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Laddar... Infinite Detail: A Novel (2019)av Tim Maughan
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Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. Infinite Detail tells the story of a revolt against big data that destroys the Internet and the global economy. Set mainly in a minority community on Stokes Croft Street in Bristol, England, it follows the fate of a group of friends as they search for their lost pasts and work to build new, healthier connections. There is a ray of hope at the end, but it leaves open the possibility that the destruction of our surveillance state will lead only to the old tyrannies. Our recent blip in the supply chain and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter make the scenario more believable than it might have been three years ago. Tim Maughan shares Cory Doctorow’s distaste for the surveillance inspired by the internet of things. Like Doctorow, Maughan does not want us to “let ourselves become nothing more than the content between adverts.” But Infinite Detail does not offer the utopian solace of Doctorow’s Walkway or Little Brother. As one character says toward the end, “[W]e just burned everything down and didn’t plan for afterwards.” Stylistically, Infinite Detail is a patchwork of effective scenes embedded in a fragmented narrative that throws up roadblocks we don’t need. I especially like a conversation between a kid and his friends who can’t understand why he wants to find sounds to sample from old vinyl records and cassette tapes. 4 stars. It's interesting that, like Robert Harris's Second Sleep, Infinite Detail takes as its premise the collapse of the Internet (here, as a result of cyber terrorism), to explore what's left in the wreckage of global capitalism. Where Robert Harris took England back to a theocratic monarchy, Tim Maugham gets us to some form of communautarism. We follow several characters who, before the collapse, were all involved in some ways with the designing of a local, decentralized, network they crafted to escape the ubiquitous surveillance society that David Lyon has written about for decades now. However, none of them can escape the collapse, the subsequent rise of half-baked governance and militias. The characters all take different trajectories: one decides to run the community the old fashioned way, one becomes a sort of revolutionary against the militias, while the designer of the local network runs in search of his US boyfriend. The problem is that that's pretty much it. That's the book. This feels a bit light on content, which is a shame, with such a great premise. This was one of the better recent sci-fi novels i've read. The extrapolation on how current ad/data grabbing trends and smart cities etc would evolve was well done, both in how it was portrayed as well as in how real it felt. I thought that it could have gone farther in some aspects (more on the systems that are used and how they affect people not interested in them etc./the futility of it all), but I still really liked it. inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
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A timely and uncanny portrait of a world in the wake of fake news, diminished privacy, and a total shutdown of the Internet BEFORE: In Bristols center lies the Croft, a digital no-mans-land cut off from the surveillance, Big Data dependence, and corporate-sponsored, globally hegemonic aspirations that have overrun the rest of the world. Ten years in, its become a center of creative counterculture. But its fraying at the edges, radicalizing from inside. How will it fare when its chief architect, Rushdi Mannan, takes off to meet his boyfriend in New York Citynow the apotheosis of the new techno-utopian global metropolis? AFTER: An act of anonymous cyberterrorism has permanently switched off the Internet. Global trade, travel, and communication have collapsed. The luxuries that characterized modern life are scarce. In the Croft, Marywho has visions of people presumed deadis sought out by grieving families seeking connections to lost ones. But does Mary have a gift or is she just hustling to stay alive? Like Grids, who runs the Crofts black market like personal turf. Or like Tyrone, who hoards music (culled from cassettes, the only medium to survive the crash) and tattered sneakers like treasure. The world of Infinite Detail is a small step shy of our own: utterly dependent on technology, constantly brokering autonomy and privacy for comfort and convenience. With Infinite Detail , Tim Maughan makes the hitherto-unimaginable come true: the End of the Internet, the End of the World as We Know It. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-Klassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
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Which was very disappointing because there is some nuance here, too. This is a debut novel, so I suppose some of that "rough around the edges" stuff is to be expected. I want to give four stars, but... AGAIN. So three stars it is. ( )