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A couple of months ago I finished reading Daemon by Daniel Suarez, an inspiring book. Creative, fantastic to read, inspiring – and very plausible for fiction.
When a designer of computer games dies, he leaves behind a program that unravels the Internet’s interconnected world. It corrupts, kills, and runs independent of human control. It’s up to Detective Peter Sebeck to wrest the world from the malevolent virtual enemy before its ultimate purpose is realized: to destroy civilization…
I bring this up here because I found an interview with Daniel Suarez today which was published in the German newspaper FAZ. He sums up a point I always make about the slow development of the human brain in terms of evolution (there haven’t been major changes in the last 75.000-100.000 years), contrasted to the rapid changes in our environment, especially within the last 1.000 years.
But he uses a computer metaphor to explain this:
“The human brain evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to cope with its environment, and we can’t fundamentally change our ‘wiring’ overnight. However, in a rapidly evolving technological world our slow, biological version cycle puts us at a disadvantage against those who’d like to push our mental buttons. We’re a stationary target. In some ways this is akin to being forced to run an unpatched version of Windows even as malware authors are scanning our source code for flaws.”
May 15th, 2011 at 17:48
Yes, a fantastic book! Had the chance to read a bit while I was waiting for a friend who happens to own it. I plan on borrowing it when he is done reading.
May 16th, 2011 at 20:42
I just realized how much of the building blocks of science fiction is already here. What Suarez writes about, and why it’s so scary, is about 20% exaggeration and 80% connecting things in one big system.
I prophesy that this will be the overarching theme of next two decades in technology. Which of course leads me to linking to xkcd.
May 17th, 2011 at 15:24
Exactly, I couldn’t have put it better myself Basti. The great thing about Daemon is that the fiction part of it is just connecting things that exist already (maybe exaggerating just a tiny little bit for the sake of suspense).
I read about 100 pages into Freedom TM now, I’m not sure yet whether I like it so much. So far, there is very little happening, and the plot is just a means of enabling DarkNet activists to preach about the corrupt system that we have (politics, economics, etc.). However, I do like some of the ideas, I have to admit.
May 25th, 2011 at 09:46
[...] his first book “Daemon” (selfpublished 2006, published 2009 by Dutton; I wrote about it two weeks ago) with [...]