What happens when all the personal information held by tech companies is no longer private? What happens when this code of ethics is broken? When everyone in your world - in the world – can know all your secrets? This thoroughly thought-provoking novel addresses such questions - and more - as it explores the all-encompassing impact of recent, emerging and conjectured future technology through a haunting and powerfully personal account of one woman’s life.
It’s 1997 and, at the tender age of 17, Laura Bow has created a basic artificial intelligence, which she names Organon after a Kate Bush lyric. Organon begins life as Laura’s imaginary friend. This creation is her outlet, a vent, a means of dealing with the loss of her father who vanished when she was seven. As Laura grows older and gains more experiences and memories, for a time working at the tech company her father founded and sold shortly before he disappeared, so Organon grows with her. Much like a skilled human personal assistant, it informs and supports Laura through her life, managing what she needs to be aware of, filtering out the superfluous, and anticipating her needs. But, as new technologies are developed and companies create intelligences with far less morality programmed into them than Organon, millions of personal and political secrets are unleashed and the world is sent reeling to the brink of breakdown.
Shifting forward in decades from 1997, the cleverly-spun narrative spans Laura’s entire life, from the early years of dial-up Internet, to a speculative future that serves as something of a wake-up call. Taking in artificial intelligence, human intelligence, love, loss, and meaningful memories, this novel might make you reflect on how much time you spend online, and what you do and disclose there. Above all, this is an absorbing story about humanity, making moral choices and living your best life with love and ethics.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
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I thoroughly enjoyed it and it sparked a big discussion in my family about the role of AI.
I'm very interested in A.I.... Read Full Review
Absolutely brilliant! I can't recommend this book enough! If you have even the slightest interest in sci-fi or technology, this is a must read.
This brilliant science fiction novel plays with the risk of becoming far fetched; about robots who will rise up and take over the human race. However, the writing is so perfect that this was never something you needed to worry about! I Still Dream exercises self awareness throughout in order to make sure it becomes so much more than a "rise of the machines" narrative while also avoiding straying into the too futuristic, unrelatable flying cars reality.
I Still Dream adapts common technology that everyone is familiar with and executes a seamless transition from the past in to the future in a way that doesn't jar but will leave you thinking (if not mildly paranoid) about just how much information you have stored and share online.... Read Full Review
An excellent, modern take on a sci-fi novel that had me hooked throughout and left me considering just how much technology should feature in our lives.
I Still Dream is an innovative new take on the Sci-fi genre! I specifically liked how the book was spread out across several decades. Laura’s experiences of dial-up internet were very much like my own, and I enjoyed how there was a progressive development, to faster internet and the introduction of AI assistants, with references to the real world with Siri, Alexa and Cortana. I think this connection to the real world, and a slow development on technology the reader will already be familiar with is an amazing premise for a story and it did not disappoint.
This is a fabulous story that left me reeling, as it makes you think deeply about what information big tech companies have access to through a range of different channels and the vast archives of the internet and cloud-based storage.... Read Full Review
