Near-future close-singularity--amazing medical technology saves a famous poet who discovers that his talent for poetry has been replaced with a talent for science (though he has to enroll in school to learn the basics, where he becomes friends with a kid from the wrong side of the tracks); his son and daughter-in-law work for American military intelligence (their names are Alice and Bob, which are the names in the standard examples of cryptography (Alice wants to send Bob a message, but Eve is eavesdropping, etc., etc.)); and a collection of European and Asian intelligence agents want to track down the source of a mind-control technology using an internet agent that may or may not be an AI.

There are several things about this book that make it great: the vivid imagining of realistic and world-changing technology (I want my wearable computers and augmented reality!); the fascinating pacing of the subplots, none of which is morally simplistic--one of the subplots is about a tech magnate bankrolling a scanning job of UC San Diego's library that involves the destruction of the books and a conspiracy planning to sabotage that effort, and the feuding sub-cultures that want the right to build the libraries new virtual reality.