The Boost

The Boost
By Stephen Baker

Let’s face it, humanity will face a lot of challenges in the twenty-first century, and just to survive the species is going to have to up its game. Enter the boost: a computer chip (made in China, naturally) that’s implanted in the brain so as to link everyone into a nearly universal human network. The good news is that this makes us all a lot smarter. The bad news is that people become so dependent on the guidance of their boost they can no longer tell if they’re hungry or not without a prompt.

Technology has always been a double-edged sword. The hive mind may be a giant cognitive leap for humankind, but it’s also a boon for government surveillance and corporate hegemony. Stephen Baker’s monitory novel is set in the year 2072, just before the release of a new upgrade to the boost. After the discovery of a bug in the software, rogue programmer Ralf Alvare goes “wet brain” in order to figure out who is behind the doctoring of our neo-neural codes, and why.