A good scenario doesn't make a good science fiction story - but it's a setting within which a good science fiction story might be told.

Nature stopped being natural decades ago.

When we developed written language, we significantly increased our functional memory and our ability to share insights and knowledge across time and space. The same thing happened with the invention of the printing press, the telegraph, and the radio.

Human civilization has been changing the Earths environment for millennia, often to our detriment. Dams, deforestation and urbanization can alter water cycles and wind patterns, occasionally triggering droughts or even creating deserts.

I have to admit it: I'm not a huge fan of the cloud computing concept.

My own suspicion is that a stand-alone artificial mind will be more a tool of narrow utility than something especially apocalyptic.

It's remarkably easy to dig up enormous amounts of information about individuals, without their consent.