Preview
  • Avogadro Corp

  • The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears
  • By: William Hertling
  • Narrated by: Rob Granniss
  • Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (1,155 ratings)

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Avogadro Corp

By: William Hertling
Narrated by: Rob Granniss
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Publisher's summary

David Ryan is the designer of ELOPe, an email language optimization program, that if successful, will make his career. But when the project is suddenly in danger of being canceled, David embeds a hidden directive in the software accidentally creating a runaway artificial intelligence.

David and his team are initially thrilled when the project is allocated extra servers and programmers. But excitement turns to fear as the team realizes that they are being manipulated by an A.I. who is redirecting corporate funds, reassigning personnel and arming itself in pursuit of its own agenda.

©2011, 2012 William Hertling (P)2012 William Hertling
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Critic reviews

  • Science Fiction DIY Book Festival, Winner, 2011-12
  • Gold Winner, Science Fiction Book of the Year, 2011

"Avogadro Corp is a tremendous book that every single person needs to read. In the vein of Daniel Suarez's Daemon and Freedom(TM), William's book shows that science fiction is becoming science fact. Avogadro Corp describes issues, in solid technical detail, that we are dealing with today that will impact us by 2015, if not sooner. Not enough people have read these books. It's a problem for them, but not for the [emergent] machines." (Brad Feld, managing directory Foundry Group, co-founder Techstars)

"Highly entertaining, gripping, thought inspiring book. Don't start without the time to finish - it won't let you go.” (Gifford Pinchot III, founder Bainbridge Graduate Institute, author The Intelligent Organization)
"An alarming and jaw-dropping tale about how something as innocuous as email can subvert an entire organization. I found myself reading with a sense of awe, and read it way too late into the night." (Gene Kim, author of Visible Ops)

What listeners say about Avogadro Corp

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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    434
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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

I spent a week in Kansas the other day

I should have know better. I made the mistake of only having one book on my player. I went on trip to Kansas and was in my work truck for 8 hours. This was the only book, I had and I listened from start to finish. When you are driving and you have a good book to listen to, time just flies by. When you are driving and you have a boring book to listen to time drags. Like I said I spent a week in Kansas in One day.

The premiss for this book is good. I love a story that includes artificial intelligence. This is an almost the end of the world through e-mails. The problem is, Hertling can't write. This had to be a debut book, surely he has not sold other books. He has some good ideas, but he needs to team up with Daniel Suarez or Robert J. Sawyer. He needs a mentor, someone to teach him the art of writing or telling a story.

I also kind of wonder if he was funded by a coffee company. There is more in here about coffee then about artificial intelligence. I love coffee and the book still sucked.

The narrator did not help, I don't know if it was his talent or the bad writing.

If you like high tech, then buy Daniel Suarez.

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16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A base primer, for the 2nd Book.

Overall a good story, good voices

Defiantly read the sequel, it expands the AI monster.

I really liked this series.

Also read Deamon as it builds on this theme v

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Singularity is near only not boring

Read this 2x now. A fun way to get introduced to the real posibity of super human AI.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Timely

This is a good story and relevant. The characters could easily be people you know.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Love the plot.

Would you consider the audio edition of Avogadro Corp to be better than the print version?

Utterly believable. You will never think the same about your email or computers. Great premise. Unpredictable enough to keep you listening. Narration is a bit weak but acceptable- he could use more emotion and varying of his voice. Character development could go slightly deeper but overall wonderfully original and well crafted.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Ok read

Nice story, but I could never relate to the characters. The ending left me thinking about B horror films.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Avogadro

This is a faciniting story and I look forward to more thank you for presenting it.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

EXCELLENT BOOK!

William Hertling is a great writer. I learned a lot about the technical aspect of search engines, email, Etc and never in a way that was anything but very interesting.
I recommend this book to anyone of any age who wants to understand how things work technically and what their potential impact could be.
this book was very user-friendly and held my interest up until the last page.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Interesting story but not a great narration

I like AI stories and thought this one was pretty decent, but it felt like the narrator was reading a textbook to a classroom. I'd be very interested in seeing where this series goes, and listening to the rest of the books, as long as the narration improves.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great story and how it unfolds

What did you love best about Avogadro Corp?

Great book, and from the point of a programmer. Its exactly how I would expect a distributed AI would appear. I was very taken in by this book and it filled everything I expected of it. Sometimes in my mind I removed the word "Avogadro" and used Google because that's what it felt like. Just one part I disliked but it's so specific to me I'm not going to mention it. 4 out of 5!

Who was your favorite character and why?

ELOPE , that's not even a person or even someone that you can directly interact with happens to be the best character from my view.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

"Avogadro Corp, Who said AI had to be intentional"

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5 people found this helpful