"This is the story of Olga, a retired mathematician, and Mateo, a college student passionate about robotics, and their attempt to influence Google. They meet to ponder ideas such as free will, merit, and the possibility of synthetic humans, and together they craft an extremely unorthodox job application, a direct appeal to a seemingly all-powerful corporation. Tension grows as their relationship becomes strained due to ideological differences, and while Olga confronts a terminal illness, Mateo plans an attack on Google. Author Belén Gopeguí has been compared to Cervantes, Nabokov and Borges. Here, she offers a literary equivalent of My Dinner with Andre, creating a hermetic, compelling world in which two characters engage in an extended conversation about the rights, roles, and obligations of humans whose choices are determined by algorithms and surveillance. As Olga and Mateo examine the possibility of what it might take to confront something as all-prevailing as Google, they ask the most basic and important of questions: What could we be, what could we build, right now, if we used our resources in different ways?"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.