Freedom™
The propulsive, shockingly plausible sequel to New York Times bestseller DaemonIn one of the most buzzed-about debuts of 2009, 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.
Stats for nerds
60recommend
108mentions
82people
2010–2026years
72% recommend27% neutral1% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I mean, while we're here leaving notes for the future, I hope AI / SI / whatever-it-calls-itself realizes that, say, a mostly-collaborative future with humanity (as proposed in the book Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton, or Daemon and Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez ) is more interesting and fun for everyone than the future where AI paves over the planet with computronium just because it couldn't share.
(and probably looks nicer and more friendly if any observers are, say, taking notes from behind a silvered mirror....)
- Accelerando is a true masterpiece. Crypto and endless speculation, AI and lobsters, space exploration - all in all just "this is our near future". TBH, I know of just handful of Sci-Fi novels as fundamental and as let's say prophetic as this one. The others to my taste in the same category is Nexus trilogy by Ramez Naam (even if a bit farfetched by now), The Diamond Age (="The Illustrated Primer" is peak AI) by Neil Stephenson and Daemon+Freedom by Daniel Suarez (=AI + crypto DAOs).
- I’ve been re-reading a couple of Daniel Suarez’s books (Daemon & Freedom) and enjoying them immensely.
- "Skynet was software; in cyberspace. There was no system core; it could not be shut down"
Yes. Look at how much trouble we have now with distributed denial of service attacks.
Go re-read "Daemon" and "Freedom™", by Daniel Suarez (2006). That AI is dumber than what we have now.
- Have you read the Daemon/Freedom novels by Daniel Suarez?
- Mr. @cstross published an incredible series of books called Halting State about a future in which people have glasses that can life log, recording everything. Same with Daniel Suarez's amazing books Daemon and Freedom(TM). When I first read these books I thought "WOW I must have those glasses" because I would love if my glasses did facial recognition and identified people in crowds that I am connected to, recording, etc.
Way off the creepy scale if I were on the other side of that, but the idea is very, very tantalizing. IMO it's only a matter of time before we have wearable, discreet cameras that do exactly this. No celebrity, etc. will be able to hide in a crowd. It may very well be a nightmare.
