“But doesn’t this just spread mysticism? Lies, essentially?”
“You mean fairy tales? Yes, initially. But then, a lot of parents tell young children that there’s a Santa Claus. It’s easier than trying to explain the cultural significance of midwinter celebrations to a three-year-old. If false magic or a white lie about the god-monster in the mountain will get people to stop killing one another and learn, then the truth can wait. When the time is right, it can be replaced with a reverence for the scientific method.”
“And this is why Sobol created the Daemon?”
She shook her head. “No, this is why they call it the shamanic interface. Because it resembles sorcery—and might as well be to low-tech people. But unlike sorcery, it exists and conveys real power.”
Riley raised her hands in front of her. #Suarez #quotes

Even the most remote tribes in Papua New Guinea understand the concept of magic—and that certain rituals must be observed to invoke it. They believe in a spirit world where ancestors and supernatural beings watch over them. The shamanic interface simply connects high technology to that belief system, granting ‘powers’ and equipment as a reward for useful, organized activity.”
Sebeck leaned back in his chair. “Useful to whom?”
“Humanity, Sergeant. This is big-picture stuff. Repositories of human knowledge and technology are being designed and built by various curator factions around the world. The spec is simply that these repositories be durable, inspire awe, and be equipped with automated systems that can teach people useful knowledge to empower the more rational among the population so that they can achieve leadership positions. That way, should human civilization be lost in a region, this system could put locals back on a path to regain knowledge in a generation or two. It could also be useful in resisting a downward spiral to begin with.” #Suarez #quotes

Suddenly credit scores appeared above everyone’s heads, color-coded from green to red for severity.
“What about medical records?”
Lists of drug prescriptions and preexisting conditions appeared above people’s heads.
“Or how about something really powerful: human relationships. Let’s use phone records to compile the social network of these folks—to identify the people who matter most to them. . . .”
Suddenly everyone’s names appeared over their heads, along with a hyperlinked diagram of their most frequent contacts—along with names and phone numbers.
“What about purchasing habits . . . ?”
Lists of recent credit card purchases blinked into existence below people’s names.
“This data never goes away, Sergeant. Ever. And it might be sold years down the road to god knows who—or what.”
Price leaned close. “Imagine how easily you could change the course of someone’s life by changing this data? But that’s control, isn’t it? In fact, you don’t even need to be human to exert power over these people. That’s why the Daemon spread so fast.”
Sebeck clutched the balcony railing in silence, watching the march of data. The public walked on, shopping and talking, completely oblivious to the cloud of personal information they gave off. That governed their lives.
Price followed Sebeck’s gaze. “So you stand there and tell me that the Daemon is invasive and unprecedented. That it’s a threat to human freedom. And I tell you that Americans are fucking ignorant about their freedom. They’re about as free as the Chinese. Except the Chinese don’t lie to themselves.” #Suarez #quotes

“How are you doing this, Price? Cut the bullshit. You’re faking this, or are you trying to convince me that someone implanted tracking chips in everyone?”
“Nobody implanted anything. These people pay for their own tracking devices.” Price pointed to a nearby cell phone kiosk slathered with graphic images of beautiful people chatting on handsets. “A cell phone’s location is constantly tracked and stored in a database. Don’t have a cell phone? Bluetooth devices have a unique identifier, too. Phone headsets, PDAs, music players. Just about any wireless toy you might own. And now there are radio-frequency-identity tags in driver’s licenses, passports, and in credit cards. They respond to radio energy by emitting a unique identifier, which can be linked to a person’s identity. Privately owned sensors at public choke points are harvesting this data throughout the world. It doesn’t have anything to do with the Daemon.”
Price turned to the mall again and drew circles on his layer of D-Space—highlighting sensors bolted to the walls at intersections in the mall’s traffic flow. “Storing data is so cheap it’s essentially free, so data brokers record everything in the hopes that it will have value to someone. The data is aggregated by third parties, linked to individual identities, and sold like any other consumer data. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s an economy, but an economy these people know nothing about. They’re tagged like sheep and have about as much say in the matter as sheep.” #Suarez #quotes

Price was pulling at invisible objects in the air around him. Then he turned to Sebeck. “This is the real world, Sergeant. The one you so dearly miss being a part of.”
Suddenly a new layer of D-Space appeared overlaid on the real world, manifested as thousands of call-outs, glowing numbers hovering above the heads of all the shoppers moving past them. Dollar amounts, green for positive, red for negative. Most of the numbers floating over people’s heads were negative: “-$23,393” hovering over a twentysomething woman on a cell phone, “-$839,991” over a dignified-looking man in his forties, “-$17,189” over his teenage daughter, and on it went. Number after number.
Price raised his arms theatrically. “The net worth of everyone. Real-time financial data.” He frowned. “A lot of red out there, but then again, this is America.” #Suarez #quotes

Price stayed with him. “You, sir, are walking on a privately owned Main Street—permission to trespass revocable at will. Read the plaque on the ground at the entrance if you don’t believe me. These people aren’t citizens of anything, Sergeant. America is just another brand purchased for its goodwill value. For that excellent fucking logo.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s all a big conspiracy. . . .”
“No conspiracy necessary. It’s a process that’s been happening for thousands of years. 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.” #Suarez #quotes

“They were the ones who invented rhyme and meter—the programming language for human memory in preliterary civilizations. It was a cultural checksum—a mnemonic device. You couldn’t fuck with the code or the rhymes didn’t work; and if the rhymes didn’t work, people noticed. And so the knowledge of a people was passed down intact. It was a shamanic code. If you fucked with the code, then society lost its collective mind. Smell me?” #Suarez #quotes

Philips turned back to the monitor and keyed the mic again. “Loki, Sobol is using you. What you’re doing is high treason. If you surrender now, I can help you.”
“You can help me?” He laughed. “I’m not the one who needs help. The society you’re defending is doomed.”
“It’s your society, too, Loki.”
“No. It’s my parents’ society, not mine. What does it offer my generation? A meaningless existence. Living long, boring lives, milked each day by salesmen. Livestock for a permanent ruling class. Well, I have no use for their laws, their maps, their failures. The Daemon has already defeated them.”
“This is your last warning: surrender.”
Loki smiled. “You don’t get it, do you?”
Philips sighed in exasperation and pounded the mic button again. “We physically cut the power to the door in front of you. Your hacks won’t work. Even if you manage to get through the door, we’ve got snipers covering the tarmac. They’ll cut you down from two hundred meters downrange. Just surrender.”
Loki shook his head. “You’re not thinking in enough dimensions, Doctor. Only part of me is in this building.” #Suarez #quotes

The reality was that, with eighty billion dollars in assets under management, the decisions made by Leland MBAs ruled the daily lives of two hundred million Third World people.
Following a (more or less) Darwinian economic model, Leland identified and quantified promising resource development opportunities in the far corners of the world. They had since formed private equity partnerships with local leaders for strip mining in Papua New Guinea, water privatization in Ecuador, marble quarrying in China, oil drilling in Nigeria, and pipeline construction in Myanmar. Anywhere local public and/or private leaders existed with abundant resources, a surfeit of rivals, and a deficit in capital, Leland could be found. And while these projects were theoretically beneficial, the benefits were best perceived at a distance of several thousand miles. #Suarez #quotes