Rainbows End

Wanna know what the hi-tech future might be like in a city you’re familiar with? That’s the feeling I got reading Hugo award winner Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. The novel was published back in 2006, i.e., most of it was likely written in the preceding years. The novel is set in 2025, so reading it in 2017 is particularly interesting. While I don’t think we will reach the portrayed tech levels in 2025, the novel feels prescient and realistic of what it might be like to live in the not-so-distant future. Rainbows End feels real. It is neither dystopian nor utopian, and there is no pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow.

Wearable technology has become ubiquitous. While keypads are still available for novices, expert users employ physical bodily motions to adjust the view overlays through their contact lenses. Data abounds. Do you want to know more about the plants that you’re walking by? There’s an (overlay) app for that. How about information about someone near you? Sure thing (with varying privacy controls, of course). Or does the world seem drab to you, and you’d rather live and breathe in your own fantasy-land? Yes, you can physically immerse yourself in (a digitally-enhanced) World of Warcraft. (A visual example are the Big Market scenes in Luc Besson’s recent Valerian movie.)

Global interconnectivity at lightning speed and super-broad bandwidth allow thousands, millions, billions of users to fashion the world around them via digital enhancement. No need to look at your cellphone screen to hunt for elusive Pokemon created by a gaming corporation, because user-generated crowd-sourced collaborative content pervades the ether. The new Gods of Entertainment are sustained by enthusiasts via ‘belief circles’. And when these factions clash for supremacy, a mash-up of genres is inevitable. A battle might ensue between knights of the Renaissance Faire and My Little Pony & Friends. You can bet that bookies are hard at work taking real-time bets with real-time odds.

For governments, corporations and their shadowy counterparts, Data Analysis is king. The ubiquitous job of the future? Data Analyst. Supported by varying levels of Artificial Intelligence, of course. With the power of global high-speed interconnectivity comes the possibility of catastrophic chaos. Will a terrorist threat go global in the blink of an eye? In Rainbows End, the moving of analytic resources by ‘leaders’ seeking to neutralize threats resembles an insect swarm. Diffuse, yet focused. Global fireflies conducting a merry dance through wire and air.

The action is set in San Diego, and reaches its zenith at UCSD. I am familiar with the campus, having spent time there first as a postdoc and later as a sabbatical visitor. The author, formerly a math and computer-science professor at neighboring SDSU, is very familiar with the environs. In 2025, he imagines high-security high-level biotech facilities dotting the area around UCSD. His description of the geography is spot-on. As I followed characters in the story walking through campus, treading dead eucalyptus leaves underfoot or winding along the snake-path, I could imagine being there.

Appropriately, the iconic Geisel Library with its otherworldly architecture, is an important part of the story. (The snow fortress in Inception could be an overlay of the Geisel library; see comparative figure from Uproxx above.) In one thread of the narrative, book digitization is proceeding apace with a method akin to shotgun genome sequencing. What should the library of the future look like? How should information be arranged, accessed, enhanced, embellished, and brought alive to future generations? What would Theodore Geisel, Dr. Seuss himself, think of the digitally enhanced creatures that resemble those in his stories? Could not, would not, there be a Seuss belief circle powered by green eggs and ham? As digital titans clash over the control and flow of information, should the Library decide the victor? How would it decide? (Read the book to find out!)

What does education look like in this new world? For me that was one of the most interesting threads of the story. What are the skills prized by the future? What would schools teach? How do the arts mesh with the science? Can you take a crash-course Matrix-upload style? How do students collaborate on projects and how would teachers grade them? Will the divide deepen between the haves and the have-nots? What happens to adult workers as their skills become obsolete and they have to re-train? Is there a place for an eminent poet of yesteryear who thanks to medical advances is experiencing a reversal of Alzheimer’s but has missed the rapid upgrades of the digital revolution? That’s the story of Rainbows End. If you would like a glimpse of the future from a master storyteller, this is a science fiction story for the liberal artist. And while it abounds in future-tech, at its heart it is a story of changing relationships and what it still means to be human.