Vinge, Vernor: RAINBOWS END

'''Vinge, Vernor. Rainbows End.''' New York: TOR, 2006.

Near-future SF novel significant here mostly for its presentation of wearable, clothing-based cybernetic technologies and virtual retinal displays that allow for "ubiquitous computing" and mediated reality, presenting advanced forms of what is currently being developed as "augmented reality." Note casual suggestion of nanotechnology as part of remarkable medical cures for varieties of Alzheimer's disease and other real-world horrors (38; ch. 01); wide-spread availability of "Grand Terror technology" and the possibility of "YGBM technology": the threat/promise of "you've got to believe me" mind control (28-29; ch. 01); JITT (Just In Time Training), unseen but possibly computer-mediated in the manner of rapid training in J. Haldeman's The Forever War (q.v.); frequent surveillance (53; ch. 04); and very high-tech communications, including "silent instant messaging." An ambiguous minor theme is the destruction of hard-copy books in order to make available their "content" — "content" in the sense used in "scan for content" — to the generations that don't read books: the books aren't burned in the Fahrenheit 451 manner but shredded, with the "shredda" scanned and reconstructed, which yields the image of large "tree shredder"-like machines destroying books 123-24; ch. 12). See ch. 08, "No User-Serviceable Parts Within" (and passim), for the theme of how people in a high-tech culture are both surrounded by technology and mostly cut off from it: there is little opportunity for ordinary people to tinker with their devices; also, "Nowadays, our access to real things is muffled by layers of automated bureaucracy" — an automated bureaucracy brought forth in part by a major character's development of "SHE," the "Secure Hardware Environment" (141; ch. 13). A very important book, discussed usefully in the Wikipedia article , the source here of some of our IT terminology. Cf. Vinge's "Fast Times at Fairmont High" (2001); on-line at ; commentary at .

3. FICTION, RDE, 03/V/12