Posthuman Blues

I'm reading "The Shockwave Rider" by the late John Brunner ("The Sheep Look Up"). Curiously, portions of this protocyberpunk novel take place in Kansas City. This book is most famous for predicting computer viruses (or, as Brunner calls them, "tapeworms," which is a really good metaphor; indeed, many real-life computer viruses are known as "worms"). Brunner also appears to have anticipated "phreaking" and today's preoccupation with identity theft. And although his imagined future has something very much akin to the Internet, it's more Orwellian than the real thing -- or so I'd like to think.