Neural plasticity, artificial intelligence, vision, theory of consciousness, the internet, and cross-cultural interactions? Yes, all that and more in Robert Sawyer’s new novel WWW: Wake.
I just finished reading this book, and definitely enjoyed it – more for the ideas than for the writing, but then again, it’s not every day you find such a neuroanthropological tale! As for the story, it moves right along, so it’s a good summer read. As Publisher’s Weekly says, “Wildly thought-provoking.”
Here’s Sawyer’s tag: “The World Wide Web wakes up…” And while much of the story does revolve around artificial intelligence and how the Web might develop into an aware agent, the protagonist of the novel is Caitlin Decter, a blind teenager who is a math prodigy and internet whiz. That combination lets Sawyer explore neural plasticity (her visual cortex has mapped onto her navigation of the web) and Decter’s understanding and interactions with the emergent online being.
As Sawyer writes about Wake, “The World Wide Web will soon have as many connections as does the human brain. And, just as reflective, self-aware consciousness spontaneously emerged in Homo sapiens some 40,000 years ago so too might consciousness emerge in the vast network that is the Web.”
Neuroanthropology 