Name that SF short story

June 17, 2013 1:11 PM

Wracking my brain trying to think of a short sci-fi story I read recently, I think in an anthology from within the last couple years. The story was about the relationship arc between a man convinced that technocratic solutions could be found to eliminate the messiness of politics and a woman who was more skeptical. Early in the story the female protagonist rescues a relative of the man's from a near-drowning in California when a computer failure causes his smart-surfboard to fail or something like that. The bulk of the story is set in Washington DC where the woman leads a lobbying effort against broad introduction of further ubiquitous computer controlled systems. Whether or not a computer-controlled traffic system is immune from exploitation was a major feature of the plot. What was it called?!
posted by Wretch729 to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

Have you read With a Little Help by Cory Doctorow? It sounds like a story from that.
posted by soelo at 2:13 PM on June 17, 2013

Best answer: The actual story is called Human Readable.

It's about a quarter of the way down the page.
posted by Mister_Sleight_of_Hand at 2:23 PM on June 17, 2013

Response by poster: That's it, thank you! I had actually thought of Doctorow but my Google-fu failed me and I had assumed his technophilia would win out over his civil-libertarian side and dismissed my hunch. Pleasantly surprised that that wasn't the case.
posted by Wretch729 at 2:42 PM on June 17, 2013

Response by poster: Hah- skimming through it I'm reminded that the writing irritated me the same way Doctorow always does, should have been a clue there. But I like the story.
posted by Wretch729 at 2:47 PM on June 17, 2013