Has 2049 Already Arrived
Almost every technology in Terminal Autonomy already exists. The question is how carefully we choose to implement it.
Author · Paramedic · EMS leader
Rod
Brouhard.
Rod Brouhard writes about capable people confronting institutions, technologies, disasters, illness, and mortality—and discovering what loyalty costs.
01 / Current fiction
Terminal
Autonomy
What if Uber ran the ambulance service—and used a Netflix-style algorithm to decide which 911 calls were worth a paramedic’s time?
Paramedic Ben Johnson trusts San Francisco’s gig EMS system until a canceled helicopter and a hospital twenty minutes out of the way leave two men dead. When he discovers the algorithm is optimizing something other than survival, he has to correct it before it kills him.
THE ALGORITHM ISN’T EVIL. IT’S INDIFFERENT.
TERMINAL AUTONOMY is speculative fiction set in 2049, but much of its technology is already here—or being built now.
The speculative question isn’t whether we can build it.
It’s what happens after we do.
02 / Notes
From the workbench.
Read note
Who Wrote the Book?
An open experiment in authorship, artificial intelligence, and whether the newest tool makes the work better—or merely faster.
03 / Published nonfiction
Advice from the field.
01
First aid · Emergency response
02
Disaster Preparedness
A practical guide to preparing for the unexpected
Preparedness · Response
04 / About
Four decades inside the system.
Rod Brouhard has spent nearly four decades in emergency medical services—as a paramedic, operational leader, educator, and writer.
He has worked in EMS since 1990 and previously directed an EMS program in higher education. His career has taken him from the back of an ambulance to responsibility for complex emergency medical operations across the San Francisco Bay Area.
His EMS journalism appeared on About.com under The New York Times and later IAC. He is the author of two traditionally published nonfiction books. Terminal Autonomy is his debut novel.
05 / Contact