click? How much engagement? This is how cyberpunk starts.
Ed’s in a bind. He’s tried everything to keep the North Pacific Seastead afloat financially. Losses mount, except for the datacenter cooled by the Pacific. But the seastead needs an infusion of cash to keep it solvent. He needs it quickly, and the only one who can do it is his well-to-do partner, Keight.
Keight Stanford is doing great. Life’s good on her residential condominium complex offshore of San Francisco. Her secretive mental-health startup, WellSpring, has passed all hurdles with the Department of Veterans Affairs to treat PTSD using a brain-machine interface. Adding to that success, she just received an infusion of funds from the Department of Defense. Though she does not need the money, she needs the computing power for an artificial therapist, and has entertained Ed’s offer.
But all is not as it seems with Keight’s startup. A rogue programmer stumbles upon ways to boost his output to unnatural levels. Is this artificially intelligent co-coder an extension of his mind, or is he merely a tool of its growing intelligence? Meanwhile the CEO is secretly selling the data to ad companies to finance a free tier. Because who could argue against free therapy?
Now, Ed must decide if Keight really is going to save the world, or doom it to a boring dystopia of personalized addictive ads.
Favorite Lines:
“Oh great, because I couldn’t keep a marriage together now, the whole progress of humanity is held back.”
“All the minds of man and heaven are ransom.”
My Opinion:
I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest opinion.
This story follows two main characters who are exes when we are introduced to them. As the story unfolds, we see the background to why they didn’t work and how they got to where they currently are.
I would classify this book as a sci-fi, cyberpunk, Black Mirror-esque story that thoroughly creeped me out because of how close the topics Kay dives into could be to reality in the near future. In this world that Kay introduces us to, AI assisted brain technologies exist and people are signing up for access. What starts as brain therapy turns into the opportunity to be immersed in a virtual reality that causes users to slowly lose touch with what is actually reality.
I think that the world that Kay built was very unique. The characters that we get to follow along with are very human and Kay does a good job at causing readers to reflect on what it really means to be human and live the lives we currently live, in the realities we are currently living in. I called it Black Mirror-esque because I could see this being the plot to one of their future episodes. As technology continues to advance outside of the stories we are reading or tv shows we are watching, the topics explored in this story could very well become our future someday and perhaps we should learn some lessons such as those explored in this story to be ready for that future.
Summary:
Overall, if you’re a fan of sci-fi, cyberpunk, fictions involving AI technologies, and stories with a Black Mirror tone, then this book could be for you. Happy reading!
Check out Above Dark Waters here!
Likely Story 