Cyberdublin In Brief

Imagine a not-too-distant future where world commerce runs from one huge hyperserver: Oodles. Personal computing is only ever online, via wallscreens and podphones that connect to the all-powerful hub’s applications and data storage.

Not only that: Oodles has bought out television, communications, shopping, banking and social networking, as well as the entire Internet. The economy is digitised and cash has vanished, but in one corner of Ireland the old ways fight to survive.

Enter Rachel, part-time Oodles sysadmin, about to launch into her university career. Her Da, shocked at the sudden Oodles takeover, reveals she’s adopted. Questions plague her. Who are her real parents? Why did they give her up? And why did her Da wait so long to tell her?

Rachel, determined to leave home, rents a big old house near the city. She and her friend Talitha find strangers willing to share it: Bethany, the snarky librarian biker chick; Louise, the fish-and-chips diva with a pregnant tomcat; and Zehrani, the queenly African from the high echelons of Oodles Security.

But all is not rosy in Cyberdublin. Soon after the Oodles takeover, holographic status graphs are introduced to display personal information to the world. Rachel, disgusted by the invasion of privacy, refuses to wear it in public despite her Da’s peculiar liking for the new social technology.

Then there are the ragged religious saboteurs, convinced they can delay the end of the world by destroying the dominance of Oodles. What will Dublin—and the world—look like without the cyber?

Follow Rachel’s search for identity in the midst of global crisis, as the sabotage mystery unfolds with a twist she’d never dare imagine.

With today’s cloud-computing technology, this scenario is possible even now. Cyberdublin will appeal to the Celtic fascination within those of Irish descent and those who wish they were, and serious Web users will find laughs aplenty.

(Light-hearted, pre-apocalyptic social sci-fi)