Galactic Bus Driver
Unrepentant Book Junkie
Since I'm waiting for used book store book finders and interlibrary loan personnel to find out if my last book search was answered or not...
I've got another I'm trying to find. This one was most likely published in the late nineties. It's main themes were virtual reality and machine sentience.
Some details:
The group that builds the evil computer are thrilled when it wins a chess competition against a grand master despite using an opening that is almost universally defeated by grand masters. I don't remember if that computer is the one that becomes the evil computer/antagonist or an earlier design.
The chess computer manages to learn new ways of playing without being programmed for learning.
The main protagonist and his friends enter a virtual reality gaming world where the reality is dialed up to 11. You can pick up/interact with anything, not just the things that are part of the story arc.
Once the program "escapes" into the internet, the main protagonist realizes that 666.666.666.666 could be mapped as a URL just like any .com address despite it not being a functional dotted quad/IP address.
Overexposure to the virtual worlds can cause nerve damage due to the speed of information flow being too high for human nerves. Meds and physical cooling can mitigate the affects.
I'm seem to remeber that either Cyber- or Virtual were in the title, but considering the plethora of books written on these themes, I can't be certain.
I've got another I'm trying to find. This one was most likely published in the late nineties. It's main themes were virtual reality and machine sentience.
Some details:
The group that builds the evil computer are thrilled when it wins a chess competition against a grand master despite using an opening that is almost universally defeated by grand masters. I don't remember if that computer is the one that becomes the evil computer/antagonist or an earlier design.
The chess computer manages to learn new ways of playing without being programmed for learning.
The main protagonist and his friends enter a virtual reality gaming world where the reality is dialed up to 11. You can pick up/interact with anything, not just the things that are part of the story arc.
Once the program "escapes" into the internet, the main protagonist realizes that 666.666.666.666 could be mapped as a URL just like any .com address despite it not being a functional dotted quad/IP address.
Overexposure to the virtual worlds can cause nerve damage due to the speed of information flow being too high for human nerves. Meds and physical cooling can mitigate the affects.
I'm seem to remeber that either Cyber- or Virtual were in the title, but considering the plethora of books written on these themes, I can't be certain.
