emmanuel navarro

The Water Knife

The Water Knife is a telling tale of what happens when our need to survive is tested at its absolute limit. The American Southwest, already dealing with water scarcity, has reached a point in which water is deathly scarce for everyone. Covert operations, bribes, and bloody violence is the name of the game for water knives, covert agents recruited to secure access to water and ultimately to keep constituents from dying. 

This severe landscape is the result of climate and change and a critical lack of foresight. This future is not a far off possibility, but rather hits closer to home after considering how fast our world is consuming water. One of the biggest threats to our water supply is the usage of water in data processing plants, which has exponentially increased since the rise of Artificial Intelligence. The convenience and benefits of this technological advancement seem more attractive than the negative consequences it may exact upon us in the very near future. 

The role of Artificial Intelligence is, naturally, not directly mentioned by the novel. However, it does elucidate how frenetic economic competition actively pushes us towards our dystopian final destination. The rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence cannot keep up with current efforts to mitigate the size of our colossal water footprint. Like a bull charging ahead with no goal except for tackling the red flag, the AI race seeks to win first and face consequences later, if at all.

Such an outlook would naturally give way a post-water apocalypse of iron-fisted will, where the cities and municipalities with the most desperation and thirst for blood will come out on top, while the rest die of thirst.

The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi
2016, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group