About the Book
A rising star at a preeminent political lobbying firm, Dag Calhoun represents the world’s most powerful technology and energy executives. But when a close brush with death reveals that the influence he wields makes him a target, impossible cracks appear in his perfect, richly appointed life.
Like everyone else, Dag relies on his digital feed for everything—a feed that is as personal as it is pervasive, and may not be as private as it seems. As he struggles to make sense of the dark forces closing in on him, he discovers that activists are hijacking the feed to manipulate markets and governments. Going public would destroy everything he’s worked so hard to build, but it’s not just Dag’s life on the line—a shadow war is coming, one that will secure humanity’s future or doom the planet to climate catastrophe. Ultimately, Dag must decide the price he’s willing to pay to change the world.
About the Author :
Eliot Peper is the author of Cumulus, True Blue, Neon Fever Dream, and The Uncommon Series. His near-future thrillers have been praised by The Verge, Popular Science, Businessweek, io9, and Ars Technica. Eliot is an editor at Scout and an adviser to entrepreneurs and investors. He has helped build various technology businesses, survived dengue fever, translated Virgil's Aeneid from the original Latin, worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture-capital firm, and explored the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Mustang. His writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and the Chicago Review of Books; and he has been a speaker at places such as Google, Qualcomm, Future in Review, and the Conference on World Affairs.
Visit www.eliotpeper.com to get personal reading recommendations from Eliot and learn more about him. He is also active on social media at twitter.com/eliotpeper and facebook.com/eliotpeper.
Review :
"Peper does a fabulous job depicting power and its trappings and giving a sense of super-powerful, super-competent sociopaths...It's a fine science fiction novel that grapples with power, consent, manipulation, equity, duty, and friendship, where no one is entirely irredeemable and even the heroes need redemption." --Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
"Eliot Peper's Bandwidth is a thoughtful meditation on the ethics of power among those who broker it...Peper manages a great deal of complexity without sacrificing clarity or pace, and I read it all in a single fascinated sitting...The depth and vulnerability of Dag's perspective, his loneliness, and the value he places on his few real friendships, kept Bandwidth feeling real and urgent." --The New York Times Book Review
"A very credibly rendered near future...Peper guides his story with a sure hand, lacing its narrative with issues and references that resonate powerfully in the age of net neutrality, algorithms, and social media hacks." --Publishers Weekly
"Peper's fast-moving thriller strikes a good balance between fast action, believable plot, and interesting characters and is worth a look." --Kirkus Reviews
"A riveting novel...combining a thriller plot with a deeper introspection of technology and its effect on our actions and our futures. It's an engaging, electric read, but also one that forces us to confront the state of the world today and our impact as an industry on politics." --TechCrunch
"The techno-thriller novel that we need right now...What does fake news even mean when you can no longer distinguish reality?...Gripping." --Ars Technica
"Our fear of diverging worldviews and loss of privacy provide the foundation for the futuristic political thriller Bandwidth, in which a brain interface keeps humans constantly connected to 'the feed.' Up-and-coming lobbyist Dag Calhoun quickly discovers the feed has a back door that an idealistic group of activists are leveraging to manipulate the behavior of VIPs through suggestive tweaks. When Dag is drawn inside the activist's cadre, he has to come to terms with the ethics behind invasive cognitive nudging. Bandwidth creates a compelling world that reflects on our present reality, skewed as it may be." --Chicago Review of Books
"Technology, not only social media but also the news feeds we consume, changes the ways we look at everything. Good and bad actors manipulate us via that technology in ways that we're only now beginning to appreciate. Bandwidth tells a really good story and illustrates exactly how that happens." --Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
"A smart techno-thriller that plays out the near future of data immersion, the digital divide, and climate change with mind-expanding effectiveness." --Malka Older, author of Infomocracy
"Spectacular near-term science fiction. Game upon game upon game." --Brad Feld, managing director at Foundry Group
"An all-too-plausible thriller of power, morality, and global consequences. What would you do to wield influence? How far would you go to wield it for good? Bandwidth's answers may disturb you." --Ramez Naam, author of Nexus
"Bandwidth blows the lid off today's techno optimists, revealing a thrilling and all-too-realistic future in which the ubiquitous 'feed'--an immersive algorithm used by millions--becomes a tool for high-stakes blackmail, with climate change hanging in the balance. An eye-opening look at how simple, everyday technologies can change our world, one notification at a time." --Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor
