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Today is the last day of the blog tour for Memories With Maya. I'm excited to share my review of this book with you all.
Title: Memories With Maya
Author: Clyde Dsouza
Release Date: March 16th 2013
Published By: CreateSpace
Page Amount: 216 pages, Paperback
GoodReads Blurb:
A story of one man's determination to HACK his destiny, even if it meant challenging Divine Providence...
The story looks at how augmentation technology will affect emotions, intimate human relationships, and our very evolution as a species.
"EMOTIONS ARE LIKE A VIRUS, a common cold...disrupting the flow of logic in the mind." Daniel reminds himself.
Dan's work involves creating commercially viable AR solutions. The recession and an explosion of data-cops is drying out his streams of income.
He turns to close friend, Krish, a researcher in Artificial Intelligence, in the hope that they can come up with ideas for the Entertainment market. His girlfriend, Maya, and her family return to their homeland after her father passes away.
Dan and Maya continue their relationship via Dirrogates (Digital Surrogates), experiencing human touch through haptics. Krish gets a job at the prestigious A.I.R.I. Using AIRI's lab, Krish and Dan, create an advanced visor with Augmented Intelligence built in.
They dub it "Wizer". A Board member at AIRI sees potential in the Wizer other than what Dan and Krish have in mind.
At a test in a nightclub, things go wrong...
Can the Wizer "insure memories" and be a catalyst to accelerate the journey toward eventual Singularity?
The (subtle) underlying philosophy in the story is about preparing the common man for our eventual Technological Singularity. If the goals of Transhumanism are to be embraced, they need to be explained to everyday people, in everyday language and using everyday settings. Only then can a road-map for Transhumanism be built.
Memories with Maya also poses the question: Can we transcend the Human Lifecycle?
The plausible science in the story details how AR & AI will merge to create Digital Surrogates in our own likeness - our DIRROGATES.
Review:
Science Fiction is not something that I often read but I've been wanting to get more into it. I think that this was a good Science Fiction story. While I honestly did not understand half - probably more than half - of the techno talk that was fine with me. I was able to get the basic idea of what was going on there, which was enough to let me understand the story.
The main characters are mostly Daniel and Maya. Daniel works with Maya's brother Krish. Daniel and Maya have been having a casual relationship behind her brother's back. It seemed to me that Daniel had some commitment issues. He did not fully commit to Maya until he went to India to work on a project with her brother. Maya is in love with Daniel but is afraid that if she tells him it will scare him off. She tells him once he is in India and then they are fully committed to each other.
Then one night at a night club tragedy strikes. Maya is substantially injured that night. Daniel cannot deal with the grief of losing her and so he creates a Dirrogate of her. This is almost like a Digital copy of Maya in her likeness.
I found it heart breaking that Daniel went to this length to 'get Maya back.' He was so overtaken with grief that he would do anything to have her back in his life. And this was the result. This story raises some interesting questions. Is it even ethical to do such a thing? Is it really the same as having the person that you lost there with you? Can it really make the grief go away? Or make it not as hard to deal with? And the biggest question of all, in my opinion, is this: If you had the opportunity to bring back someone you lost in this way, would you do it?
I do recommend this for its thought provoking story and the questions that it raises. I give Memories With Maya 3.5 stars!
About the Author:
Clyde DeSouza is a Creative Technology Evangelist. He explores technologies such as Augmented Reality, Real-time Game engines and Stereoscopic 3D and their influence on human perception. His non fiction book: "Think in 3D" has been seen on a growing number of film-locations and is used as prep reading by Directors and Cinematographers.
His second book: "Memories With Maya" is a fiction novel in the hard science/tech-noir genre. The story explores the impact Augmented Intelligence will have in human personal relationships and in society.
Twitter: @cly3d
RealVision Knowledgebase: http://www.realvision.ae/blog
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Nice post! :)
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