In this brilliantly conceived and absorbing thriller about a computer system that takes over a Geneva-based hedge fund, the Darwinist machine wins. That the machine is Darwinist in its philosophy of life is flagged up at the beginning of the novel when it sends its creator a first edition copy of Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
At the end of the book, the declaration of victory of the machine over humanity is sloganised on the screensavers of the firm's computers:
THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL HAVE NO WORKERS THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL HAVE NO MANAGERS THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL BE A DIGITAL ENTITY THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL BE ALIVE
The money-making machine exploits human greed to achieve Darwinist supremacy. In a hat-tip to George Orwell's 1984, the financier nominally in charge of the hedge fund after his computer genius partner fails to slay the beast willingly submits to the machine's camera surveillance.
Mr Harris clearly does not approve of the greed by which mankind enslaves itself. But without the biblical worldview he has no reason to hope for humanity's redemption. He begins the final chapter of his book with a quotation from Darwin's On the Origin of Species:
Looking to the future...which groups will ultimately prevail, no man can predict; for we well know that many groups, formerly most extensively developed, have now become extinct.
There are a number of biblical quotations Mr Harris could have ended his book with. Cranmer's Curate suggests one:
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him (John 1v18 - AV).
0 comments:
Post a Comment