Sycamore

by Craig a Falconer

[Angie]

Imagine if Google Glass actually became a thing, and then was further developed to be simple contact lenses. Then imagine Amazon and Walmart having a baby. Then that baby teams up with the Google Glass lenses. That would be Sycamore in a nutshell. It's the near future and millions of people wear UltraLenses which sync to their phones and computers. But Kurt has this idea to eliminate the need for additional devices: have your hand become a trackpad! It's genius and innovative and just one of his many improvements. Unfortunately, once this tech is out there, there's no stopping the company from using it for whatever they want.

Sycamore was super cool and intense. The idea of UltraLenses paired up with Kurt's microchip is awesome. All the technology you need is right on your person. He also came up with the idea of having the lenses record your life for later playback. You can relive your first kiss! Prom! Disneyland vacation! Anything! Of course, the Sycamore company who develops his idea takes it to the extreme, as you can imagine. Tracking, targeted advertising, digitized money, virtual plastic surgery! It's madness! This is not what Kurt had in mind, and it was totally twisted how this company was able to make it all seem like good, safe ideas, and avoid responsibility when things go wrong. They're basically like "We don't force people to do X, we just charge them for it!" It's madness.

There were only two things that really kept me from loving Sycamore. The first was that it needed some more editing. At first I thought it was set in the UK because of some of the words used and the punctuation, but then we're told that it's set in America. There's even mentions of VAT, which as far as I know isn't used here. It was just distracting and pulled me out the story when I noticed it. There's no reason that this couldn't have been set somewhere in Europe, but I suppose America is the most obsessed with smart phones and invasive tech.

The second was that there's multiple mentions of needing the UltraLenses for getting into houses, cars, etc and how if Sycamore shuts down your chip, then you're locked out. But not everyone had lenses before Kurt's chip, so therefore not everyone has this kind of tech on their houses and cars, and those same people are probably the ones who didn't buy the chip when it did come out, so they still wouldn't have that tech on their houses and cars. There would have needed to be a complete overhaul on infrastructure and there's no way that happened.

I don't want to give too much away, but Sycamore was a great read. This future feels probable. Much of this stuff already exists, it's just not at the level it's portrayed here. We're living in a time where almost everyone is constantly plugged in, we're constantly be bombarded with ads, being told to buy this and wear that. It's not hard to imagine technology developing this far in the name of progress to the point where we forget what's even real anymore and become wholly dependent on it. Of course, Kurt has to fight the system he accidentally helped create, but that's not until the sequel!

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.