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QUestion 3: Globalization
The novel bounces around and discuss the topic of who gets to actually benefit (or gets harmed) as technology rolls out - particularly transformative technology. Does Air do a good job of touching on the topic of technology in a globalized world or did it drop the ball there?
Comments
I wasn't persuaded by Air as a communications technology apparently based on hidden dimensions - I worked on such models back in the day, when they were collectively known as Kaluza-Klein models, and I'm not sure that the job of converting the rolled up dimensions into messaging was an obvious corollary! But if you just treat that as hand-wavium, and focus instead on the potential for tech to transform society, then it was much more persuasive. I see it was published in 2004 and maybe that stuff wasn't so obviously imminent then as now.
I did like and appreciate the way that technology's impact was seen in small social ways (the teacher losing his job, or former friends falling out, for example) and not just big ways.
I though the book's main spirit was to tell a community story (the kind of story @BarnerCobblewood keeps mentioning he's looking for, and what I expect our next book, The Carpet Makers, will also be) against the backdrop of technological change. The actual technological change is a form of cybernetics, but it might as well be telepathy. Any sufficiently advanced technology is akin to magic? Basically, that's what Air is. It's the Singularity. Who benefits financially are people in far off places, and very distant from the core of this book, I suppose. But maybe, when the technological change is so advanced as to basically be a singularity, we're all effected in ways we can't comprehend. We all have the chance to adapt or not - to sink or swim. I think the book is more about adaptation (and the sacrifices one must make) than about which groups benefit. That's probably one of the reasons the UN is the one rolling out Air in the novel, rather than a big company.