Cyber Revolution was not the book I set out to write. As was true of many writers, after the 2016 US presidential election I felt outraged, frustrated, and unempowered. Regardless of his policies, the 45th president as an individual is a misogynist, a bully, a liar, an islamophobe, a transphobe, and a chauvinist. My biggest fear was, how the election would impact the hundreds of millions in the US who are part of those demographics the president discriminates against.
As time passed and I continued to worry I kept hearing story after story of tech companies toadying up to the president-elect. IBM, who helped the Nazi’s build a database of Jewish people, had their CEO meet with the president-elect in 2016. These CEOs have put profit ahead of ethics, and it sickens me that I'm part of their industry. They gave excuses, like Tim Cook’s excuse that it is best to have a seat at the table. The government of Vichy France felt the same way about working with Hitler. This is when I realized I wanted to show how I thought a tech company should act in the face of a government with discriminatory intentions.
The seed of Cyber Revolution was to show how a company of similar size and power to those who choose to be collaborators with the new administration could instead choose to protect at-risk demographics. I created the fictional company Fast Futures Machines (FFM), to be a company that would take a stand against the US government.
As I began writing I wanted to develop a main character that readers could relate to. My prior novels all had male characters in the lead role because it was easier for me to write. If I were to do that with Cyber Revolution I'd be creating a book I wouldn't want to read, so I decided to have a woman as the main character. I decided that meeting the Bechdel test wasn't enough, I wanted to exceed it. I wanted gender diversity, but also diversity in other demographics.
I named the main character Rosa Alvarez. I wanted a character who had a biography that would make her empathize with how the administration treated Muslims. At times I've worried this was a bad choice. People should make a stance against governments that are hurting people even if they only sympathize with those who are being hurt.
As I added characters, I'd review the current list and do my best to make sure I created a diverse character list. People of multiple ethnicities were included. I also did a lot of research so I could include a blind character, who has become my favorite character in the entire book. I hope I did justice to all the characters.
As I wrote the early chapters of Cyber Revolution I realized that having Rosa's career progress from being an engineer at FFM in 1994 to being their CEO by 2011 would be unrealistic due to the lack of gender equity in corporate America, especially in tech. Companies have made great strides in the last few years. Facebook, for example, had made several effective changes including a training they shared with the world called Managing Unconscious Bias. With Trump being elected for a second term Mark Zuckerburg decided to throw Sheryl Sandberg under the proverbial bus in order to placate the president. Zuckerburg, one of the richest people on Earth isn’t satisfied with $21 billion. He is a greedy coward. Rather than continuing to have a welcoming workplace and diverse ideas to make a better profit he has, as
Timothy Snyder
would say, obeyed in advance by gutting the DEI work Facebook has been famous for.
Rather than change the timeline, or Rosa’s character, I decided to have FFM be a fictional pioneer of the work companies like Facebook were doing to improve equity. Companies that strive for gender equality are more successful, which meant that having Rosa lead the initiative would also make her rise through FFM more realistic both because it removed the glass ceiling and gave her a track record of work that made FFM more successful. The early chapters of the book thus became a fictional account of how to improve diversity at an American company.
Within the first few pages I wrote, I included Martin Niemöller's poem:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
When I completed the first draft, I decided I wanted to include a quote at the top of each chapter that related to the content in it. As I began searching for appropriate quotes I began to see a trend. Men are far more frequently quoted than women. I kept Martin Niemöller's quote, but challenged myself to find a quote from a woman to start each chapter. I feel it is critical that we tune into diverse and intersectional voices. I succeeded in this challenge and each chapter starts with a quote from a woman like the following from Emma Lazarus's sonnet The New Colossus:
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
To some extent, Rosa was a wish fulfillment character for me. While I have no desire in being a CEO, I absolutely want to be a woman who stands up for people in need.