(a review of Cosmic Trigger 1 I posted on Goodreads)

Would give this five but for the outdated predictions. Life extension, increased space travel, a lot of the things haven’t happened yet. But, when I look at what has happened over the past thirty years, it isn’t that surprising. There has been a TREMENDOUS increase in the use and availability of personal technology. People like Elon Musk and Richard Branson are doing good things with regards to space flight. However, a whole lot of the money and research has gone into personal computers -> laptops-> smartphones -> tablets -> smartwatches, Glass, etc. Yes, the internet is a wonderful place and can allow people to connect (to a degree) but to my mind the connections aren’t genuine. Rather than move toward things which could unify us as a world people and possibly realize our common interests, we have managed to come up with more ways to make us more self-involved and things to addict ourselves to. I have had the idea for a while for a scifi story. Basic premise is that the machines are, in fact, taking us over. But they are doing it covertly and by preying on our human weaknesses. They managed to insinuate themselves even more strongly into our lives with the advent of the personal computer (think about the famous Apple 1984 ad – maybe prescient in a different way than intended). In the process of this intrusion into our lives, they manage to interface with us and get into our brains to make us THINK they are more vital to us than they actually are. And make us “need” them more, to do more things. And subsequently convince us that we need to constantly get the latest, greatest, smallest new gizmo out there. This initial entree was so successful that they upped their game and put themselves in our pockets, and upped the ante in terms of how “valuable” and “necessary” they are to us. Their latest strategy is to put themselves directly in front of our eyes at all times, and on our wrists. Of course, this is all leading to the next goal which is to get into our actual bodies. Which they have managed to accomplish to a small degree. The more interaction we have with them, for more hours of our day, the more of our consciousness they take over as they manage to convince us they are so important to us that we should allow them even more free reign. They manage to manipulate and persuade us to allow them even more control over our lives, and that the avenues for connection are more important than genuine connection. We don’t need things like consciousness expanding substances or techniques which might encourage us to have genuine connection with other humans, the beings on this earth and the earh and universe itself. No, we just need them to attain the simulacrum of happiness they offer. It’s all virtual anyway, right?