The Awakening of Artemis has been available for about two months now. And readers are getting the message. Here's what reviewer Priscilla Bettis had to say:
"The world building in this novel is supreme. It’s 2049, and the Space Force is up and running. Cars drive themselves in efficient, bumper-to-bumper traffic systems. Cryogenics is a thing, and so are advanced medical implants.
"There are also scary “advancements” in society such as a Culture Index system (similar to current day China’s) in which the party in power controls how citizens behave by tying their behavior to employment opportunities. Every person is monitored via an unobtrusive implant and/or AI personal assistants.
"Perhaps the most notable aspect of Calia’s vision of the future is that the US has taken a bold step into socialism. Sixty percent of the masses live off government-guaranteed income, and forty percent of citizens work, live, and play in upscale, fenced-in pods (city-states) where every pod is its own likeminded tribe. (Like a brick-and-mortar Facebook group.) The income gap has never been bigger, and there is no diversity of thought."
Although the book is science fiction, my predictions are not without foundation. Here are a compendium of resources for your reading pleasure.
Even Bugs Will Be Bugged: When Mark Zuckerberg posted a picture of himself on Facebook in June, a sharp-eyed observer spotted a piece of tape covering his laptop’s camera. The irony didn’t go unnoticed: A man whose $350 billion company relies on users feeding it intimate details about their lives is worried about his own privacy. Read More
Can the Law Keep Up with the Rise of the Machines?: Emerging with these technologies is an ever-increasing public concern for the many risks present where decisions are made by computers and not by humans. Read More
The Rise of the Useless Class: In September 2013, two Oxford researchers, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, published “The Future of Employment,” in which they surveyed the likelihood of different professions being taken over by computer algorithms within the next 20 years, and they estimated that 47 percent of US jobs are at high risk. Read More
Augmented Reality Will Put the Internet Everywhere: In the beginning, we trekked to the family PC, hijacked a phone line and, after a series of dings and that chhhhh sound, “went on the internet.” In the future, all we’ll need to do is throw on some lenses and open our eyes. Read More
Drop the Batteries -- Diamonds and Lasers Could Power Your Drone: Lasers actually—shot through diamonds. If this sounds like the sort of dilithium crystal setup that powered the Starship Enterprise, well, it’s not all that far off. Lasers have long been considered potential solutions for beaming electricity straight to drones, by focusing their light on photovoltaic cells affixed to the small aircraft. Darpa, the US Army, independent research groups, and private companies are all investigating the idea. Read More
The Bedside Singularity -- Amazon's Alexa as a Murder Witness: Amazon’s Conversational AI assistant may have been a silent party to and is at the center of at least two active murder investigations, one in New Hampshire, the other in Arkansas. The victims had the device in their homes - which became crime scenes - and prosecutors believe Alexa knows Who Dunnit. Read More
I've imagine these trends and others as they mature and become an accepted part of everyday life three decades into the future. The Awakening of Artemis takes place in 2049 America, a world where the elites make the rules and artficial intelligence enforces them.
If you would like to learn more, reach out to me in the Contact section of this webisite. I'd be happy to enjoy a lively discussion with you.