The headline in the San Jose Mercury was stark:
“Hackers Instigate Internet Warfare”
We’re not quite to the era where hackers jack into their decks, creating avatars that cruise the net doing battle with rogue AIs. But given the nature of what’s going on these days, the lack of direct neural interfaces is a minor obstacle. The dueling and posturing of various internet factions supporting or opposing Julian Assange seems to be the catalyst.
I read Gibson’s Neuromancer trilogy not long after they were originally published, and re-read them a couple of years ago. What’s striking about Gibson’s tales isn’t the tech. It’s the way he captured human and factional behavior.
In some ways, the technology has outstripped Gibson’s predictions, while in other ways, we have yet to catch up. For example, the technology for connecting minds directly to computers is very much in its infancy. By the same token, Gibson missed the implications of wireless technology. His protagonist, Case, still needed a wired connection to jack into the net.
We’re also not quite to the point where we have megacorps with their own orbiting space cities plundering the planet’s financial systems. On the other hand, if you look at what happened during the financial meltdown, the byzantine financial instruments, rapid pace of trading and internationalization of the meltdown are all possible because of computers and high speed networking.
Then along comes Assange. Though much more public, Assange looks very much like the information broker that’s become something of a trope in the Cyberpunk genre. The cast of characters opposing or supporting Assange reads like something from Cyberpunk novels, too.
You’ve got Anonymous, who may or may not be members of 4Chan. You’ve got this guy, Jester, who’s taking on Anonymous and their supporters. You’ve got the Chinese, who may or may not have been monitoring and hacking Google. You’ve got the US military, who have recently been talking about building up a cyberwarfare force. You have rogue criminals creating botnets to attack financial institutions. Who knows, hackers may be part of the cadre that becomes a fifth arm of the US military.
It’s looking like reality is outstripping fiction.
Certainly all this has been going on for years, but the Wikileaks affair seems to have caused much of this to bubble to the surface of the public’s consciousness. What was once the purview of Internet hipsters has become water cooler conversations about the daily news.
To range further afield, technologists are even talking about preserving digital memories. Take a look at Microsoft’s Gordon Bell, who’s been experimenting with his entire life digitally. That’s still a far cry from being able to digitally back up your brain and restore it to a new, cloned “sleeve”, which is one of the more recent cyberpunk tropes. But there’s no doubt researchers are looking at the idea.
As a longtime technology observer, all this is both exciting and disturbing. Eventually, direct neural interfaces will become a reality. Couple that with powerful wireless mobile devices, and there’s nowhere that information will be able to hide.
Recently, I’ve just started watching season one of the TV series Lie to Me. It strikes me that the ability to always know the truth may be as much a curse as a blessing. Expand that thought beyond one guy who can tell when anyone’s lying.
Imagine living in a completely transparent world, without secrets. Would that be a curse or a blessing?
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3 comments
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Ledon Johnson
December 9, 2010 at 10:09 am (UTC -7)
Maybe you should change that Amazon link to the Kindle version, considering the subject.
AJ
February 8, 2011 at 1:10 pm (UTC -7)
I loved the article. I just finished Neuromancer myself, thanks to the Sword and Laser podcast. I’ve started paying more attention to these things ever since the attacks on Estonia. I just read today (via Digg) that parts of NASDAQ have been compromised.
http://business2press.com/2011/02/07/nasdaq-directors-desk-computer-systems-hacked-confirmed/
As to your question, a completely transparent world world be a curse. We would have to see a drastic change in the way humans socialize before transparency would be a good thing.
deefhach
February 15, 2011 at 11:48 pm (UTC -7)
Actually we are, The space cities are located on earth and called Wall Street, City of London and Reyjavik. And the best known financial megacorp is Goldman Sachs
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December 9, 2010 at 11:06 am (UTC -7)
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