I dug into the ancient vault of Overman scripts this morning and found a page that references computers and compact discs. I made a conscious decision a few years later, during one of the many drafts of The Overman story, that I would make no mention of computers of any kind. While the setting is clearly futuristic science fiction, including some pretty strange technologies, I wanted to approach the story from the angle that there would be no recognizable computer imagery anywhere in the story.
It's reasonable to assume that in 200 years, computers will have evolved so radically beyond what we know today, that they won't even call them computers. This thought connects back to artificial intelligence motif, which has been explored in about a million science fiction stories, and it's nearly unavoidable in science fiction. I believe AI is coming, and it's not even a very startling concept for most people. The Overman was probably once written with that theme as the central focus, but like everything else in the story (well, most everything), the plot twists and turns into something entirely different. I don't think the concept of AI is even that interesting these days. If artificial intelligence is coming, I think the only interesting aspect is wondering how the world will deal with it.
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