Book Review: WWW:Wake

I'm a Robert J. Sawyer fan. If I see something he wrote on the shelf at the bookstore I grab it. Recently he released the first book in a new trilogy about the internet becoming intelligent.

In "WWW: Wake" he explores the various senses and perception through several parallel stories.
In one a chimp/bonobo hybrid participates in a video conference with another type of primate. Soon after he starts painting pictures of people instead of abstract art. Presumably seeing sign language in 2D instead of 3D showed him that things that he's only experienced in 3D can be represented in a flat medium. Also, the zoo that he's borrowed from wants it back so the painting chimp can be used to make them money. But since it's a hybrid and they want to keep the primate genetic lines pure they'll want to castrate him.

In another story the internet has developed as many connections as we have neurons. It starts developing a simple awareness. Part of it gets cut off when China goes behind a firewall. Cracks in the firewall let it glimpse the intelligence on the other side and teach it that there is self and there is others. But it can't see or hear or experience anything. Internet data is gibberish. It exists much like Helen Keller before meeting the Miracle Worker.

The main story is about a blind girl who participates in an experiment to give her sight. The part of her brain that is supposed to see is fine. There's a problem with the data coming from the eye. So a chip has been created that is supposed to connect to her optic nerve and feed the data from the eye to an external device that corrects it and feeds it back. At first it doesn't work, but during a software update she starts seeing lines. We soon figure out that she's seeing the internet. Circles are websites and line are active connections. With time and adjustments to the hardware she can eventually see lightning and then more.

Her device feeds data from her experimental visual equipment back to a server in Japan for analysis. The internet becomes interested in this continual link and checks it out. Suddenly, it can see. At first only a reflection of itself since she can only see the internet and then the rest of the girl's world. As the girl uses internet software to learn to read with letters instead of braille the internet learns what binary patterns make up what letters and learns to read. Then it starts to communicate with her.

There's also some hacker in China that got busted. I expect to hear more from him in the next book.

Robert J. Sawyer tends to do near term sci-fi. Stuff that takes place in the modern world plus an extra bit of technology. Then he explores not just the central characters but the overall impact on society. There's nothing of his I wouldn't recommend.