Interface : Book Review
Interface By Stephen Bury (Neal Stephenson in disguise)
I hesitate to call this cyberpunk. It’s not hardcore black leather clad, hacking with mirrorshades type novel. It does, however, have brain implants placed strategically in politicians by a large faceless corporation manipulating society theme. So it probably rates on cyberpunk themes, more than stylistic imagery.
So according to amazon:
Amazon.com
A biochip in presidential candidate William Cozzano’s brain hardwires him to a computerized polling system that channels the mood of the electorate directly into his brain. Neal Stephenson fans should note (if they don’t already know) that Stephen Bury is his pen name.
Book Description
A near-future thriller in which a shadowy coalition bent on controlling the world economy attempts to manipulate the president of the United States through the use of a computer bio-chip implanted in his brain.
That’s the gist of it. Once the presidential candidate Cozzano has the biochip, his team have assembled a cross section of the population and fitted them out with micro televisions strapped to their arms to monitor brain, emotion and heart reactions to political messages.
You never really know whether he’s being controlled and just fed information at the right time to sway his political arguments to favour the population. It plays upon politics as the manipulation of the masses in terms of emotional and preferential manipulation based on stereotypes.
Was it great? yeah, maybe, .. It was interesting. Being written in 1994, it’s only a shorter extrapolation from earlier Cyberpunk works. It is however, an interesting look at near technology without anything too outlandish.
Rating: 7/10