A Novel of Silicon Valley

Hardcover, 576 pages |

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Jason Sheehan is the restaurant critic at Philadelphia mag, nevertheless when no body is wanting, he spends their time books that are writing giant robots and ray firearms. Stories Through the Radiation Age is their latest book.

Simply your typical summer beach find out about emergent super-AI, nuclear annihilation, Silicon Valley and Amazon product critiques.

No, After All seriously. Rob Reid’s latest novel, After On, is just a doorstopper: 547 pages which, during the extremely begin, he dares your reader in order to complete — guaranteeing a present by the end for anybody who.

This will be clever. Annoying, smarmy and intrusive in a entirely childish means, but clever because his narrator (undependable in the extreme) is all those things, too. really really Loves low priced jokes. And! Exclamation! Points! AND ALL SORTS OF CAPS. You can find long digressions on apparently unrelated issues, distracting and seemingly useless Amazon product critiques peppered throughout the writing, and excerpts through the worst spy tale ever written ( each of that may be vital before we are done). And as the kind of guy who can get smirky about things like the extinction of the human race while I don’t know about Reid personally, he strikes me. Whom could stay is adultfriendfinder legit through a TED talk on nuclear expansion and rogue, non-state actors and invest the entire time sketching rude things regarding the system records.

Which explains why the medium by which humanity’s (potential) doom arrives in After On is, needless to say, a social network system and “dating” app (air quotes quite definitely suggested). A method called Phlutter (stupid Silicon Valley naming conventions being one of Reid’s running gags) which becomes sentient and attempts to just just take the world over. As a result of program it can. Is not that what every AI does?

. It is like a long philosophy seminar run by a dozen insane Cold War heads-of-station, three millenial COOs and that guy you decided to go to university with who constantly had the weed that is best but never ever did their washing.

But wait, it ain’t all quite therefore easy. Reid, being a squishy pink being that is human in place of a capital-A writer — was the man whom founded listen.com, which became Rhapsody, which influenced sets from Spotify to Apple musical. And the Prime is being followed by him Directive of article writers right right here, that will be to publish everything you understand. He knows Silicon Valley. He understands the cult of investment capital. He understands exactly exactly how things work behind shut boardroom doorways.

Therefore, he starts with a failed Silicon Valley start-up called giftish.ly being obtained by the hot brand new thing, Phlutter (which, it self, rose through the ashes of the unsuccessful start-up supplying internet pet food distribution). Giftish.ly employs (and figures as a whole) three of Reid’s primary figures, genius engineer Kuba, genius programmer Danna and. Mitchell. Mitchell the supervisor. The sane sound. Mitchell whom is suffering from a extremely uncommon degenerative illness, is (by his or her own admission) the smallest amount of smart individual in nearly all space he inhabits, but has a gift (possessed, apparently, by hardly any in their industry) for distilling knowledge and value through the nerd-prattle.

With giftish.ly, Kuba, Danna and Mitchell have actually almost unintentionally produced one thing extremely effective that the employer at Phlutter desires. The something that will enable an extremely collection that is smart of, data-collection tools along with other whiz-bang doo-dads to attain among those singularity events and start to become . alive? Sentient? a boy that is realor girl)?

We dunno. And neither does Reid, actually. He’s got some views, yes, but in which the front third of the guide checks out such as a primer on the best way to get full of technology by simply being truly a {small smarter and|sma many more wicked than everybody else, while the center third can be an evolving tech-thriller packed with bombs and business assassination and modern-day super-spy tradecraft, the closing 3rd? It is like a long philosophy seminar run with a dozen insane Cold War heads-of-station, three millenial COOs and that man you decided to go to university with whom always had the most useful weed but never ever did their laundry.