En un artículo reciente de io9 se afirmaba que una novela de 1975 había predicho la controversia actual con Wikileaks. “Shockwave Rider” de John Brunner cuenta la historia de Nickie Halinger, una especie de niño genio informático que ha escapado de una institución del gobierno, donde ha sido entrenado en las ciencias de la computación. Al parecer Nickie is allied with a group of idealistic young hackers to put the spotlight all the secrets the U.S. government and draws upon himself all sorts of attacks and accusations of unpatriotic.
Indeed, it could be argued that the vast majority of works in the cyberpunk genre predicted to Wikileaks, populated with gangs of lawless antihero facing super mega powerful and Machiavellian governments.
However, "Shockwave Rider" seems to be a pioneering work in the genre. Remember, "Neuromancer" by William Gibson was published in 1984 and "True Names" by Vernor Vinge in 1981, while "Shockwave Rider" it was in 1975, a year before the first Apple computer and the first floppy disk.
In my opinion there should be specific as to understand that science fiction for quite some time we have been speaking about this phenomenon called Wikileaks, but in its broadest conception, in its ultimate goal to achieve total transparency: without exception all the information is available to anyone who wants to know.
I refer to science fiction stories that speak of a time machine, but a particular kind of time machine.
The chronoscope is a fictional device that allows direct observation of events at any place and at any time history. In Wikipedia call it "Time-viewer" , to avoid confusion with a real engine of the same name invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1840 which allowed to measure tiny time intervals compared to a traditional clock.
This imaginary device allows authors wondered what would happen if someone (or everyone) can witness first hand any event in the past? What are the consequences of this for society?
I will not refer here to stories in which, besides seeing the past is possible to see the future as in a crystal ball, because it raises philosophical questions larger caliber is there free will? I'm not going to talk about stories that besides seeing the past is possible to travel that far, because then questions arise as is it possible to change the past? What happens if I kill my own grandfather? Issues to eclipse our original question.
The novel "Light of Other Days", 2000, was a collaboration by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. By manipulating quantum is possible to stabilize wormholes connecting any two points and through them to see what is happening elsewhere in the world. It is possible to see anyone in her private moments, hidden even more intimate. The new technology is gone for good privacy. Then the same technology is being able to show moments back in time. Nothing can prepare society for what triggered the mass discovery of truth in the thousands of years of history. Governments collapse, fall religions, the foundations of human society are shaken. I remember that space-time becomes porous by countless wormholes that focus to observe the scene of the death of Christ.
Clarke's vision and Baxter is optimistic. The playing of any human interaction fundamentally change, for every observable known at any time and place, even the most powerful.
I also remember the emergence of a new form of humanity, when they decide to connect the brain directly through this technology and become a collective mind, capable of dealing with more complex problems, even able to prevent the extinction of all life on land because of an astronomical catastrophe.
In "Snow", 1985, John Crowley, is an artifact chronoscope absolutely personal. A monitoring device the size and appearance of a wasp, which accompanies a person continuously and faithfully recorded all the scenes of his life. At his death all these memories would stored and available to their relatives to be accessed in a cemetery for that purpose in the cemetery. Although it is more a reflection on human memory, include "Snow" on this list for a recently published article about privacy on the Internet. John D. Sutter, of CNN asked whether the Internet is becoming a global repository of the flow of our consciousness and whether there is now something that can remain absolutely private. It presents a scenario in which more and more people are continually searching actions, habits and preferences in social networks, including their physical location from moment to moment.
More 500 million people use Facebook with an average of 90 new "content" per month. In Twitter, we learned the child to breath and there Foursquare which continuously records the location of its participants by GPS. Also Blippy, which publishes every purchase made with credit cards. At this rate, we will not need a Wikileaks if people keep posting their lives voluntarily on the net.
Here in Colombia I think we are far from giving us this way to public view would be like put up a sign saying 'Thieves steal here "or" Secuéstrenme to me. " Although some thought, I remember the hundreds of families decorating their cars with stickers of father, mother, each of the children and even the dog and cat, and more than one message with "Valentina on board." There are so far from the first world so naive.
According to Sutter, technological advances have fundamentally changed our social interactions, to the extent that some analysts warn that people have lost control of their own identities in the network. In early 2010, a site called "PleaseRobMe.com" collected the Foursquare Twitter posts and indicating that people were not home. This information, in theory, could help thieves to identify the best time to enter home or apartment to steal.
This is particularly relevant for new generations, for whom social life practically goes online. No Facebook or Twitter have today is like not having a phone or go to parties, is isolated from its social network. Not an option for most young people.
Many say by this that privacy is a concept in danger of extinction and that we must prepare for a world in which each of our activities is recorded forever in the network. Should we act as if we were always being watched?
From Damon Knight is the story "I See You", 1976. It is actually two alternating narratives, the story of the inventor of universal viewer, who called Ozo, written in third person, the one written in second person, present tense, the life of a woman since when is a girl in a world very different future to ours. A world in which there is no privacy and are amazed at the ingenuity of their ancestors regarding nudity and bodily functions. Why do children say "pee" and "poop" and laugh? Why had taboos about bodily functions? Why was worse stool to sneeze? is a world at peace, no crime. There are no secret places in the future someone is watching and this someone is watching, and so on indefinitely.
Clarke's novel, and Baxter was dedicated to the writer Bob Shaw. He is the author of the novel "Other days, other eyes", 1972, in which technology is a kind of slow glass, a material through which light takes a minute, one day a year, ten years move from side to side. Crystals of these with a delay of twelve hours replace the electric lighting field. It is a world where intelligence can be done by tiny particles of glass and rooms that are to be held secret meetings should be covered by a thick layer Paint just minutes before the meeting. A judge commits suicide at the evidence, ten years buried in a slow glass, which can demonstrate that it has sentenced to death an innocent man. This is not a world as utopian as the other two works. There are people who choose not to see the world only through glass lenses that have only slowly been exposed to pleasant scenes. As today some evade the virtual worlds of video games.
slow crystal technology certainly is not very far from reality. UC Santa Cruz researchers working for the U.S. agency DARPA has developed an optical device able to change the speed of light inside. A laser beam creates variable quantum interference effects that change the refractive index inside.
And we go to 1956 with the story "The Dead Past" by Isaac Asimov, perhaps the best-known work on this topic. In a future in which all research is planned and controlled centrally by the government, chronoscopy is no exception. By contrast, the use of technology is strictly rationed and all research, including study of the matter is barred. A historian frustrated by the continuing negative physical encouraged to investigate, in hiding. What the government fear is that the indiscriminate proliferation of chronoscope can lead to destroy the very notion of privacy. "At first, people would simply look at their youth, their parents, and so on, but it was not long without being grasped its full potential. The housewife forget her poor mother died and would be watching her husband in the office. The merchant and the merchant would monitor their competitors, and the employer to its employees. There would be nothing private. Gatherings and espionage behind the curtains would be nothing compared to this. At all times there would be someone watching and watching the stars of the show. There would be no way to escape the ambush. "
" The Dead Past ", 1956, Isaac Asimov. Translated by Francisco Blanco.
way, the centralized research scheme that speaks Asimov seems to have led to a delay of 60 years, at least in the field of telematics (A familiar story by Tim Wu, author of "The Master Switch, The Rise and Fall of Empires Information ").
In early 1934, Clarence Hickman, an engineer at Bell Labs, had a secret machine in his office, about 1.80 meters tall. If someone called and nobody answered the phone was connected, machine would give a signal and start recording, for leaving a message. Hickman's invention was the tape recording. Bell Laboratories was the area of \u200b\u200bresearch and development of AT & T, then a telecommunications monopoly authorized by the U.S. government. They are owed the demonstration of the dual nature of wave - particle of matter, the invention of the transistor, Unix, C programming language, among many other things.
However, any invention that could ever threaten the interests of AT & T suffered a similar fate as the Ark of the Covenant at the end of the film "Hunters of the Lost Ark ". Hickman's invention was only discovered in the 90s because he was barred from pursuing any research on magnetic storage and everything was closed and deleted, but got to know when the historian Mark Clark Hickman reviewed the notes. Magnetic tape eventually come to the United States as an import from Germany. reason? AT & T strongly believed that the answering machine tape and lead the public to stop using the phone. The mere knowledge that it was possible to record a conversation would lead to an important restriction on the use of phone, with catastrophic consequences for the business. In theory, business men may fear the potential use of a recorded conversation to break a written contract. Also inhibit the use of telephone to discuss intimate matters or matters ethically questionable.
In other words, the magnetic recording structurally change the nature of telephone conversations so that the phone would be far less successful or useful in most of its uses.
This is precisely the kind of social impact that provide science-fiction stories following the invention of chronoscope. Pretty funny.
Magnetic storage was not the only case. Fiber optics, mobile phones, digital subscription lines (DSL), fax machines, among many others, also fell under the censure of Bell Labs and AT & T.
The year 1949 brought a story that I have not had a chance to read: "Private Eye" by Henry Kuttner and CL Moore. It's about a society where almost impossible chronoscope commit murder unpunished. Sounds a bit in the line of "Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick.
1949 is also the story "The Aleph" by Jorge Luis Borges. The Aleph is a point that contains all points of the universe and can see who looks at the same time and without distortion all that exists in nature. I would say is a distant relative of chronoscope, which serves only to see the present. Of course, this is shown in one stroke and detail.
From 1947 is "E for Effort", a short novel by TL Sherrer. I read somewhere that is considered one of the top 10 science fiction stories of all time. Here the chronoscope is used by its inventor to make documentary films. As the unit works even to the distant past, it used to make films of great historical events, showing in detail the dialogue of leaders and how did each war. Sherrer's narrative makes us feel what you would know that we will finally have the opportunity to discover the truth behind all the lies they have told us and maybe finally do justice. oppressive government falls but is then replaced by an even worse to take control of technology and destroy all copies of the films. An all-powerful regime that leads mankind to a nuclear war.
Sherrer's vision is the most pessimistic of all the stories I've reviewed. Instead of a new world without barriers we find more of the same. Another oppressor with a different name but with a new weapon to his credit.
Is not this what has happened with Wikileaks in dictatorial regimes? I read somewhere that in Cuba are translating some of the cables that bind the United States to disclose to the people, likewise is happening in Venezuela and other countries with anti-imperialist governments. Did not the same as the Americans with the information leaked from his enemies?
More of the same.
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