The Collective Universe begins with an event retrospectively labelled as the Dark Hundred. Beginning around the late 2050s, in spite of significant technological advances, including the commercial deployment of nuclear fusion, a combination of environmental, economic, demographic and political factors converge, causing increasingly catastrophic impacts across the globe. By the mid 2070s humanity is on the brink. Faced with a broken economic system, relentless climate damage, war and mass migration, a handful of still functioning nations pool their resources in one last gamble.
From that venture a triumvirate of AI entities is born with the intent of saving the planet. Within a relatively short timeframe, humans quickly cede all major decision making to the AIs, Through a process called Convergence, humans temporarily merge mind power with AI, providing creativity and inspiration to match the machines superior analytical and processing capabilities. Slowly, painfully, over the course of the next few decades these Guardian AIs evolve into an even more powerful type of entity known as an encephalon. Freed from the short-termism of 21st century politics they reshape the world, through advanced technology and huge cultural and political changes.
Over the next 250 years, led by an AI government known as the Encephelarchy, humanity colonises almost two hundred nearby star systems and makes first contact with alien species. This new world is one where human and machine work in symbiosis, becoming intimately connected to the UniNet, where ever greater augmentation is a necessity and where many humans struggle to keep pace with their AI administered society.
It is into this society that Juno Li is born in 2338 and where we find her twenty seven years later at the outset of the novel Mindhouse.