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Lucy Liu, Ali Andre Ali, Rebecca Lowman, Jennifer Egan, George Newbern, Timothy Andrés Pabon, Nicole Lewis, Michael Boatman, Danny Campbell, Thomas Sadoski, Colin Donnell, Griffin Newman, Jackie Sanders, Christian Barillas, Tara Lynne Barr, Alex Allwine, Emily Tremaine, Kyle Beltran, Chris Henry Coffey, Corey Brill, Gibson Frazier, Allison Light, Travis Tonn, Dan Bittner: The Candy House (AudiobookFormat, 2022, Simon & Schuster Audio)

audio cd

Published April 5, 2022 by Simon & Schuster Audio.

ISBN:
978-1-7971-2840-5
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4 stars (1 review)

6 editions

Magical realism meets surveillance capitalism

4 stars

Jennifer Egan’s “The Candy House” straddles the line between magical realism and sci-fi—and I am here for it.

Anthropologist Miranda Kane’s 1995 book, “Patterns of Affinity” lays bare exacting formulas for predicting human behavior. She could never have anticipated Bix Bouton seizing on these ideas to expand his surveillance capitalism juggernaut: “Mandala” (the novel’s answer to Meta/Facebook).

Later, in 2010, while fretting about the future of Mandala, Bouton infiltrates a college discussion group of Kline’s work. There he learns of experiments to externalize people’s memories into machines.

Bix uses the research as the inspiration for “Own Your Unconscious”—a way to relive your past (including everything you’d forgotten).

Later, Mandala introduces “The Collective”—a pool of memories users can tap at the cost of releasing their memories for others. The collective is a database searchable by geolocation and time—enter the date and place and watch events unfold through the eyes of any …