Privacy invasion, stock market manipulation, character assassination…The Fear Index is all so timely! “Torn from the headlines”, as they say. The capacity for causing all this mayhem, plus more, is not here just yet, but not too far in the future either. Machines using algorithms which allow themselves to “learn” from their “experience” do exist. Harris adds the element of using fearful keywords to the mix, “tragedy,” “explosion,” “catastrophe”, the hyperbole that we’ve taken to using even in jest ….drawing from streaming broadcast media, headlines, phone conversations, online records. The jittery market responds accordingly. The man who wrote the algorithm is being targeted, but by whom…which is almost secondary… to keep him out of the way. And it all happens in a gripping, 24-hours.