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"The immediate problem with our meat brains is that they have no back-up. We can lose the most precious information we have from one bump on the head or stroke. You want a mind system with back-up that can access other databases."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Kuang Grade Mark Eleven Penetration Program | ||
| Chinese virus software for breaking the ICE. |
How can you get past the barriers that computers put up against intrusion. You need some really good virus software.
| Maelcum produced a white lump of foam slightly smaller than Case's
head, fished a pearl-handled switchblade on a green nylon lanyard out of
the hip pocket of his tattered shorts and carefully slit the plastic. He
extracted a rectangular object and passed it to Case. `Thas part some
gun, mon?'
`No,' Case said, turning it over, `but it's a weapon. It's virus.' `Not on thisboy tug, mon,' Maelcum said firmly, reaching for the steel cassette. `A program. Virus program. Can't get into you, can't even get into your software. I've got to interface it through the deck, before it can work on anything...'
`What is this thing?' he asked the Hosaka. `Parcel for me.'
He slotted the Chinese virus, paused, then drove it home.
|
| Technovelgy from Neuromancer,
by William Gibson. Published by Phantasia Press in 1984 Additional resources -
|
Gibson does a great job of giving us a mental picture for a tech concept; here's the virus a bit later:
Something dark was forming at the core of the Chinese program. The
density of information overwhelmed the fabric of the matrix, triggering
hypnagogic images. Faint kaleidoscopic angles centered in to a
silver-black focal point. Case watched childhood symbols of evil and bad
luck tumble out along translucent planes: swastikas, skulls and
crossbones, dice flashing snake eyes. If he looked directly at that null
point, no outline would form. It took a dozen quick, peripheral takes
before he had it, a shark thing, gleaming like obsidian, the black
mirrors of its flanks reflecting faint distant lights that bore no
relationship to the matrix around it.
`That's the sting,' the construct said. `When Kuang's good and
bellytight with the Tessier-Ashpool core, we're ridin'~ that through.'
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Neuromancer
More Ideas
and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to Neuromancer
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Kuang Grade Mark Eleven Penetration Program-related
news articles:
- Chinese Cyberwar Units Prepare For Netwar
- DoD Computers Penetrated In Cyber-Attack
- China's PLA Unit 61398 Working On Kuang Grade Mark Eleven Penetration Program
- Great. Now AIs Have Access To Hacking Tools
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
