Technogenesis

Technogenesis, Syne Mitchell, Roc Books, 2002

In near-future America, all human contact, commerce, information, entertainment, etc, takes place on the Net. Data induction jewelry lets people stay connected all the time.

Jasmine Reese is one of the best data miners in the business, until her Net connection breaks down. Forced to exist in the "real" world of the homeless and outcasts, Jasmine slowly begins to realize that her senses and thinking are more acute. Doing research at the local library on a man named Orley, who was the first to speculate about a Net-created overmind, Jasmine finds articles being deleted from the Net practically right before her eyes. Looking up suicide statistics, she finds the usual number of suicides among those not Net connected over the past few years. Among the Net connected, the number of suicides over the same period of time is zero.

Taking some co-workers into the mountains, far away from the Net, to convince them that the Net is controlling people's behavior, Jasmine is kidnapped by the NSA and taken to a secret location. There she meets the Net overmind, called Gestalt, and is forced into an assignment to gain the confidence of Orley, then betray him to Gestalt. Orley has totally removed himself from the Net, and is doing something very secret in a lab at Stanford University.

Jasmine finds an attempt to create another overmind, called Symbios. The two overminds meet, and have a titanic battle for the control of North America and then the world, with Jasmine literally in the middle.

This one is really good. It is high tech enough  for cyberpunk fans. I liked the look at near-future America, and it has a very good story, too. It is well worth reading.