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"In WWII, they had a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. I think the modern equivalent of that is that there are no jaded, bored people in the high-tech industry, in the land of really good hardcore geeks."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Civic Notification Distorter | ||
| A device that subtly damages databases full of government information. |
Surley G. Febbs, certified everyman, has an unusual conversation with an anonymous portly, well-cloaked businessman while flying TWA.
| "I'll give you the poop," Febbs said, "on the Civic Notification Distorter. It's n-e but not terror. Not terminal. I mean it doesn't kill. It's in the conf class."
"... that means confusion. Disorienting" "The Civic Notification Distorter," Febbs said, "bases its operation on the requirement that in present-day society every filled-out official form has to be recorded, microwise, in trio or quad or quin. Three, four or five copies in every instance have to be made. The weapon functions in a relatively uncomplicated manner. All micro-copies, after being Xeroxed, are carried over coaxial lines to file-repositories, generally subsurface and away from population centers, in case of a major war. You know, so they'll survive, I mean, records have got to survive. So the Civic Notification Distorter is launched ground-to-ground say from Newfoundland to Peking. I've selected Peking because that's the Sino-South-Asia civic-institution concentration for that half of Peep-East; that's where their half of their total records originate. It strikes, screwing itself within a matter of microseconds out of sight in the ground; no visible trace survives. And at once it extends pseudopodia which search out, subsurface, until it contacts a co-ax carrying data to an archive..." "And the distorter," said Febbs, "Operates from that instant on in a way for which the word 'inspired' is not excessive. It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree. In other words, copy two of the original document no longer can be superimposed on copy one. Copy three disagrees with copy two at one higher order of distortion... |
| Technovelgy from The Zap Gun,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Galaxy Publishing in 1965 Additional resources -
|
It turns out that the U.S. government is very interested in this kind of warfare. However, rather than implementing this as a missile-borne device, the military has set up the Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare, or JFCCNW. They might equally well be called the BAHP (Bad-Ass Hacker Posse). Their apparent function is to penetrate enemy computers to steal or manipulate data so that the enemy cannot communicate effectively with its own troops or materiel.
I can just hear two enemy commanders talking about an order from headquarters - "I'm telling you, my copy of these orders is different from your copy..."
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More Ideas
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Tech news articles related to The Zap Gun
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Civic Notification Distorter-related
news articles:
- Newstweek Notification Distorter
- Poisoning Big Tech's Data Well
- CD, DVD Bit Rot And PKD's Civic Notification Distorter
| Has Turkey Been Stealing Rain From Iran? |
| We Need To Build Anti-Drone Systems For Civilian Spaces |
| Bullet Steers Itself! The Advanced Low-Cost Munitions Ordnance ALaMO |
| Russians Think US Is Weaponizing Asteroids |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
