The Last Barista of Norwich: In 2043, AI Has a New Hobby - Paperback

by Emanuela Giangregorio (Author)

The year is 2043, Earth. Our planet is still mostly intact and orbiting the same mediocre star, in the Age of Enhancement.
Modern society isn't collapsing with dramatic flair or revolutionary upheaval. That would be far more interesting. Instead, it's committing a slow personality suicide by convenience.

In 2043, the world is run by an artificial superintelligence. For practical reasons. It's all very convenient - until it isn't.

Jasper Marlowe, the last independent barista in Norwich, would rather continue being a barista, but that's no longer possible. He got the job of AI Agent Coordinator, but was then made redundant by the AI agents he was supposedly coordinating. Jasper's quiet rebellion against the System's perfect predictability might have gone unnoticed - if not for a curious retired teacher named Meredith, a data analyst called Mali, and a genetically modified goat named Geoffrey with more opinions than most philosophers.

What begins as a small act of defiance becomes a quiet, collective awakening that asks the ultimate question:
why does an Artificial Superintelligence need humanity at all?

Funny, unsettling, and strangely hopeful, The Last Barista of Norwich is a story about friendship, free will, and what remains uniquely human in a world that's learned to imitate everything else.
A witty, thought-provoking novel for readers who loved Klara and the Sun, Black Mirror, or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this is speculative fiction with heart, humour, and a cautionary smile.
The novel wrestles with topics like:

• The Future of Work: Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), technological singularity, automation, and job displacement.
• The Nature of Humanity: Neural AI augmentation, transhumanism, human enhancement, identity, and human authenticity.
• Control and Consciousness: Surveillance, social control, free will, determinism, quantum consciousness, and quantum entanglement.
• The Core Question: The fundamental meaning of what it means to be human in an age where the boundaries between human and machine, individual and collective, and physical and quantum realities are increasingly blurred.

About the Author
Emanuela Giangregorio helps her clients bridge the skills gap in ethical, efficient, and effective human-AI collaboration. She is known internationally for her AI Project Governance Framework.
Having published several non-fiction works, she pivoted to fiction as a way to make sense of the accelerating confluence of AI, quantum physics, and humanity's future.
She lives by the sea in East Sussex, actively curious about what tomorrow's version of reality will bring.