Our technology is haunted by demons controlled by transhuman life-forms

In my latest Locus column, “Demon-Haunted World,” I propose that the Internet of Cheating Things — gadgets that try to trick us into arranging our affairs to the benefit of corporate shareholders, to our own detriment — is bringing us back to the Dark Ages, when alchemists believed that the universe rearranged itself to prevent them from knowing the divine secrets of its workings.

From Dieselgate to Wannacry to HP’s sleazy printer ink chicanery, we are increasingly colonized by demon-haunte...