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Fiction.
Science Fiction.
Thriller.
HTML:The propulsive, shockingly plausible sequel to New York Times bestseller Daemon. In one of the most buzzed-about debuts, Daniel Suarez introduced a terrifying vision of a new world order, controlled by the Daemon, an insidious computer program unleashed by a hi-tech wunderkind, Daemon captured the attention of the tech community, became a New York Times and Indie bestseller, and left readers hungry for more. Well, more is here, and it's even more gripping than its predecessor. In the opening chapters of Freedom(tm), the Daemon is firmly in control, using an expanded network of real-world, dispossessed darknet operatives to tear apart civilization and rebuild it anew. Soon civil war breaks out in the American Midwest, in a brutal wave of violence that becomes known as the Corn Rebellion. Former detective Pete Sebeck, now the Daemon's most powerful—though reluctant—operative, must lead a small band of enlightened humans toward a populist movement designed to protect the new world order. But the private armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon once and for all. In a world of conflicted loyalties, rapidly diminishing human power, and the possibility that anyone can be a spy, what's at stake is nothing less than human freedom's last hope to survive the technology revolution.… (more)
This suffers from the syndrome of being the middle book of a trilogy; it lacks the narrative drive that the first book, Daemon, had in spades. Still its picture of the growth of the darknet, the challenges it receives, and the challenge it posts to humanity is gripping. Very much looking forward to the next one. ( )
I think this one was better than the first book (The Daemon). First, it explores more deeply some societal problems we face globally. Second, there is some pretty cool tech which would be difficult to create but definitely possible.
Not a bad book, just had a hard act to follow after the very good [b:Daemon|4699575|Daemon (Daemon, #1)|Daniel Suarez|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255801429s/4699575.jpg|4763873]. It's very much a sequel. In fact, the most awkward parts of the whole novel are the few little filler bits that try and explain just what happened in the first novel. Don't read this one without reading Daemon first, or both will suffer.
There are some interesting new bits as the authour tries to explore just what inhabiting his new world would be like, but for some reason it didn't ring that true to me. Weird, since the whole series takes a healthy dose of suspension of belief to really enjoy, but that's the way it felt.
If you enjoyed the first novel, this one is a must read. If the first novel didn't really turn your crank, skip this one, you'll like it even less. ( )
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. -- Theodore Roosevelt in 1906
Dedication
For Generation Y
First words
An elderly man emerged from the crowd an aimed a revolver straight at Anthony Hollis's face.
Quotations
Wealth aggregates and becomes political power. Simple as that. ‘Corporation’ is just the most recent name for it. In the Middle Ages it was the Catholic Church. They had a great logo, too. You might have seen it, and they had more branches than Starbucks. Go back before that, and it was Imperial Rome. It’s a natural process as old as humanity.
Democracy requires active participation, and sooner or later someone ‘offers’ to take all the difficult decision-making away from you and your hectic life. But the darknet throws those decisions back onto you. It hard-codes democracy into the DNA of civilization. You upvote and downvote many times a day on things that directly affect your life and the lives of people around you—not just once every few years on things you haven’t got a chance in hell of affecting.
When people become more reliant on multinational corporations than on their own communities, they surrendered whatever say they had in their government. Corporations are growing stronger while democratic government becomes increasingly helpless.
Instead of adapting, their leaders clung to power and strove instead to be the last ones to starve to death. The Mayan civilization in South America did the same, and I expect our own civilization will do likewise.
They made a simple enough mistake. The same one we’re making. They founded their society on resource extraction, and in doing so, inflated their population beyond the carrying capacity of the land.
It all seems so clear now. Corporate intrusion into public institutions. Corporate domination of culture and media. It happened in plain view, with us cheering on their success as if it reflected well on us. As if it was us.
Fact and fiction carry the same intrinsic weight in the marketplace of ideas. Unfortunately reality has no advertising budget.
We basically used oil and aquifer water to temporarily boost the carrying capacity of the land, all for economic growth demanded by Wall Street investors. It’s a crazy system that only makes sense when you foist all the costs onto taxpayers in the form of crop subsidies that benefit agribusiness, and defense spending to secure fossil fuels. We’re basically paying for corporations to seize control of the food supply and dictate to us the terms under which we live.
When the survival strategy of a civilization is invalidated, in all of human history none have ever turned back from the brink.
You taught me everything I need to know; self-reliance, self-respect, community. Just don't be surprised if I actually put it to use.
How do you preserve your freedom when the powerful can use software bots to detect dissent and deploy drone aircraft to take out troublemakers? Human beings are increasingly unnecessary to wield power in the modern world.
So what? So what if everyone cares? What does that do for us? The situation we’re in isn’t going to be solved by angry posts and best fucking wishes. Public outrage has never stopped these bastards.
Exactly. Democracy is a rare thing, Pete. You hear how democracies are all over the place, but it isn’t really true. They call it democracy. They use the vocabulary, the props, but it’s theater. What your Founding Fathers did was the real thing. But the problem with democracies is they’re hard to maintain. Especially in the face of high technology. How do you preserve your freedom when the powerful can use software bots to detect dissent and deploy drone aircraft to take out troublemakers? Human beings are increasingly unnecessary to wield power in the modern world.
Freedom is overrated. You can be completely free and starving in an igloo in Antarctica. Business is what makes people’s lives better, not democracy. The world is filled with dysfunctional democracies, paralyzed by idiots with votes.
She thought about it and nodded slightly. "Yes, the darknet economy was seeded by real world wealth. Wealth that was questionable in origin to begin with. Here, it’s being invested in people and projects that have begun to return value - not in dollars, but in things of intrinsic human worth. Energy, information, food, shelter.
That people will do whatever a computer screen tells them. I swear to god, you could run the next Holocaust from a fucking fast-food register. He pantomimed aiming a pistol. It says I should kill you now.
Just look at corn and soybeans, subsidized with taxpayer money—creating a market that wouldn’t otherwise make sense. Why? So agribusiness firms have cheap inputs to make processed food. The taxpayers are basically subsidizing corporations to make crap, when we could have grown real food on our own.
There are billions of lives at stake. Tinkering with the organization of human society—it never ends well.
Did these systems give us more than they took from us?
Fact and fiction carry the same intrinsic weight in the marketplace of ideas. Fortunately, reality has no advertising budget.
the public doesn’t really decide anything now—they just select from the options they’re given.
She recalled scoffing at Morris’s three golden rules of computer security: do not own a computer; do not power it on; and do not use one The subtlety of it had escaped her at the time. It wasn’t meant as a surrender. It was a meditation on risk versus benefit. Did these systems give us more than they took from us? It was an admission that we will never be fully secure. We must instead strive for survivability.
Fiction.
Science Fiction.
Thriller.
HTML:The propulsive, shockingly plausible sequel to New York Times bestseller Daemon. In one of the most buzzed-about debuts, Daniel Suarez introduced a terrifying vision of a new world order, controlled by the Daemon, an insidious computer program unleashed by a hi-tech wunderkind, Daemon captured the attention of the tech community, became a New York Times and Indie bestseller, and left readers hungry for more. Well, more is here, and it's even more gripping than its predecessor. In the opening chapters of Freedom(tm), the Daemon is firmly in control, using an expanded network of real-world, dispossessed darknet operatives to tear apart civilization and rebuild it anew. Soon civil war breaks out in the American Midwest, in a brutal wave of violence that becomes known as the Corn Rebellion. Former detective Pete Sebeck, now the Daemon's most powerful—though reluctant—operative, must lead a small band of enlightened humans toward a populist movement designed to protect the new world order. But the private armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon once and for all. In a world of conflicted loyalties, rapidly diminishing human power, and the possibility that anyone can be a spy, what's at stake is nothing less than human freedom's last hope to survive the technology revolution.
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