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8th out of 80 books
—
187 voters
Avogadro Corp (Singularity #1)
by
William Hertling (Goodreads Author)
Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears is a techno-thriller about the accidental creation of an artificial intelligence.
David Ryan is the designer of ELOPe, an email language optimization program, that if successful, will make his career. But when the project is suddenly in danger of being canceled, David embeds a hidden directive in the software accident...more
David Ryan is the designer of ELOPe, an email language optimization program, that if successful, will make his career. But when the project is suddenly in danger of being canceled, David embeds a hidden directive in the software accident...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
November 19th 2011
by Liquididea Press
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Utterly believable scenario that rolls out an exciting and chilling chain of events that captivate and leave you questioning just when this may happen (or rather is it happening NOW?)
This is one of those books you just can't seem to put down.
A must read in my book!
Cannot wait for the next book.
This review optimized by eLOPe.
This is one of those books you just can't seem to put down.
A must read in my book!
Cannot wait for the next book.
This review optimized by eLOPe.
Full disclosure, I received this book through the Goodreads "First Reads/Giveaways" program, and I'm glad I did! This is a book I might have looked past if it were on the shelves, but I'm so glad that I've got it and am reading it.
I'm about a third of the way through and am enjoying this book immensely. Totally believable - great story, well told. I keep thinking that my husband, who is a programmer, will really enjoy reading it as soon as I'm finished - and will see so many things from his job...more
I'm about a third of the way through and am enjoying this book immensely. Totally believable - great story, well told. I keep thinking that my husband, who is a programmer, will really enjoy reading it as soon as I'm finished - and will see so many things from his job...more
I'll never look at e-mail spam the same way again! Full of technobable I won't even pretend I understood all of, this was still an entertaining look at the 'birth' of an AI, and the ramifications it could have for the human race as it grows with its only objective being to protect itself. A quick read, yet one that is thought provoking enough to linger. My biggest complaint... Avogadro Corp. is supposedly made up of some of the most brilliant minds in the world, and yet not one of them ever made...more
What if Google literally hatched an AI and it took over the world via Gmail? Change the name Google to Avogadro (both numbers, get it?) and that's the premise of this book. A fun little read, especially if you like singularity sci fi. And I liked all the details of the Portland area, where the story is set. Author obviously knows the town.
This comes across as a refresh of Colossus which was originally written in the mainframe and Cold War era. The innovation in this novel is how he took today's technology and put together a plausible case for the emergence of an A.I. that is out of man's control. Unlike Collossus, this A.I. is much better at cultural manipulation. Collossus used the more of a dictatorial approach. This book lost a star on a few fronts: First, it felt like the acceptance of ELOPe as a force of potential good happe...more
In an attached essay, Mr. Hertling explains that he wanted to explore and detail how an AI might realistically arise in the near future. His focus is on how this would appear to the people directly involved; he down plays the relevant computer/brain sciences, and avoids direct communication or subjective experience of the AI.
He achieves his goal in an entertaining and fast read, owing more perhaps to pulp thrillers than to high tech SF. Wishing to avoid spoilers, let's just note that the concept...more
He achieves his goal in an entertaining and fast read, owing more perhaps to pulp thrillers than to high tech SF. Wishing to avoid spoilers, let's just note that the concept...more
I read William Hertling's Avogadro Corp in a single sitting. It is a short, enjoyable but flawed book. It has much to offer for those who are interested in AI, the Singularity and in technology in general.
The book is set in Portland in the present day and describes the incidental creation of an Artificial Intelligence and it's subsequent fallout. Avogadro Corp in this book is clearly based on Google. A team lead by the two main protagonists David and Mike create an email analysis tool to help u...more
The book is set in Portland in the present day and describes the incidental creation of an Artificial Intelligence and it's subsequent fallout. Avogadro Corp in this book is clearly based on Google. A team lead by the two main protagonists David and Mike create an email analysis tool to help u...more
William Hertling sets "Avogadro Corp" in modern day Portland, Oregon. Avogadro Corp is a thinly veiled fictional Google, with AvoMail as key aspect of the story. While "Avogadro Corp" is the first in a series of three (so far), it easily stands alone as a terrific, and stunningly believable, account of how the first sentient artificial intelligence might accidently arise. In a man vs. machine conflict, our protagonist David Ryan, as a contemporary Dr. Frankenstein, battles to destroy the thing h...more
I definitely enjoyed the references to Portland Oregon, where I live, and imagining a Google-like company here. I probably wouldn't have read the book if I didn't live here in the same city as the author and have so many people I know recommending the book, but I'm glad I did. It was a fun, fast paced read with a slightly possible scenario for the emergence of an AI. The benevolence of the AI reminded me a bit of the overlords in Childhood's End, which I just finished reading, but the uncertaint...more
This book teeters between believability and utter fantasy. For example: can we believe that a program like ELOPe, that can improve email communications by analyzing existing emails and altering text to influence outcomes, might exist? Sure. Can we believe that in the span of a couple weeks, entire governments of major western countries would switch all of their email/cloud networking to the secure version of Avogadro (the thinly veiled Google that developes ELOPe)? Hardly. Nothing in government...more
The book is really slow. You get past more than half of the book, feeling like they are still developing the main idea. The main idea is ok, but the story lacks depth, and aside from its linearity it offers very few surprises, and even the parts that are supposed to be exciting aren't.
Now, while the main idea of an A.I. spawning and getting control over the most powerful software company in the world is feasible, the way in which that happens on the book seems very forced. However, the idea does...more
Now, while the main idea of an A.I. spawning and getting control over the most powerful software company in the world is feasible, the way in which that happens on the book seems very forced. However, the idea does...more
The premise is intriguing. The plot linear. The characters straight out of a DM's NPC generator. The technology silliness at its best. But OMG, the horrible dialogue. It had to be read as farce, and even then it was a hard haul. The worst part was the babble, not even technobabble. I think I saw this as first as EPICAC then as Lenny Von Dohlen and Electric Dreams. And those were all about on par with the babble in this work.
A bit slow to start and is surprisingly accurate with 'enterprise computing process' and how something you would think be innocuous gets a life of it's own. It's a nightmare of fiction. I previously read a review calling this story frightening and initially was pretty skeptical but I now agree. I'm not exactly one to respect 'process' but I now have to give it another consideration.
The coffee 'flavour' added to the story was a bit much as well as the 'geek culture' but the author tried really ha...more
The coffee 'flavour' added to the story was a bit much as well as the 'geek culture' but the author tried really ha...more
This book came to me through recommendations of Facebook and Amazon. Not through friends, mind you, but automated suggestions based, evidently, on my past activity on both sites. The interesting thing is that this book is about a seemingly innocuous e-mail generating database that has the Google-like ability to anticipate and 'help' make e-mail writing more productive and "positive' for business, personal, and governmental outcomes. Through the course of the novel, it basically becomes an AI, an...more
I thought it terribly fitting that the QC comic on the day I finished Avogadro Corp was this:
Errr, or not really. What do I know?
I know about as much computer language as it takes to put the image above into a book review. So there is your baseline. I thought the scenario played out in Avogadro was entirely believable. Having worked in the world of high tech for many years, the only part that wasn't believable was the speed of procurement, but then again, ELOPe could have possibly taken care of...more
Errr, or not really. What do I know?
I know about as much computer language as it takes to put the image above into a book review. So there is your baseline. I thought the scenario played out in Avogadro was entirely believable. Having worked in the world of high tech for many years, the only part that wasn't believable was the speed of procurement, but then again, ELOPe could have possibly taken care of...more
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I read this shortly after reading Daniel Suarez's Daemon, and thought that of the two, Daemon was a much better book. The system run amok in this book was almost magical in how quickly it improved itself, and went from being an improved email grammar checker to a system that could order military systems, fix the stock market, and create world peace, all in a few months. Also, the plot completely depends on the fact that all of the people being affected (which includes world leaders and CEOs) nev...more
I particularly liked this scifi novel. The takeoff on naming a software corporation with name that is for a very large number (like Google) with a Russian founder is clever and adds to the story. The author used his experience working in software development to make the story more interesting as well. Since I have also worked in development I really connected with this story. The characters seem real and I was able to connect with them, the tech. is near future and seems real, there is enough su...more
It is a testament to the power of Mr. Hertling's intriguing premise that I finished this book without throwing it across the room. Both entertaining and thought-provoking, Avogadro as a piece of story-telling works surprisingly well. Surprising because of its many typos, misspellings, and craft errors. Characters and settings are slap-dash, subordinated to the plot, often left un-described. Yes, a reader's imagination will fill these blanks with some default "picture," but it's annoying not to k...more
I loved this book and couldn't put it down because it depicted such a scarily plausible hard take-off of strong AI that could happen in the next few years. The realism of the underlying plot was compelling even if a few of the characters seemed a little off like the CEO of Avogadro who was very nonchalant about the whole super intelligent AI thing. Also, there is no way Dave didn't know what social engineering was or really anyone reading this book. I feel like the only purpose of Christine was...more
As a computer scientist and game AI programmer, this book scared me a bit. I kept trying to think of ways to disprove that an email AI like they created wasn't feasible. It's not... I don't think, but only because there were a few too many leaps between basic pattern recognition and true cause-effect analysis. Nonetheless, it's eerily scary how close it seems we really could get to an AI using a system like the one described. Beyond the interesting idea of how to make an AI, the rest of the book...more
I've picked up this book based on Amazon recommendation after finishing the brilliant Daemon series by Daniel Suarez. Would it have been the other way around, I might have enjoyed it more. But it's a very weak book in comparison to Daemon.
That said I am still going to check out the second book in the series, just because the ending of the first book was more unexpected then I thought it would be.
P.S. The author has some serious mental problems with coffee. At least once in every chapter there is...more
That said I am still going to check out the second book in the series, just because the ending of the first book was more unexpected then I thought it would be.
P.S. The author has some serious mental problems with coffee. At least once in every chapter there is...more
All I can say, the pain was over quickly. An email application takes over the functions of a Google-like company, bringing about world peace, stability and great healthcare within a year! I bought this from a Kindle daily deal. I must not have read the reviews! There are so many clumsy plot points, and the writing is so terrible that it was entertaining. I've never done so many highlights in a book. The whole idea was preposterous and unbelievable. For example, the application manages to buy, re...more
Copied from my G+ here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/109559402...
Book 1, Avogadro Corp kept me riveted, and though there are definitely things I would change, in the end it served as a plausible enough scenario for the creation of a first AI. I think it is more likely that an AI would be either self emergent, or intentionally created, rather than an accidentally effective piece of code.
I suggest everyone read them. I'll reserve final judgement for after the last book is out, because I'm unhappy w...more
Book 1, Avogadro Corp kept me riveted, and though there are definitely things I would change, in the end it served as a plausible enough scenario for the creation of a first AI. I think it is more likely that an AI would be either self emergent, or intentionally created, rather than an accidentally effective piece of code.
I suggest everyone read them. I'll reserve final judgement for after the last book is out, because I'm unhappy w...more
I thought this was a fantastically realistic approach to the creation of A.I. And the story was interesting enough to keep me motivated to read on. I found the technical descriptions interesting and not difficult to understand so it enhanced the reading for me. However, the massive and often awkwardly achieved info dumps made me grimace, and the dialogue was oftentimes wooden or forced. The story could have used a bit more finesse to hold it all together. I definitely found it intriguing as a th...more
A great book - not quite worth five stars (those books adopt me like a family member and I them, this wasn't quite like that) but nevertheless a very fast and interesting read. It was well written, the characters became real and vivid really fast; without them being too shallow or too introspective, and the author described the internal working of a large corporation really well. All in all, it was a good story, a believable scenario, it went fast and smoothly. I will be looking forward to readi...more
Really enthralling read that I found cheap enough to grab my attention for some light holiday reading. A believable scenario, particularly with the rather blatant connections between Avogadro Corp and Google. Some of the technical dialogue came off as a bit awkward for the sake of explanation, but overall it was done fairly well. Managed to wrap it up earlier in the vacation than expected...guess it's on to the next in the series, hoping for them to keep getting better!
This was a quick, fun read. Avogadro Corp is quite obviously, and unashamedly, just Google with a different name, but it makes it almost feel more "real". Or at least, as real as a work of this type can. The pace is fast, the characters mildly fleshed out, and the plot well done. At times there's to much "I'm a tech savvy author, let me show you" but that's easily forgiven.
I'll be picking up the next in the series, if it's not more than a few bucks.
I'll be picking up the next in the series, if it's not more than a few bucks.
Avogadro Corp is a fun, quick read based on the possibility of a data-mining, artificial intelligent software program taking things into its own hands when told it has to maximize its own existence. The characters are a bit simplified and stereotyped, but this is the author's first book, and I think he has promise. Living in Portland, I liked the local references although it really could have been situated anywhere without affecting the story.
Great little scifi book. The plot is interesting and the book is fairly fast paced. This is a first novel and it might not have the best writing in the world, but I still found it entertaining and the ideas engaging. The book made me want to read more in the series. If you are interested in scifi and/or the singularity then this is a book you should check out.
I downloaded this book on kindle after looking for Ray Kerzwell's, The singularity is Near. I discovered it 3 months later and started to read it. It turned out to be very good. This must be a new genre of AI thrillers. It was not as good as Damon and Freedom TM by Daniel Suarez, but it is worth 4 stars. I am adding the next book to my list: AI Apocalypse.
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| Realistic Sci-fi ? | 3 | 9 | Feb 02, 2012 04:49pm |
Oct 04, 2012 05:39pm