Help offset server costs by donating. This is totally optional. Any overages will go to library fines or new books.
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.