The Beast has a clear objective: predict the future.
It is what has been doing at least for the last one hundread years and with great success. It is the reason behind the size currently has. The Beast day job is to model human behavior and quantify the risk its masters are exposed to based on the data it receives from the environment.
For the masters or the gods who own this symbolic creature, consolidation it's very important matter, they have a what could be defined as a vocation for order, so they merge and adquire small endevaours that show some compatibility with the work of The Beast and if they see some acceptable degree of competence, they integrate it into it. It is how start ups and public institutions dilute themselves into something else.
The current technology is only the manifestation of The Beast in the material world. Back in the day was paper, then electro mechanical punching machines, today its mass is composed by silicon-based computers. People must distinguish its body from its objective. People has the tendency to mythologize the beast through the means it manifest into reality, but that medium can and probably will change in the future. Like a reptile changing its skin, just like one hundread years ago the work of the beast was a collection of books, in the future its manifestation can be something else entirely. The model people has about it it's going to be obsolete, and if we cling too much to one model, its trail will be lost.
Because if something the beast does very well, it is to hide in plain sight. Every time we perform some monetary operation, we leave a trace. Like a rabbit in the snow. A trail of footprints. That footprint is valuable. Each print is registered, validated, stored and analyzed. And those who control the field where you print your steps are the ones who are part of this game and you can be sure everyone get a piece of the value it produces. However, even for myself, the clear path of money this operation has is difficult to map. Too many elements. Too many variables I don't have access to, specially the contracts and agreements the different people involved in this data economy engage between themselves.
Why I am explaining all of this? Because maybe in my hard heart I am having a bad time trying to reconciliate the fact that people has no choice on the matter and is probably this kind of reduction of personal volition what is leveraged to enforce the collective communion everyone is part of with the Beast and its masters. It is the same principle that having a mobile phone. You need it because it is necessary as an interface with modern society. We can in theory, reduce its use and presence but it is difficult to totally remove it from the equation of our daily lives.
The beast is big and the predators and parasites that attracts are also pretty big. These creatures come in many shapes and forms and it is my mission to protect it from them.
People don't have a choice but feeding the beast, may as well have their assets well defended, because if there is something positive about the beast, it is the fact that has to follow The Law. It was created inside the confines of the law, so it has no other choice but to observe it and every wrong move will have a cost.
The predators, the parasites and scavengers circling around it however, are not binded by any law, and even can be under the protectorate of some External Law. Some of these intrusive elements have their masters of their own.
The beast is big and clumsy. It is difficult to maintain it.
The art of engineering, the art of management, the art of the technique and many shapes of policy had created many instruments to tame it, but it is difficult to coordinate all its components and the people resposible for them, so when you have such difficult infrastructure, is not surprise and you even understand why the masters were so happy and hype with the idea of cognitive technologies as a gateway to the harmonization of the organs and entrails and of course, many providers sold the hope to achieve a perfect orquestation of procedures and processes, however it seems is not as easy as they thought.
If there is something more interesting than the Beast itself is the ones who own it.
If you want a faithful representation of The Masters, watch that spy movie about a secret war that takes place through time, that has the same substance that some form of radiation. The masters are never in the same room you are. You will never met them and probably the best thing it can happen to you is never be close to them. It is better to never call their attention, and shape yourself into a someone with less substance than a shadow or a forgotten dream.
Everyone dies. This is the only clue that helps us to confine the masters inside the fact that they probably inheret it.
It's clear that they enjoy a world where they are not being perceived. Probably because their existence raises questions like the ones I have been doing during this article.