{"id":14724,"date":"2017-11-11T15:00:27","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T14:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/2017\/11\/11\/nick-harkaway-i-have-a-firework-going-off-in-my-head-and-i-have-to-describe-it\/"},"modified":"2017-11-11T15:00:27","modified_gmt":"2017-11-11T14:00:27","slug":"nick-harkaway-i-have-a-firework-going-off-in-my-head-and-i-have-to-describe-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/?p=14724","title":{"rendered":"Nick Harkaway: \u2018I have a firework going off in my head and I have to describe it\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The novelist on technology, surveillance and having John le Carr\u00e9 for a father\u2018If everybody was incredibly committed to acts of kindness and charity in a ubiquitous circle of love and whatever,\u201d Nick Harkaway waves his hands as the words come tumbling out, \u201cwe\u2019d be living in a utopia now. People would walk out into the street and make sure their neighbours are OK, the way they do after earthquakes.\u201d He stops, looks around the light study at the top of his house in Belsize Park, north London, and tries to work out how he\u2019s got from the all-seeing surveillance at the heart of his latest novel to historical materialism. \u201cI\u2019ve strayed again \u2026 what was the question?\u201dThe breakneck whirl of Harkaway\u2019s conversation is a bit like his fiction, ideas fizzing off in every direction as it hurtles along. His fourth novel, Gnomon, is no exception, with his near-future detective embarking on an investigation that races through privacy, encryption, alchemy, a sociopathic post-human intelligence and Bach\u2019s Musical Offering. A woman living in defiance of a regime built on constant connection is called in for questioning. When the interrogation goes wrong, an inspector dives into the memory files extracted from her brain and finds herself submerged in a series of other minds, leading her to question the foundations of the surveillance state. Continue reading…
\nVia: Nick Harkaway: \u2018I have a firework going off in my head and I have to describe it\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The novelist on technology, surveillance and having John le Carr\u00e9 for a father\u2018If everybody was incredibly committed to acts of kindness and charity in a ubiquitous circle of love and whatever,\u201d Nick Harkaway waves his hands as the words come tumbling out, \u201cwe\u2019d be living in a utopia now. People […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}