cc'ing @emollick and @ryancarson: 20 years later, "Air" by @geoffryman feels surprisingly more urgent and nuanced in explaining the before and after of the global AI rollout.
Air is the story of a town's fashion expert Chung Mae, a smart but illiterate peasant woman in a small village in the fictional country of Karzistan (loosely based on the country of Kazakhstan), and her suddenly leading role in reaction to dramatic, worldwide experiments with a new information technology called Air.
Air is information exchange, not unlike the Internet, that occurs in everyone's brain and is intended to connect the world. After a test of Air is imposed on Mae's unprepared mountain town, everyone and everything changes, especially Mae who was deeper into Air than any other person.
Afterwards, Mae struggles to prepare her people for what is to come while learning all about the world outside her home.
PS: @geoffryman – I'm currently re-reading your book and just wanted to say:
Wow. Air is even better than I remembered. On pretty much every level: Story, characters, momentum, unexpected segways and new horizons. It's a really, really good book.
