Wake - Sawyer

This is a 2010 Hugo nominee.

The heroine of 'Wake' is Caitlin, a teenage girl who is brilliant with math and totally blind. She is a whiz with her computer, navigating the web at a speed that tops the sighted. This girl is plugged in and hip. Her web handle is 'Calculass'.
She is contacted by a Japanese scientist that wants to try an experimental procedure with her. Her blindness is caused by a fault in her nervous system where the information is received by the eye but the data doesn't route correctly to her brain. He wants to install a chip that could fix this.
While this is happening a strange conciousness is awakening. Through fits and stops and painful bouts of self actualization this something is becoming aware. I'm going to spoil this for you and tell you that this strange thing is the entire internet! And, land sakes, the chip in Caitlin's eye helps her see this happening!
There are a couple of other sub-plots, one having to do with censorship in China and the other with a painting gibbon. Neither one is well resolved. Or all that interestingly presented.
I can't recommend this book. The writing was poor throughout. Caitlin was annoyingly precious. The 'awakening' process is not even a little bit believable. The writing, though light, conveyed very little story for it's length. On the plus side, it was a quick read so at least it was only a short pain.
I've heard it speculated that this book was popular amongst SF fans because many of them could put themselves into the place of the heroine. I don't know how true that is. This book is the first of a scheduled trilogy and I hope that the next two aren't nominated. In fact, if they are I'm going to skip them and just assume that they are at least as bad as this is.