I am not sure we read the same book. This was an outstanding look at the near future. Three things off the top of my head that I took away as insightful:

1. As computing gets cheaper and basic AI/pattern recognition follows suite, the ability to get a group of human experts to collaborate becomes more valuable. 2. The "Rip Van Winkle" effect of an Alzheimer's patient waking up after a cure is found and having to go back to high school (or what voc/tech school has become) allowed for an interesting exploration of how little impact computers have had to date on K-12 education and how much they are going to. 3. The portrayal of the military as an enhanced system administration function was interesting and matches what Barnett is proposing in "Pentagon's New Map."

It's not the far future space opera of "Marooned in Real Time" or "A Fire Upon the Deep"--both of which I also enjoyed--but it's about a lot more than "some old people trying keep some books from being destroyed."

But don't you see that this book was a very shallow? As a piece of work, setting aside the pre-singularity tie-ins, the story was boring and the characters were uninterresting. The technology aspects of the story did little to actually explore near-term implementations of emerging tech in little more than glossing ways. There was little original thought in this book and was little more than VV's recent speeches of the last few years.

I re-read in the on-line version and was fascinated all the way through. Perhaps you could offer some other books/stories to read that you found more interesting or thought provoking.

I haven't read all of his books, but I agree that I liked this one the least. His other books: "A Deepness in the Sky," "Marooned in Realtime" and "A Fire Upon the Deep" are AWESOME. Vinge is the smartest sci-fi writer I've read. I wish he'd write some more Pham Nuwen stories.