Just after I put the Mnikr final paper on the Internet, a man named Lee Konstantinou emailed me. He liked the Mnikr work I’d done, he said, and he’d written a book about the next logical step: if Identities have shareholders, then surely Identities should have boards of directors composed of shareholders, right? And if they have those, then shouldn’t the board be able to take steps to protect their investments?
It’s a neat– if terrifying– addition to the Mnikr premise, and the book is a really fun post-cyberpunk novel called Pop Apocalypse. I read it on my iPhone Kindle– the first book I’d read on there, but certainly not the last, as I love the convenience of being able to read even if I haven’t thought to bringing a book along– I always have my iPhone.
The book came out just as I finished the Mnikr thesis, and it’s a fantastic first novel– and more than that, I think it’s great that people outside CS and the technical community are thinking about context-free reputation, privacy, and coalesced identities. Kudos to Lee on his first novel!