Daniel Suarez
If you want to be a modern citizen of the world, you have to be minimally capable in technology. It's a new literacy test. Technology rules your outcome in life. And software is making a lot of decisions in our lives.
We need to take a leaf out of nature's book. Any species that clones itself will eventually be attacked by a parasite, leading to an inevitable population crash.
We need to build change in to our systems and let these systems evolve as circumstances change. Change is inevitable, but we need to do a better job of dealing with it, because when we start building huge gleaming monoliths, I think we start getting into trouble.
Neal Stephenson is great. He can write about a white wall for six pages, and it sounds fascinating. I read the whole 'Baroque Cycle' and 'Cryptonomicon.'
I have an English literature degree. I wanted to be the next great American novelist from a very early age, but I put it aside for a while, because I got very realistic at one point.
I'd always loved technology. It's something I always messed around with in computer labs at school. So I glommed onto it very early as way to differentiate myself in business.
I'm against unanswerable concentrations of power, whether that be government or private industry or religious figures - anybody who is not accountable to the larger social climate or society for the power they wield, that concerns me. I'm very pro-democracy.
I think if I were to express my wish, it would be that we are more regionally self-reliant. And I don't mean people being survivalists, I mean regionally self-reliant. So that you have these individual cells. The idea of having different solutions in different areas, so that we have a very robust, durable civilization.
I actually love technology. I worked for 18 years as systems analyst in technology.
I think that for all of the dangers of technology spreading, I think it is more dangerous in some ways that it doesn't. My simple reason for that is we've got 7 billion people on the planet, and we have these very serious problems, and I think we don't know who's going to have the answers to the problems that are coming around the bend.
The role I see for my books is trying to think through the consequences of various things because a lot of the issues around technology and the nuances in it are not usually widely appreciated. That's how I view my writing as I sort of explore this terra incognita ahead of us in an effort to try to understand where we might be heading.
I think technology is spreading, and I think one's experience of technology is going to relate increasingly to class - not so much to country.
We have to find a happy medium in our use of technology. We want things to be efficient, but we have to compartmentalise, too, so that if there is one flaw discovered, the whole thing doesn't topple.
I wrote a piece of software in 1998 that created fictional weather.
When you write a high-tech thriller, and then people in the defense establishment start calling you - people I can't name - you feel you've hit a nerve.
Print-on-demand publishing is the new farm system for new voices in fiction. Authors who have compelling things to say, who can market their stories in compelling ways, will succeed.
I've read one too many thrillers that had really horrible technology in them.
If your data is out there earning money for somebody, you should have a say in it.
My fiction is only just over the horizon. I present a world that's different but it's familiar enough that it freaks people out a little.Collection: People
But if they're so successful, why haven't parasites taken over the world? The answer is simple: they have. We just haven't noticed. That's because successful parasites don't kill us; they become part of us, making us perform all the work to keep them alive and help them reproduce.Collection: Taken
Perfect replication is the enemy of any robust system... Lacking a central nervous system much less a brain the parasite is a simple system designed to compromise a very specific target host. The more uniform the host, the more effective the infestation.Collection: Simple
When the survival strategy of a civilization is invalidated, in all of human history none have ever turned back from the brink.Collection: Civilization
I suspect that democracy is not viable in a technologically advanced society. Free people wield too much ability to destroy.Collection: People
A life where bots tell us what to do every second - get up, go to work, do this, have kids with this person - is completely reasonable. Bots determine our economic opportunities; We have already accepted that. All the decision making would be done by bots and we wouldn't even notice.Collection: Kids
Data is gathered all the time. Just take your mobile phone. Geo-location data collected by your (mobile phone service) provider is not just about your movements. It's about who you are with and what you will do next.Collection: Phones
A very small group of powerful people is deciding what's going to happen with your data, and they're using bots to help implement what they want to do. That has nothing to do with democracy. It's all about efficiency. And that's the really scary thing about it.Collection: Powerful
In all, his outfit required nearly two thousand man-years of research and development, eight barrels of oil, and sixteen patent and trademark infringement lawsuits. All so he could possess casual style. A style that, in logistical requirements, was comparable to fielding a nineteenth-century military brigade. But he looked good. Casual.Collection: Military
Wealth aggregates and becomes political power. Simple as that. ‘Corporation’ is just the most recent name for it.Collection: Simple
Anything before you’re thirty-five is new and exciting, and anything after that is proof the world’s going to hell.Collection: World
Fact and fiction carry the same intrinsic weight in the marketplace of ideas. Fortunately, reality has no advertising budget.Collection: Reality
We need to take a leaf out of natures book. Any species that clones itself will eventually be attacked by a parasite, leading to an inevitable population crash.Collection: Book
At issue is not whether the global economy will pass away. It is passing away. Rising populations and debt combined with depletion of freshwater sources and fossil fuel make the status quo untenable. The only question is whether civil society will survive the transition.Collection: Issues
I don't have a Facebook page. I don't use Twitter. I don't give anyone a lot to grab onto. Sometimes, I even take out the battery of my mobile phone so that I can't be localized.Collection: Phones
Mammals of every species indulge in play. Games are Nature's way of preparing us to face difficult realities.Collection: Reality
In the vast game of Darwinian musical chairs, whenever the music stopped there were large numbers of people without a seat—and some smartass had sold them guns.Collection: Gun
I think if I were to express my wish, it would be that we are more regionally self-reliant. And I dont mean people being survivalists, I mean regionally self-reliant. So that you have these individual cells. The idea of having different solutions in different areas, so that we have a very robust, durable civilization.Collection: Mean
Silicon Valley isn't usually where aspiring authors go to kick-start a literary reputation. [...] How'd he do it? By courting bloggers and influential techies like Joi Ito, Stewart Brand, and Craig Newmark demonstrating that if you can get the geek grapevine on your side, you don't need Random House.Collection: Your Side
Food is the very heart of freedom. How can people be free if they can't feed themselves without getting sued for patent violations?Collection: Heart
For average working folks, America was becoming a puzzle. Who was buying all these two-hundred-dollar copper saucepans, anyway? And how was everyone paying for these BMWs? Were people shrewd or just stupefyingly irresponsible?Collection: Average
I think technology is spreading, and I think ones experience of technology is going to relate increasingly to class - not so much to country.Collection: Country
Sexual reproduction exists solely as a means to defeat parasites. By mixing male and female genes, sex produces offspring not exactly like either the male or female - making each generation different from the last, and presenting a moving target to intruders intent on compromising this system. ... Even with this variation, parasites continue to pose a threat... and parasitism evolves and moves through any system - not just living things. The less variation there is in a system, the more readily parasites will evolve to infest it.Collection: Sex
Anyone who has ever tried to share pizza iwth roommates knows that Communism cannot ever work. If Lenin and Marx had just shard an apartment, perhaps a hundred million lives might have been spared and put to productive use making sneakers and office furniture.Collection: Sneakers