Infomocracy

“Do you know why they set the elections ten years apart? So that there would be time for governing in between bouts of politics.”
“It doesn't work.”
“I know.”

An interesting read in the middle of this political bonanza we currently have. I kept waiting for some great insight into what is happening while reading, but was content with the fact that government will never work. Problems are solved with people on the local level. OK, so that last part was my political bias, but it works. Wish it were a stand-alone, but I'll pull the next one off the shelf in 2017.

Infomocracy started out making me think there would be a lot to this book. There were a lot of characters, futuristic political ideas being introduced, and a cyberpunk sense of the setting. However most of the book I was left wondering where the plot was or when events would be introduced that would cause things to get more exciting. I thought this might be because it was a trilogy so there would be a lot of build up in the first book to a long conflict in the later two. This did not seem the case as it appears this could be a standalone and didn't seem like it was setup for a sequel which left me a little confused. I will probably still read the next book in the trilogy to at least see if something is going to carry over.

Overall an average read.

(the narrator on the audiobook was excellent though!)

I bought this when it was pretty new and didn't get around to it.

I finally did. I really liked it! It takes place during an election in a world wide (almost) micro-democracy. There are rumors of someone trying to sabotage the election, and then all sorts of things go wrong.

It was exciting and interesting and I liked many of the characters: Ken, Mishima, Roz... I'm definitely reading parts 2 & 3.

Kind of fun. Felt a lot like Snowcrash early on, but went much more toward politics than tech and action. The characters weren't very fully developed and the whole thing felt kind of light. But I appreciated that so much of the world was insinuated rather than spelled out. If there were a sequel (the plot was fully realized but I could see more here), I'd probably pick it up.

There was definitely some interesting things in there but too few spread over too many pages made it a slow take

It's a rare second read, and a first listen, for me of this novel. It's wonky and it takes a while for the action to pick up. The world building gets into the weeds with the various governments, plots and motives. Fortunately, there's only a few key characters to follow, so the plot does mostly flow. As we in the U.S. approach a presidential election all about the future of democracy, this future-set world where democracy has an intriguing shape (each geographical block of 100K people votes for its own government,) offers insights into the importance of the freedom to vote and also the constant challenges of doing so. I think I'll continue in this fictional world through the next two books as it will provide a commentary on and a distraction from the mess the U.S. democracy finds itself in 2024.