Feeding the Beast

‘Feeding the Beast’ examines the effects of the technological revolution – mobiles, computers, chat rooms and ‘fake news’ – all of which have become very relevant as current topics of discussion.

And, as I have aged, (and how!), concern about how and by whom the www, new media, and AI are deployed and used reflects my abiding interests in life and the universe. There is a plethora of ‘stuff’ that I have absorbed over a couple of years and even, as I write this in 2024, Trump, the Tories, the right-wing here and across Europe are, in some areas at least, resurgent.

There are also topics in “The Coming Storm” by ‘Gabriel Gatehouses on the BBC and the like, that have impacted upon my ideas and memories – including Simon and Garfunkel (Write-ups about the latter refer even to songs of my late teens including references to “four days to hitchhike from Saginaw”  and “they have all gone to look for America”. So much of that ilk comes to mind, and most of it seems to be concerned with, what some think of, as the beginnings of America’s decline post-Nixon and Vietnam and the effects of that fall from grace upon the “free world” as my generation came to know it).

In this story, I articulate my version of worries as to what our society is doing, and might yet begin to do, with the technology that now empowers our human nature to manifest itself in ways that I, and many others, find worrisome. For example, in 2023 and 24 there were, and remain,  some who were suggesting that, though Jan6 was, indisputably, a real event, it was, in reality, something that was staged for the internet by ‘the deep state’ with dark motives.

I very much enjoyed writing this story; another ‘embroidered tale’ (or series thereof) using the shapes of a mix of characters that I have come across in commerce, politics, the military, and security forces at home and abroad. In it, I seek to address the issues of ‘big tech’ and how ‘the internet’ works, tending as it does to maximise income and resonance to reinforce beliefs and prejudices alike and, in those ways, impacting upon the ways we live, love, relate and vote.

Chapter Extract:

Feeding The Beast   “FEEDING THE BEAST”

Despite the state of his mind, still, one part of his brain prompted him to think;” God, I love this car” as the distinctive roar of the Maserati’s exhaust took him briefly away from his present mission. Instinctively, he settled himself into the driver’s seat as, simultaneously, he eased her into a sharp bend whilst reaching across to the passenger seat. There, residing on the plush leather, the bottle – nearly empty – and the silver foil of the packaging of tiny tablets were rolling around with the movement of the vehicle as it bestrode, with elegance and power, the Fen Road outside Cambridge.

Fuck it; he exploded as his searching fingers told him that just one of the little pockets still contained anything – how in hell had all those little ‘reliefs’ he had been swallowing disappeared so fast but to so little effect?

That last row, the noise, the sheer violence of ‘her’ expressed hatred of him.  ‘She’ – his wife of all people – had delivered her crushing assault on all he believed in and had worked on and for!

How could the beautiful, delicate, and supportive creature that had been by his side through all those years in which success had been something to take for granted, a time when all he had touched had, seemingly, turned to gold, have turned so suddenly? How could all of that they had shared have been for naught and have turned so suddenly to utter dross?”