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Indexed: The end of social media
Hallvard looked around the garage, somewhat in surprise of how empty it still was, there should be other cars at this hour. Then Hallvard noticed the total silence. Not just where he stood, but the entire city seemed to be in a deep sleep. No cars, no bikes, no planes in the air. Nothing. Nothing at all. What was going on?
There was no warning to the people of the world. Using your phone to tune in to limitless information seems so easy. You have more friends on your friends list than you could ever meet in person. There is no moment in the day that you have nothing to do. Always a new message, a status update or a funny movie. But what makes this all possible? What systems control the content you watch? Which systems know what you will be reading? Just imagine what will happen if these systems get stronger, much stronger. What if those systems control everything, control even you. What if your trusty phone is no longer your friend. But your mortal enemy?
Learn to survive in a new world. One without a like button.
Good luck, you will need it.
There was no warning to the people of the world. Using your phone to tune in to limitless information seems so easy. You have more friends on your friends list than you could ever meet in person. There is no moment in the day that you have nothing to do. Always a new message, a status update or a funny movie. But what makes this all possible? What systems control the content you watch? Which systems know what you will be reading? Just imagine what will happen if these systems get stronger, much stronger. What if those systems control everything, control even you. What if your trusty phone is no longer your friend. But your mortal enemy?
Learn to survive in a new world. One without a like button.
Good luck, you will need it.
276 pages, Paperback
Published October 25, 2015
2 people are currently reading
656 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 14, 2017
Just finished reading “Indexed: The End of Social Media” by Wim Verveen. I try to as honest as I can when I do my reviews, and usually can find some redeeming quality to say about a book, and that it was worth the time and effort. In this case I’m afraid I cannot do that. I have a rule that if I start a book I will finish it no matter how I feel about it. There are times that halfway through a book that I was having a hard time understanding that the story came together and I was glad I hung with it and it ended up being one of the better books I’ve read. One of the best things about this book was that at the beginning of each chapter there was a quote from another author, world leader, educator or officials. I understand that fiction is fiction and fantasy is fantasy, but I must believe what I’m reading to some degree. If I cannot imagine it in my own mind it’s just a lost cause. The story line was convoluted, confusing and rambling. In the first 50 pages we are introduced to Hallvard, Valda, Arkin, Erar, Egil, Alfhild, Marit, Liv, Freya, Andun and a few other less memorable characters. I understand the author is from The Netherlands, and that these names may be indigenous to that part of the world, but for me it made it even more difficult to understand who these characters were and what their roles in the book were. Throw into that mix sexual scenes that made little to no sense in the storyline and quite frankly were embarrassing to read. I do not know anyone in my life that talks like these characters talk. The dialogue was nonsensical and amateurish! When I came to these sections in the book I was able to skim across them and at times just not read that part of the book as it had nothing to do with the plot, story or anything else. I wish I could tell you what this book was about, but I can’t. I’m still wondering what I just read and why! Sorry, but this was a complete waste of time for me at least. I will still stick to my self imposed rule to finish a book I started in hopes of finding something that makes it worthwhile even though this book made me question that rule. I was hopeful and found the premise interesting and thought I would enjoy the read, but alas that was not to be.
Synopsis (from back cover): Hallvard looked around the garage, somewhat in surprise of how empty it still was, there should be other cars at this hour. Then Hallvard noticed the total silence. Not just where he stood, but the entire city seemed to be in a deep sleep. No cars, no bikes, no planes in the air. Nothing. Nothing at all. What was going on?
There was no warning to the people of the world. Using your phone to tune in to limitless information seems so easy. You have more friends on your friends list than you could ever meet in person. There is no moment in the day that you have nothing to do. Always a new message, a status update or a funny movie. But what makes this all possible? What systems control the content you watch? Which systems know what you will be reading? Just imagine what will happen if these systems get stronger, much stronger. What if those systems control everything, control even you. What if your trusty phone is no longer your friend. But your mortal enemy?
Learn to survive in a new world. One without a like button.
Good luck, you will need it.
Synopsis (from back cover): Hallvard looked around the garage, somewhat in surprise of how empty it still was, there should be other cars at this hour. Then Hallvard noticed the total silence. Not just where he stood, but the entire city seemed to be in a deep sleep. No cars, no bikes, no planes in the air. Nothing. Nothing at all. What was going on?
There was no warning to the people of the world. Using your phone to tune in to limitless information seems so easy. You have more friends on your friends list than you could ever meet in person. There is no moment in the day that you have nothing to do. Always a new message, a status update or a funny movie. But what makes this all possible? What systems control the content you watch? Which systems know what you will be reading? Just imagine what will happen if these systems get stronger, much stronger. What if those systems control everything, control even you. What if your trusty phone is no longer your friend. But your mortal enemy?
Learn to survive in a new world. One without a like button.
Good luck, you will need it.
December 23, 2015
I was sent this book to review. The premise sounded interesting; the reality was the book was not. The writing and storyline is so bad I would have thrown it in the bin had I not been expected to review it for being sent a free copy. Are you a teenager, Vim, because you write like one? The attempts at describing sexual encounters are embarrassingly bad and the storyline implausible and, by the way, you cook with flour not flower!!!! An author to put on my 'avoid' list.
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October 20, 2017Won in the Goodreads Giveaways
May 26, 2017
Wel een verhaal van het einde van de beschaving door een computer die superintelligent wordt en via zijn programma alle smartphone gebruikers doet verdwijnen en opneemt in zijn geheugenbanken. Dit is meteen ook het zwakste stuk
A beautiful book although i didn't see the connection between the cover and its contents. What is it all about then? It is an end-of-the-world or last-man-on-earth story. Of course not really the end of the world and not really the last man on earth, otherwise this would be a really short book. But a story about the end of civilzation as we know it caused by a computer that becomes far too intelligent and makes all smartphone users disappear and adds them to its memory banks. This is immediately the weakest point in the tale since it is nowhere explained how people acutally desintegrate without leaving a trace (the "indexing" of the title) and the combined knowledge is not accessible to the AI. Countries where people do not have smartphones and would be unaffected by this catastrophe are completely left out of the picture.
That being said i love the way the author starts from some individuals that were for various reasons unaffected by the catastrophe and have to find a way to cope - to re-start civilization again on individual basis so to speak. Coincidnece, genius, co-operation and love play a big part in this - quite convincing, well brought in short chapters so that it reads fast an goes from action to action.
This part is like Robinson Crusoë except that the characters have all the remains of a highly technical civilization to start from. But there is danger too: escaped convicts and wild animals released from a zoo.
Most of the book is about the duality of 1 group of people who start all over and build on common human values and their opposite based on master-slave hierarchy. After a while both societies clash and fight for supremacy.
The plot is original but as mentioned above a bit shaky on scientific basis. Many characters having all kinds of relationships clearly show the author's view on life. Which is not wrong at all but a bit much to shove in just a few hundred pages. The result is that most characters stay quite shallow but also that there is no clear hero or small group of heroes - too many characters take main stages at a certain point in time to highlight a certain aspect of the new civilization and then disappear in the crowd again.
But allover a very good book that could easily be translated into a tv-series.
A beautiful book although i didn't see the connection between the cover and its contents. What is it all about then? It is an end-of-the-world or last-man-on-earth story. Of course not really the end of the world and not really the last man on earth, otherwise this would be a really short book. But a story about the end of civilzation as we know it caused by a computer that becomes far too intelligent and makes all smartphone users disappear and adds them to its memory banks. This is immediately the weakest point in the tale since it is nowhere explained how people acutally desintegrate without leaving a trace (the "indexing" of the title) and the combined knowledge is not accessible to the AI. Countries where people do not have smartphones and would be unaffected by this catastrophe are completely left out of the picture.
That being said i love the way the author starts from some individuals that were for various reasons unaffected by the catastrophe and have to find a way to cope - to re-start civilization again on individual basis so to speak. Coincidnece, genius, co-operation and love play a big part in this - quite convincing, well brought in short chapters so that it reads fast an goes from action to action.
This part is like Robinson Crusoë except that the characters have all the remains of a highly technical civilization to start from. But there is danger too: escaped convicts and wild animals released from a zoo.
Most of the book is about the duality of 1 group of people who start all over and build on common human values and their opposite based on master-slave hierarchy. After a while both societies clash and fight for supremacy.
The plot is original but as mentioned above a bit shaky on scientific basis. Many characters having all kinds of relationships clearly show the author's view on life. Which is not wrong at all but a bit much to shove in just a few hundred pages. The result is that most characters stay quite shallow but also that there is no clear hero or small group of heroes - too many characters take main stages at a certain point in time to highlight a certain aspect of the new civilization and then disappear in the crowd again.
But allover a very good book that could easily be translated into a tv-series.
September 3, 2017
Received through a Goodreads Giveaway.
I made it to about page 80 before I had to give up, which is really frustrating because there is an interesting premise here, but I just can't handle wading through all the flaws in this narrative to see it through.
The best version of this book does at least the following three things:
1. Pays a lot less attention to its character's sex lives and more time on their actual characters.
2. Sorts out its chronology in such a way that it does not take nearly as much effort to track the timeline and when things are taking place from paragraph to paragraph.
3. Is given at least one more thorough editing pass for proofreading and other writing errors.
If the premise seems interesting, I would suggest reading "Voyager in Night" by C.J. Cherryh and any good post apocolypse/disaster book (One Second After by William Forstchen comes to mind or "Lucifer's Hammer" by Niven and Pournelle). Then you can imagine for yourself what a satisfying mashup of those two books would look like. This wasn't it.
I made it to about page 80 before I had to give up, which is really frustrating because there is an interesting premise here, but I just can't handle wading through all the flaws in this narrative to see it through.
The best version of this book does at least the following three things:
1. Pays a lot less attention to its character's sex lives and more time on their actual characters.
2. Sorts out its chronology in such a way that it does not take nearly as much effort to track the timeline and when things are taking place from paragraph to paragraph.
3. Is given at least one more thorough editing pass for proofreading and other writing errors.
If the premise seems interesting, I would suggest reading "Voyager in Night" by C.J. Cherryh and any good post apocolypse/disaster book (One Second After by William Forstchen comes to mind or "Lucifer's Hammer" by Niven and Pournelle). Then you can imagine for yourself what a satisfying mashup of those two books would look like. This wasn't it.
May 12, 2019
I liked this book, it was a bit harder to read only because of the translation from the authors native language to English I think. Some of the phrases you had to decipher. But the story line, the characters, the scenery, they are all strong and vivid.
January 17, 2017
1.5/5. I received a free copy of this book via the Goodreads giveaway.
"Indexed" takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where technology/cell phones (not exactly social media, as per the title) have destroyed humanity. What starts as a survival story quickly unravels and shows the characters attempting to rebuild society.
While this premise was interesting, the execution fell horribly flat. First, the author really never explains how the technology destroyed everything and made people "disappear". The confrontation at the end brought everything together, but didn't even attempt to give a cohesive explanation of what had happened to cause this apocalypse type event.
Furthermore, this book contains dozens of characters and doesn't focus on any of them. Everyone in New Beginnings, Lovisa, Brandr, etc., all had potential, but a complete lack of any sort of character development left me not caring about what happened to anyone. As well, the 20+ characters were hard to keep straight. Similarly, this lack of focus extended to the end, where the author appeared to try and tie in issues of morality; however, this was once again not expanded on or developed.
Finally, the horrible portrayal of women in this book was the final straw in an already tedious book. As mentioned above, the male characters were hardly developed or nuanced but were still far better portrayed than the woman, who took instantly stripped their clothes off immediately when ordered, at least once a chapter.
Overall, there are dozens of post-apocalyptic books out there, and I would absolutely recommend choosing one of those instead of this one.
"Indexed" takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where technology/cell phones (not exactly social media, as per the title) have destroyed humanity. What starts as a survival story quickly unravels and shows the characters attempting to rebuild society.
While this premise was interesting, the execution fell horribly flat. First, the author really never explains how the technology destroyed everything and made people "disappear". The confrontation at the end brought everything together, but didn't even attempt to give a cohesive explanation of what had happened to cause this apocalypse type event.
Furthermore, this book contains dozens of characters and doesn't focus on any of them. Everyone in New Beginnings, Lovisa, Brandr, etc., all had potential, but a complete lack of any sort of character development left me not caring about what happened to anyone. As well, the 20+ characters were hard to keep straight. Similarly, this lack of focus extended to the end, where the author appeared to try and tie in issues of morality; however, this was once again not expanded on or developed.
Finally, the horrible portrayal of women in this book was the final straw in an already tedious book. As mentioned above, the male characters were hardly developed or nuanced but were still far better portrayed than the woman, who took instantly stripped their clothes off immediately when ordered, at least once a chapter.
Overall, there are dozens of post-apocalyptic books out there, and I would absolutely recommend choosing one of those instead of this one.
March 12, 2016
I read this book as part of a Book of the Month Club run by a community of other authors.
I enjoyed the concept of the book and it does give you food for thought regarding how dependant society is on technology. The idea of technology taking over was interesting.
I am not going to pick faults in the formatting and editing of the book because I know this is being rectified at the moment. I will say though, it made the book difficult to read and I struggled to engage in the story as a result of the evident errors. With that being said, the re-edited version of the book should be much smoother and future readers of the book shouldn't be deterred by this part of my review.
Something I didn't like about the story and characters; there seemed to be a sex scene on every other page which felt totally unnecessary to me. It also seemed that the female characters were sex objects to be used and abused by the male characters. Some of the language used to describe the female characters and how the men were leering and ogling over them at every turn bothered me too. The story seemed to be set in the future, where technology is very advanced but these scenes made me feel the society within the story was stuck in the dark ages. I hope this is something Wim is going to address in the re-edited version though.
Once all of the creases and cracks have been fixed, I would definitely say this book is worth a read. Watch this space.
I enjoyed the concept of the book and it does give you food for thought regarding how dependant society is on technology. The idea of technology taking over was interesting.
I am not going to pick faults in the formatting and editing of the book because I know this is being rectified at the moment. I will say though, it made the book difficult to read and I struggled to engage in the story as a result of the evident errors. With that being said, the re-edited version of the book should be much smoother and future readers of the book shouldn't be deterred by this part of my review.
Something I didn't like about the story and characters; there seemed to be a sex scene on every other page which felt totally unnecessary to me. It also seemed that the female characters were sex objects to be used and abused by the male characters. Some of the language used to describe the female characters and how the men were leering and ogling over them at every turn bothered me too. The story seemed to be set in the future, where technology is very advanced but these scenes made me feel the society within the story was stuck in the dark ages. I hope this is something Wim is going to address in the re-edited version though.
Once all of the creases and cracks have been fixed, I would definitely say this book is worth a read. Watch this space.
August 31, 2016
Goodreads Win Copy
Could you live without technology? No telephones connecting to you social media and computers. Will you be able to survive in the long run?
Suddenly the world you once knew has changed as telephones do not work and people start to disappear. A few people meet by chance as they band together to survive by working together. As their group become bigger they find a way to make things work.
Story looks at how dependent we have become addicted to technology but deep down we will find a way to survive without it.
Could you live without technology? No telephones connecting to you social media and computers. Will you be able to survive in the long run?
Suddenly the world you once knew has changed as telephones do not work and people start to disappear. A few people meet by chance as they band together to survive by working together. As their group become bigger they find a way to make things work.
Story looks at how dependent we have become addicted to technology but deep down we will find a way to survive without it.
April 16, 2016
I got a free copy of this book to review it.
The topic of the book seemed promising. Sadly it didn't rise to my expectations. It is written like a disaster movie with quickly changing scenes. The depiction of women was what I disliked most. I still can't think of anyone who would behave like this. In addition I didn't like the style of writing or the characters. I thought the plot was ridiculous at many parts of the book.
The topic of the book seemed promising. Sadly it didn't rise to my expectations. It is written like a disaster movie with quickly changing scenes. The depiction of women was what I disliked most. I still can't think of anyone who would behave like this. In addition I didn't like the style of writing or the characters. I thought the plot was ridiculous at many parts of the book.
November 11, 2016
I did not enjoy this book, the concept is so unrealistic, if mobile phones were the cause of all problems the people who would be left would be 70,80 and 90 year olds, who only have their phones for an emergency and rarely look at them.
Also can't believe that although there is snow on the ground very few people wear any underwear and are quite willing to have sex with anyone, anywhere or at any time.
Just so unbelievable.
Also can't believe that although there is snow on the ground very few people wear any underwear and are quite willing to have sex with anyone, anywhere or at any time.
Just so unbelievable.
January 20, 2016
I think think the overall premise of the book was very interesting. Noticed the previous review about the sex scenes. I think this may be the wrong genre for that. It covered a topic that is scary for most people to think about. Would read more from this author, if I can put down my cell phone/tablet/etc
July 16, 2016
GOOD
What a delightful story. It held me captive from the first page thru to the last. This tales uniqueness, in the genre it belongs to, causes the reader to pause in thoughtful speculation asking oneself, could this actually happen one day? God help us all if it does one day happen. That's all I can say. God help us all!
What a delightful story. It held me captive from the first page thru to the last. This tales uniqueness, in the genre it belongs to, causes the reader to pause in thoughtful speculation asking oneself, could this actually happen one day? God help us all if it does one day happen. That's all I can say. God help us all!
August 21, 2016
The book is recently edited and the writing is improved. There has been a lot of research in what happens on earth when humans are out of the equation. The writing style is unusual for the type of books and definitely European
September 27, 2016
I found "Indexed: The end of social media" this to be an interesting and entertaining read. I won this great book on GoodReads and like I do with most my wins I will be paying it forward by giving my win either to a friend or library to enjoy.
October 13, 2016
This was an interesting and new look at the post apocalyptic genre, I would recommend this book to anyone who finds themselves drawn to this type of book.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews