The past few months i have read 2 books, that although they come from different authors and deal with different subjects, the have something in common. The 2 books i am talking about are “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez and “This is not a game” by Walter Jon Williams.

If you haven’t read the books, and you plan to, don’t read below, since i will probably spoil a lot of interesting surprises for you.

Daemon

Daemon story revolves around a “bot”, which comes to life when the genius dude that coded it , died. The bot initially received information by parsing news sites, but eventually it employes some artificial intelligence and becomes a very aggressive botnet. The botnet’s purpose in life (so to speak) is to acquire control of all the major corporations / governments and then force the people to prove that they deserve their freedom. If they succeed, Daemon will shutdown, otherwise it will keep running controlling every major network

Obviously several people are fighting to control the botnet, each one with a different agenda. Daemon “operatives” are introduced, and their life turns into a huge, real life MMORPG. They level (depending on how good they perform on the quests assigned by Daemon), they gain reputation (based on interaction with other people) and they use AR (Augmented Reality) glasses to have an edge on non-Daemon operatives

The book is pretty good, mainly because:

1. The technologies described in the book are accurate, and even if they don’t fully exist today, it is very probable that they will be consumer grade in the next 5-10 years
2. The plot is engaging. When i was finished with the second book of the series, i really wished i had an Ethernet jack implanted in me
3. It is a battle of humanity against technology, an area that i am quite sure that we haven’t investigated enough

This is not a game

The book revolves around a puppet master, organizing ARG (Alternate Reality Games). The idea is similar to Daemon, but this time a botnet is created which is capable of: a) Performing financial transactions (trade bonds, currencies) and b) Learning and evolving (as usual , Artificial Intelligence comes into play again).The botnet starts slowly, without the intent from the botnet’s master side to be created, but eventually it expands and starts making millions for the botnet master

The story is a bit less engaging, since a limited number of characters is involved, but i liked the book because:

1. The idea of a self-managed, self-replicating money making machine really intrigues me
2. I learned about ARG games and i am ashamed to admit that i had no idea what they were
3. The main character sounds interesting to say the least
4. The financial destruction caused by botnet could be a nice excuse for what is happening to Greece right now

And…

The bottom line is these books probably don’t lie far from what is happening or will happen pretty soon. We already have examples of botnets capable of delivering mass DDoS attacks, spam and identity / data theft. We are also slowly advancing on the artificial intelligence / neural network area, and i am quite sure that the concept of a self-aware, thinking botnet is not really far away

If you believe in God, now it’s a good time to start praying!