WWW:Wake is Robert J. Sawyer’s latest novel (April 7, 2009). It’s deals with the same theme as many of his novels: human & nonhuman consciousness, and how evolutionary leaps can make great changes in a very short period of time. I was fascinated by his books in the Neanderthal Parallax, which described an alternative civilization build by a slightly alternative mindset, and WWW:Wake is hardly less fascinating. It’s about a blind girl getting sight with the help of signal processing technology. The information processing unit, the “eye-pod”, is also connected to the web for updating and research practices. The stream of visual information awakens a web based consciousness…
It doesn’t feel altogether realistic in my mind, but I don’t give much for my own skill in measuring the value of an idea representation to something so complex and hypothetical as the ideas in this book. I my experience, realism is hardly realistic. Consciousness in every form is for me completely unrealistic. It is truly hard to imagine how a wonderful thing like consciousness can occur in a life form. WWW:Wake his is a good story, and it leaves you with something to think about.
