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"I wrote many novels which … contained the element of the projected collective unconscious, which made them simply incomprehensible to anyone who read them, because they required the reader to accept my premise that each of us lives in a unique world."
- Philip K. Dick
 |
| 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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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 |
| Can A Swarm Of Deadly Drones Take Out An Aircraft Carrier? |
| Has Turkey Been Stealing Rain From Iran? |
| We Need To Build Anti-Drone Systems For Civilian Spaces |
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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.'
