"Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore"

A book about our relationship with books

If Robin Sloan had asked me to write a person-quoted-on-cover blurb for "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" I'd probably have sent in something like:

"A highly enjoyable typesetting mystery romp!" —Paul Hively

No hard feelings for going with George Saunders's blurb instead.

Upon reflection, I think what the novel suggests about our relationship with books and technology is every bit as interesting as its plot. A bookstore that stays in business without customers; secret codes; missing artifacts; strange cultists; these may be fun, but anxiety over technology's role in transforming society is timely.

The book's central tension is ultimately between the Old Ways and Newfangled Methods. What's lost when computers can solve in seconds problems that took our learned ancestors years or decades? When books are replaced by summaries which are replaced in turn by metadata? Is there such a thing as wisdom without work?

The journey on which Sloan takes his readers is fun and the denouement satisfying, but I would have liked to see him spend more time resolving these questions. In fact, I think his portrayal of technology points us in the wrong direction. When Sloan's protagonist Clay encounters an obstacle, the solution is typically a clever device or a couple hours of computer coding away. The ones who create the devices and write the code are portrayed as geniuses, techno-wizards uncovering truth with a keystroke here and a cleverly-initialized algorithm there.

As a statistics/machine learning practitioner, I do see this attitude in the real world. Aspiration and credulity exceed grounded curiosity, and businesses take note. These days, there's so much money in the tech sector that a lot of companies appear to be reinventing the wheel, so to speak. The products and techniques may be different, but the cycle is the same: new solutions are hyped, promises are made, measuring outcomes proves elusive.

I worry that this is harmful. We all have a stake in the data and analytics methods that increasingly impact our lives. If they're to reflect society's priorities, we need to understand that there is no one true answer waiting to be discovered. At some point, a decision is made: what's the goal, the objective function, prediction or explanation, neural networks or regression or trees or....

These are choices, not magic, and people outside tech should have an awareness of (and a say in) these high-level decisions too.

One more thought before I end: are paperbacks and hardcovers doomed? I don't believe technology will obsolesce books, or at least the concept of books, combining as they do knowledge, artistry, and an expression of their owners' values. It's certainly possible that some electronic form will eventually become dominant, but for that to happen, those techie types do need to stop reinventing the wheel:

A characteristically on-point XKCD comic

My highly subjective rating: "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" is, well, a highly enjoyable typesetting mystery romp. Recommended for those intrigued by mystery with a dash of futurism. Just do be aware that the portrayal of programming and analytics is closer to science fiction than to fact.