Science fiction. Near future. A company develops technology that, when implanted in the brain, allows human beings to have much greater ability to focus on multiple things at once and to for-real multitask. This makes those with the implants considerably more productive and therefore more valued in the capitalist economy and its associated institutions (e.g. schools), and the blue light that glows on the side of the head of anyone with the implant serves as branding and as a social marker of those with these new capabilities. The book examines the implications of this technology (and of course implicitly of various features of our existing world) through the experiences of one family. Each of the four members of this family relate to this technology in different ways, initially and over time, and the stresses and strains and conflicts and challenges in their relationships to each other and to the implants are a way for the author to get at the larger issues involved. Clever and entertaining. I thought it did a good job of making this a story about people that was able to say things about issues, rather than, as sometimes happens with sci-fi, a story about issues (or about technology) that just happens to make use of people. Interesting portrayal of the anti-implant social movement – a strange-to-me mix of sophisticated and simplistic, of things that show a nuanced sense of at least some aspects of how real-life movement spaces actually work and things that feel to me (as someone with a certain amount of knowledge in this area) to be unrealistic. Decent overall, though I was expecting more based on my experience with the collection of short stories by this author that I had previously read. I’ll continue to watch for her future work.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.