Archive for December 2009

Daniel Suarez ‘Daemon’

Daemon is an futuristic novel, which sets out not only to entertain, which it surely does, but also to challenge the reader to consider social issues as broad as the implications of living in a technologically advanced world and whether democracy can survive in such a world. And for us geeks: what we can expect from near-future technologies.

The storyline portrays one possible world consequent to the development of the technological innovations that we currently live with and the reality that the author, Daniel Suarez, imagines will evolve, and it is chilling and tense (on thedaemon.com the reader can find evidence that the seemingly incredible advances Suarez proposes could – and likely will – in fact become real). Daemon is filled with multiple scenes involving power displays by the Daemon’s allies resulting in complete loss of control by its enemies, violence with new and innovative weaponry, explosions, car crashes, blood, guts, and limbs-cut-off galore. – As far as technological complexity, Daemon will satisfy any computer geek’s thirst!

Big Brother Germany?!

Big Brother GermanyBig Brother German?! With amazement I discovered that Germany – of all countries! – censors Google results. That makes it one of only two other nations – the other being China and France – to restrict access to search engine results. Under German law, hate speech and Holocaust denial are illegal. Violent or sex-related sites such as YouPorn and BME that the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien deems harmful to youth are also censored. Google has complied with these laws by not including sites containing such material in its search results (Google does however list the number of excluded results at the bottom of the search result page).