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Beyond Y2K
Privilege and Privacy in the next Millenium
-- William White
There's been so much hype about the pending Y2K computer crisis, with old school
programmers running around implementing all these (w)hack solutions - readjusting
initialization variables back 30 years, putting the problem off rather than actually
solving it and taking home $300/h for their efforts. As students, it sometimes seems a
little ridiculous but at least we can take heart in the fact that their lousy work today
will mean plenty of jobs for us tomorrow.
The question is though, what will our tomorrow be like? What do we, as the implementers
of the solutions of tomorrow have to understand in order to properly make the right
decisions in the reality of the world to come?
For years, people have forecast an apocalyptic vision of the future - with robots,
computers and machines usually playing the role of the vehicle of evil and destruction.
Whether you believe the world is going to end or not when the clock strikes midnight on
January 1st, 2000 - you must agree that the new millenium will be a much different place
than that of its 20th Century counterpart.
If television was the driving force in shaping our current popular culture, the
computer is what will shape the next generation. With the introduction of newer and faster
modem and modulation techniques (ADSL, cable modems, etc.), we already have the capability
for data transfer rates which allow for real-time video and audio transmission. Recordable
DVD's offer the potential of up to 17 GB per disc - almost 25 times the 680 MB capacity of
our current Writable-CD's. Though both technologies are still yet to break into the
mainstream, it seems hard to believe that we'll be renting movies for long. Consumption of
mass media propaganda in the future will take the form of a more sophisticated and
efficient medium - one that allows the viewer to choose what they want to see, when they
want to see it.
Fibre optics offer us the promise of virtually infinite bandwidth and the race to
provide the PLUG to feed your home is already on. The second major component of the future
world - the VIDEOSCREEN, now exists in the form of our televisions and monitors. In the
coming millenium, it will exist as a flat panel display on our walls. This bigger, better
screen will allow us to watch movies, the news, TV, surf the Internet and both talk to and
see our friends over the phone.
The COMPUTER is what ties it all together. The PLUG feeds into the COMPUTER and its
images are fed out for human consumption through the VIDEOSCREEN. The COMPUTER will
control the entertainment systems within the house, manage the heating and electricity
efficiently and interface with the outside world for financial transactions and various
other activities. This is not an apocalyptic vision. This is the coming reality. Someone
in that coming reality is going to get really rich, and someone in that coming reality is
going to have a lot of power and control over the lives of innocent men and women.
The average American household watches 6 hours of television per day. 6 hours a day
glued to and consuming a fantasy reality. The virtual reality of the television of the
future - the teleputer, the node that exists in your house or apartment, that connects you
to the outside "real world"; this virtual reality will be running 24-7. Every
day. Every hour. Every nanosecond.
The place where all the action will be taking place is of course our beloved Internet.
This incredible network, this graph of computers which span the world, which has spawned
the very model I speak of. The Internet is a ripe land of opportunity for modern day
programmers and people alike. In the uncertainty of the virtual world, there is no racial,
sexual, religious or lifestyle prejudice. It allows for a truly unbiased perspective and
can reveal some interesting things about ourselves. (Why does my friend's mother always
assume the personality of a young teenage boy whenever she goes on IRC? hmmm.)
Gender-swapping when assuming a virtual persona via chat seems to in fact be very popular
if not even the status quo. But there is some comfort in notion that everyone is lying...
some bizarre implications about the real world as well.
The Internet may give a voice to the voiceless, putting www.worthylonelycause.com
alongside www.generalelectric.com in the domain name hierarchy; however it assumes a
certain degree of wealth merely to be able to get online and especially in order to
achieve some type of web presence. As the Internet and its assimilation into the modern
lifestyle becomes stronger and more concrete, it will in fact cut off the lower echelons
of society. Cycles of poverty and despair will become harder to break for those unable or
unwilling to keep pace with technology.
All of this to say that those of us who've enrolled in computer science educations have
indeed made the right decision. There is no need for me to wax on about the relative
advantages and disadvantages of the Internet. It is obviously here to stay and will only
become a more integral part of our lives. The issues that are of key relevance to us in
the future are those of privacy, power and the protection of our freedom and civil rights.
Someone is going to have to write all the software to manage this new medium of
communication. Judging by our current model, it could be just one or two megacorporations
which will be vying for our business. Whoever does implement this new technology could
theoretically implant a variety of subroutines for surveillance and information retrieval
into the mix. It certainly seems in the interest of big business and government to have a
world where everyone can be watched and their lives monitored. Their purchases, the movies
they watch, the music they listen to - the illicit activities they get involved in all
recorded and put into a database to be sold to other companies. This information then
being used to target you into buying more stuff so more information can be sold about what
kind of stuff you buy.
With cameras in every videoscreen giving us a videophone in every living room, we'll
also have a new set of magnifying glasses and microscopes to examine and dissect ourselves
and our culture with. Our culture will become the medium - the medium will come to define
our culture. America's Funniest Home Videos will be replaced by JennyCam, LauraCam, the
DaviesCam or DaveDownTheStreetCam. With an infinite amount of cameras everywhere - an
infinite amount of hilarity will no doubt ensue.
So what is the point of all this? If, for example, Microsoft offers you a job and then
sends you gift packs twice a week - should you say 'no'? Not necessarily, sleeping with
the enemy can sometimes be the best way to get to know them. The point is though that when
it comes time to implement this technology, we'll be the one's doing it. We'll be the ones
living fat on the pig paycheque from Mr. MegaCorp. We'll be the one's who'll have to
implement his evil seedy ideas. We shouldn't just "abstract that data". We've
got to understand that some things we do may have an impact on the lives of many, and
we've got to appreciate what that really means, both for us and them. Or else we might
create something that we regret... something that could destroy ourselves.
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