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"I realized there was a heavy-duty change coming in biology, and I could write a really compelling novel about catastrophic evolution, punctuated equilibrium."
- Greg Bear
 |
| 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
and Technology from The Zap Gun
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and Technology by Philip K. Dick
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
| Bunker Busters and Bore-Pellets |
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| Has Turkey Been Stealing Rain From Iran? |
| We Need To Build Anti-Drone Systems For Civilian Spaces |
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
