Loss of Privacy

William Gibson’s Neuromancer was published on July 1, 1984 and accurately predicted the world wide web and cyberspace, but what else did he get right?  What did he get wrong?

Gibson’s cyberspace also turned computing into an experience that involved all of the senses. Instead of interacting with the network visually by using a computer monitor, Gibson’s characters “jack in” and navigate an enveloping 3D world. Each user is “connected” to the computer via a system of electrodes and neural interfaces emerging from a laptop-type thing called a “deck.” Once hooked up and inside cyberspace, the user can experience intense beauty, such as the sight of the huge, shining cities of data that Gibson describes.

Here’s how Gibson describes it in the early pages of Neuromancer: “Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.”

On the other hand, if something goes wrong, as during Case’s risky hacks of corporate databases, the user can feel actual pain and even die (or “flatline,” to use Gibson term).

Even what Gibson got wrong is still pretty cool.  Simstim is an interesting idea even if it’s not true today.  Also, even if we don’t have our own evil AI, the very idea of Wintermute is possible in the  future.  The idea of a Construct is quite scary and, to this day, I’m not sure if it would be a good or bad thing to actually have.

If you haven’t read Neuromancer, you can start your journey reading by either reading the wiki, reading the book, or listening to the audio book, read by the author himself.

Having finally seen the light, the city of Schaumburg, Illinois has come to the conclusion that red light cameras don’t make anyone or anything safer.

Like other municipalities, Schaumburg began issuing $100 tickets in November to those found blowing the red light, generating some 7,000 tickets by the end of 2008, according to the Daily Herald. By February, that number climbed to over 10,000 and $1 million in revenue. Apparently very few accidents were prevented, however, and the city got numerous angry phone calls from citizens and tourists alike, resulting in the camera being switched off in February.

The police department has concluded that the red light cameras didn’t prevent any accidents or collisions.  The use of the cameras was always to prevent collisions, not to be a revenue generator, so the police department will issue a recommendation that the city remove the camera and not install any more.

After receiving complaints that airport workers were taking bribes at Katmandu airport and discovering it was true, the airport has said that employees must wear trousers without pockets.

Ranchers around the United States do not want a government program that tracks their cattle.  They say it’s too expensive, intrusive, and doesn’t work well.  The USDA’s National Animal Identification systems touts itself as being useful because it can track if a cow has mad cow disease or bovine tuberculosis.

Ranchers claim that the tags are so expensive and impractical that they could push them out of business.  Most cannot afford the cost of tags, scanning equipment, and filing reports of livestock movements.

Mr. Platt called the extra $2 cost of the electronic tags an onerous burden for a teetering industry and said he often moved horses and some of his 1,000 head of cattle among three ranches here and in Arizona. Small groups of cattle are often rounded up in distant spots and herded into a truck by a single person, who could not simultaneously wield the hand-held scanner needed to record individual animal identities, Mr. Plattsaid. And there is no Internet connection on the ranch for filing to a regional database.

Looking over the 22,000 acres that his cattle share with elk, pronghorns and mountain lions and where animals can easily disappear, Mr. Platt scoffed at the idea of reporting every death, as animal health officials prefer.

“They can’t comprehend the vastness of a ranch like this,” he said of federal officials. “They don’t appreciate what is involved logistically.”

The USDA claims that farmers don’t need to purchase anything except for the tags, which aren’t federally mandated.  They suggest that the tags could be read at auction, market or a feedlot.  However, they then go on to contradict themselves, stating that they hope to prod all states to require tags and be able to trace all animals.