Containment

by Chris Anderson

"When Simon opened the back door to let out the whining dog at 7:05am on Tuesday, there was a monolith in his backyard. He didn't immediately recognize it as a monolith, since who describes shapes that way? But that's what it was. As far as he was concerned there was just a big black square thing not 30 feet from his back door jutting out of the grass. So he and the golden, whose name was Cody, went out to investigate."

So begins "Containment", which starts as a mystery involving an inexplicable artifact-- which might be a portal to extradimensional aliens -- and then goes deeper as an AI is brought in to communicate with it.

What would happen if the AI claimed to not only understand but speak for the intelligence behind the monolith? Would we believe it? And what if this got out?

99 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 27, 2024

About the author

Chris Anderson was named in April 2007 to the "Time 100," the newsmagazine's list of the 100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world. He is Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine, a position he took in 2001, and he has led the magazine to six National Magazine Award nominations, winning the prestigious top prize for General Excellence in 2005 and 2007. He is the author of the New York Times best-seller The Long Tail, which is based on an influential 2004 article published in Wired, and runs a blog on the subject at www.thelongtail.com. Previously, he was at The Economist, where he served as US Business Editor, Asia Business Editor; and Technology Editor. He started The Economist's Internet coverage in 1994 and directed its initial web strategy. Anderson's media career began at the two premier science journals, Nature and Science, where he served in several editorial capacities. Prior to that he was a physics researcher at the Los Alamos National Lab."