In Other Words
The Glitch by Elisabeth Cohen
“Analog technology” is how Shelley Stone might describe the print version of the novel she narrates,
The Glitch, by Elisabeth Cohen. She might be okay with the e-book, though she would probably prefer the audiobook. If only it had haptics.
Shelley is the sleep-deprived, excessively scheduled, Type A++ CEO of the Silicon Valley wearables company Conch, which produces a small device that, when placed just behind the ear, tells you everything you ever wanted to know. It covers the now-basics we’ve grown accustomed to checking on our smartphones — GPS, the weather — but it also gets more involved in your life, asking you questions (“Going for a drive?”), letting you know whom you’re speaking with (“Say hello to Shelley Stone”), and using vibration patterns to check in with you. “Our vision for the product is that someday it will be an assistant and a better self, all rolled into one,” Shelley says. “It’s an amazing way to optimize your experience in the world,” she explains; she is a self-described “digital evangelist.”
The problem is that when we lean too heavily on another entity, be it sentient or digital, our decision-making can get a little shaky. (Do you use a maps app, and if so, can you still remember how to get places on your own?) “Not having to make decisions is very satisfying,” a Conch customer service rep notes during a discussion of some troubling reports about Conch users. They’re taking their “actionable” guidance a bit too literally, and some Conches seem to be going off-script, or rather, off-code.
The novel’s titular glitch may be the Conch product peculiarities, or it may be something else entirely. Shortly after giving a motivational speech to women entrepreneurs in Barcelona, Shelley runs into a young woman who looks curiously recognizable. The woman, Michelle (Shelley’s given name), resembles Shelley 20 years prior, and she knows things from Shelley’s past that no one else could. She sleeps frequently and eats carbs.
The plot of uncontrollable forces striking the most orderly among us is nothing new; neither is Silicon Valley satire. (Nor, for that matter, is Silicon Valley’s seeming selfsatire — remember that $400 juicer startup?) That doesn’t make either any less smart and surprising in Cohen’s debut novel, which mordantly bites the tech that newsfeeds us. Sure, there are some obvious shots at easy targets: venture capitalist nerd-bros, marketing yoginis, everyone in tech who uses language like “decisionable” and “incentivize the millennials.” Shelley herself could be an easy target. In the novel’s opening scene, while on theoretical vacation with her husband and two young children in France, she stays on a call, even though her daughter Nova — as in “innovate” — has gone missing.
Shelley is the sleep-deprived, excessively scheduled, type A++ CEO of the Silicon Valley wearables company Conch, which produces a small device that, when placed just behind the ear, tells you everything you ever wanted to know.
But instead, she is a nuanced character, with a psychology that is both remote to those of us who don’t think of children as having motherboards or partnerships as having compression algorithms — and, somewhat remarkably, accessible. There are roots to her intensity, most notably a lightning strike half her life ago, which she credits for her reinvention from aimless Wisconsin kid to Silicon Valley boss: Michelle Stone 2.0. Reinvention is another plot point that can’t be said to be original, but when mixed with a possible younger avatar and video technology that shows Shelley doing things she’s never done, the result is certainly a unique AI Age kind of identity crisis. How she handles it is a joy to discover. She, unlike the Conch wearers who unthinkingly do as they’re told, is in control.