Autonomous Decisions -- Computing quandaries in short fiction

Autonomous Decisions
Computing quandaries in short fiction
by Maria Keet

ISBN: 978-0-7961-9536-4 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-7961-9537-1 (eBook)

Publication: KREST Publishers, 2025

Back cover
Where to buy it
Media

Back cover

Who has, takes, or relinquishes control of computing software? The users, the corporations, the programmers, the State, or the algorithms and applications themselves? This short story collection explores the dynamics of who, or what, dominates—or perhaps ought to dominate—in our interactions with such technologies.

Car crash survivor Lubanzi in Claremont tries to get his new care robot to serve him more wine. An oncologist in a hospital in Athlone discovers that a donated radiation machine has a bug. Neev’s digital retinal implant becomes uncontrollable. An AI home assistant snitches on daughter dearest smoking marijuana in her bedroom. An honest, hard-working student from Khayelitsha tries not to succumb to the dubious social credit app at his university.

Delve into the moral quandaries and flagrant violations of fictionalised current cases and scenarios in information technology as well as past transgressions, explored in ten short stories situated in South Africa and elsewhere in the 21st century.

Where to buy it

Key data:
Keet, C.M. Autonomous Decisions -- Computing quandaries in short fiction. KREST Publishers, 2025. 192p. ISBN: 978-0-7961-9536-4 (paperback); 978-0-7961-9537-1 (eBook).

It's available in paperback and as eBook from various online stores, among others:

The publisher: KREST Publishers, paperback and eBook.
Amazon: ebook on Kindle and paperback, and its country-specific sites, such as on amazon.co.uk and amazon.de.
National bookstores, including TBA in 2025 as it's holiday season now (but you can ask the shops).

Media

Reviews and endorsements

On goodreads, among others.

Awards

"Radiating confidence" (one of the stories included in the collection) was shortlisted in the Northwestern Ontario Writer’s Workshop’s (NOWW) writing contest of 2024.

Social media

Among others:

Cover reveal by KREST on Facebook and Instagram
More TBA

Supplementary material

FREE stories:

Melokuhle -- good things; published on East of the Web in January 2024. It's also the first story in the short story collection. Wheelchair-bound Lubanzi tries to make his somewhat culturally-aware care robot serve him more wine.

A selection of more or less recent materials that are somehow related to the book, either directly or to the theme (non-fiction):

Blog post Background readings to the "Melokuhle -- good things" short story; 7 January 2024.
Blog post Social impact issues with LLMs – a brief write-up of my list from the SIGdial'23 panel; 17 September 2023.
Lecture notes Social Issues and Professional Practice in IT and Computing (FKA Computer Ethics), developed for the Masters in Information Technology course on in (CSC5014Z) and for the SIPP module when it was part of CSC1016S at the University of Cape Town, which I taught from 2016-2021 and in 2023.