The word exchange : a novel
(Book)

In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted death of print has become a near reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers and magazines are essentially things of the past as we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but have become so intuitive as to hail us cabs before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of our stomachs, change traffic lights and interface with home appliances. They even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange. Anana Johnson works with her father, Doug, at the North American Dictionary of the English Language, where they are hard at work on the final edition that will ever be printed. Doug is staunchly anti-Meme and fondly remembers the days when people used e-mail to communicate or even actually spoke to one another, for that matter. One evening, Doug disappears from the NADEL offices, leaving behind a written clue. It's a code word he and Anana devised to signal if one of them ever fell into harm's way.