Starts out with one of the coolest perspective on education that I have ever seen, and then flings itself full speed into the crapper. Full of interesting technological and philosophic ideas, but character development is completely irrelevant and missing. This is a prime example of what happens when you get genus level techno-nerds trying to write literature. The authors seem to missed the whole point that good Science Fiction consists of dropping a little bit of 'magic' into the would, stirring it a bit and observing what happens to the characters and society that it touches. Instead the authors got it completely backwards and blast massive amounts of provocative techno-babble at the reader leaving character development as a complete after thought.