A Changing World

A daemon is a computer program sitting quietly in the background waiting for something to happen, some call to action. So it is with The Daemon. The untimely death of its genius-but-insane creator lights the blue touch paper, as The Daemon "senses" the event from online news reports. When the time is right, using artificial intelligence and autonomy, The Daemon exerts a quiet demonstration of networked power. But as it spreads, so it picks up pace, to contaminate every corner of a world inexorably connected via the internet. Only then could it demonstrate its fury. Those who get in its way are sacrificed in the most cold-blooded way; those who work with it rewarded. Was it ever thus?

This is not a topical virus but it has a similar effect. Rather, The Daemon's creator himself likens The Daemon to a parasite. Parasites evolve and move through living things as they now can through computer systems. Viruses spread disruption. Parasites prey on uniformity within computing to make IT systems easily targeted hosts for replication. At once malevolent and benevolent, it makes 2001: A Space Odyssey's Hal seem like an affable uncle.

With access to undreamed of funding from corporations it now controls, so The Daemon can fund recruit and further change. 

The author wrote The Daemon in 2009. Then, how little we knew about the power of computing. The Facebook was barely four years old. There is something inevitable about The Daemon. The relevance of The Daemon with today is simply that this is something unseen that can shape us. Unseen, because if the public knew the extent to which The Daemon was shaping their lives, the financial markets would crash, the very markets that support life and lifestyles as we know them—a crash would affect millions of lives worldwide. In a sense, then, the book charters an inevitable struggle between two artificial systems, one the economy the other a parallel cybernetic organism acting like a corporation itself. The Daemon is as remorseless as a modern corporation. It's just exaggerated and it will see the end of the age of plutocrats, oil and industry to be replaced by, well, you need to read the sequel.

The point during the current pandemic is both the spread of The Daemon and the fundamental changes it makes to how we live. And, as people struggle with lockdown and are sparked by a reaction to the George Floyd murder, we also see social disorder looming.