![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Gu has always preferred paper and a pen to Wikipedia.īut when he awakens from a twenty year sleep in the year of 2025, with the Alzheimers’ disease that took him out of action cured due to new medical research and much of his physical and mental frailties similarly taken care of, it’s technology that Gu must confront.ĭigital paper and clothes that let you interface with the 2025 version of the internet, augmented/virtual reality, an economy heavily based on the fusion of content and software production … pretty tough going for a 75-year-old, even with the help of his grand-daughter Miri and her fellow school student Juan Orozco. The main character of Rainbows End is Robert Gu, a world-famous poet and an unlikely man to be forced to grapple with the latest next-generation technology. The book does a fantastic job of probing the human cerebellum … but not the human soul. And readers who prefer their science fiction to use the evolution of technology to better understand what it truly means to be human will finish the novel feeling Vinge’s ideas only go skin-deep. However, the selection of a 75-year-old man as the main protagonist enforces a sometimes glacial pace. Review Vernor Vinge’s 2006 book Rainbows End constitutes a veritable cornucopia of dazzling ideas about where the current crop of web 2.0 technologies such Wikipedia and Google could be leading human society, strung together with a well-planned plot that aspires to explore the sort of trans-human ideas that similar authors like William Gibson favour. ![]()
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