The Ganzfeld Memorandum - A Premonition (Paperback)

What you've uncovered is alarming. Nor is it by accident. Anyone who's googled the hashtag #MalleusMaleficus, will know that the virtue of an algorithm lies in its performance, namely in the accuracy of its results, its scope, and the speed with which it can be operated. But either way, you've been had. Look at your Twitter feed. You've been targeted, tracked, stalked, and subjected for weeks, if not months, to being observed remotely. A faceless, clandestine conspiracy hidden behind layers of encryption and online anonymity. Indeed, the first thing you notice about "The Ganzfeld Memorandum" is that it puts a well-deserved stake through the heart of an enormous con. The plot is short and beside the point, really. Anonymously penned, there is, I need hardly point out, no such person as Malleus Maleficus. When I was asked to review this Memo, I found a kind of proto-scientific satire, with CERN, time travel and unexplained Ufo sightings - quantum physics with a whiff of Monty Python. But the one thing I can say about it is, that it skins a cat in that most traditional fashion: the inside job Whosoever he is, Malleus is a not a confabulist. He is a visionary. Nor is any part of this Memo more apposite than the chapters devoted to the "digital filter bubble," with you being harnessed by complex computer algorithms that can predict what you're likely to do next, or when, to whom and, conceivably also why. Malleus knows his strength, and to the charge that his claim of some kind of universal psychosis requires a pinch of salt, I would point to the shape-shifting properties of the "user-generated content," in which past preferences mean users enter a hall of mirrors, where you can't tell whether anyone is who they say they are, and where everyone is chasing their own reflection. As for this book's style - it veers between baffling and superbly derisory. Readers may wonder what Malleus is up to. For if the long list of scientists, journalists, authors and academics featured in this memo is not, in fact, a declaration of further intent, I'll be happy to eat my words, if not the entire book. (V.H.I.)