THE PLEASURE IN TELLING A STORY; ....who has devised software that can track human emotions, particularly fear, and hence predict the movement of markets. The program generates vast profits for its creator, but in the best traditions of the genre, it proves less than stable. The action of the book takes place over 24 hours as the program spins out of control.
The novel has been a long time in the making. Harris had been thinking about it for 12 or 13 years, since he read Bill Gates’s book Business at the Speed of Thought, which talks about companies having a digital nervous system. He had always wanted to create an Orwellian dystopia, and he was fascinated by the idea of people going to work at a company that was more intelligent than they were. “What would you do if the machine on your desk was taking all the decisions, and you were simply window dressing?” he said over lunch.
THE PLEASURE IN TELLING A STORY; ....who has devised software that can track human emotions, particularly fear, and hence predict the movement of markets. The program generates vast profits for its creator, but in the best traditions of the genre, it proves less than stable. The action of the book takes place over 24 hours as the program spins out of control.
ReplyDeleteThe novel has been a long time in the making. Harris had been thinking about it for 12 or 13 years, since he read Bill Gates’s book Business at the Speed of Thought, which talks about companies having a digital nervous system. He had always wanted to create an Orwellian dystopia, and he was fascinated by the idea of people going to work at a company that was more intelligent than they were. “What would you do if the machine on your desk was taking all the decisions, and you were simply window dressing?” he said over lunch.