.................
'the machine that grew'
by Christopher Candide
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Chapter two
Get Cookie
'could you spare any change please ' the words seemed to float through the air...ephemeral.... ...the sight of the woman, slumped against the plexi-glass of
a shop window...clothed in a dirty grey woolen poncho had given taylor a sudden fright ..upon hearing the quiet plea ...he realised angrily that he had
been in.. a world of his own ...and making sure as to pass the transient by.. taylor fixed his gaze...and continued down the thorougfare... the woman had
summoned up the energy to whisper a single phrase under her breath mumbling to herself in the cold and gray of the shadows
'none of us is free ' for all taylor knew it might have well been her
dying breath....a final comment filled with terrible resonance.. of a life lived in a world that offered only tragic accidents...
the word 'free' struck a chord on the young man's conscience...
taylor knew
that the streets of Capital were technicaly safe largely due to the introduction...of among other public safety initiatives.. the right to fair passage
a security policy .born out of the government's reaction to the nation's seemingly
never-ending obssession with crimes of violence.. particulaly the sort of petty street crime that made up the mainstay of media ouput
programming ...designed primarily to put bums on seats and had.as an almost accidental byproduct ...for many years... made the fear of crime...
uppermost in the general public's long list of gripes...concerns that had made many fearful of leaving the comfort of their armchairs
the governmanet ever keen to improve the wellbeing and freedom of choice of iit's citizens had utilised the introduction of such
new technolgies as examples of it's modern systematic approach to policy making.... initiatives invloving new technology bing
carefuly orchestrated or spun in order to calm public fears on the subject... a typical example being that of the cookie or in this instance
geo-cookies ....the idea being simple... entry to a district..or zone (Capital
having three hundred such regional estates.)..required that a person recieve a manditory 'cookie'... a packet of information the size of a mini-bit ...and
stored . 'in the digital destination of his or her choice'....taylor like most most people.. chose
to store 'cookies' onto a credit card..due to the fact that consumer stores provided....among other things 'credit for cookie' incentive schemes..run on similar lines
to a reward sytem...involving the consumer being 'rewarded' with a cookie upon visiting the neighbourhood or district of the store..and therefore
able to use the cookie... as a voucher or coupon when shopping...
in fact some of the larger shopping complexes had their own brand of cookie and thus could run special offer 'baked cookie drives' so reminiscent of traditional
home spun american tradition.... although virtual shopping was still very popular.. in the main being the chief means by which people did their shop ... many people
...due largely to financial consraints felt shopping in person to be preferable many swearing that virtual malls could never replace the real thing...
companys employing this new retail techology soon found that ownership of a large percentage
of the population's' personal details could be made into a lucrative second stream of income... the law concerning private details being...open to
scrutiny ...such that any departmental
agent... ie concerning the state... could have complete access ... and thus
by providing accurate 'consumer information' to a plethora of secured agencys...largely those belonging to
governments departments ..national... and international...all hungry for data.. the proposed introduction of the new
system... a system that in some quarters was
seen as a blatant attempt by the government .. yet again..to. further diminish the rights of the people ....was quite literally seen as the nationalisation of
the IT industry.... or information age and thus the food for thought debate was born a term coined from the
the front page of the morning star whose chief editor liberally pointed out that the ultra right of big
business...siteing.... jim vesta the CEO responsible for creating the geo cookie marketing phenominon had once again given us all food for thought
tempting even the moderate and liberal minded government to take the biggest bite...
the polical use of cookies had opened up the age old debate concerning privacy.. forcing the goernment
to act and in the face of a virtual campaign of civil
disobedience ordering an immediate investigation in the form of a specialist open source
government select committee ( 12 03 2005 AD ) the first open source event of it's kind in the uk
the procedings were televised fully and interactively... the aim being
to investigate the possible benefits and hazards
of IT in the fight against crime.. with special regard to the use of (data tagging and the 'open prisoner'project ) concluding ..amongst other
matters that the use of geo-cookies
was in no way an infringement upon the basic human rights of resident nationals (as laid down by the court of human rights... geneva..). .. the live event
for two weeks drew a large percentage of the worldwide viewing public all of whom eagerly followed the procedings on television...an even larger percentage
interacting via computer and mobile phones in the debate and even
voting on the subject matter... an historical first for the country... many believing that the government's imaginationative handling in of the affair had been lauditory
in .fact
concerning the movements of their individual populations.... in the words
of the information brokers..Hammet & Stein
.this ingenious method of information technology for example will... and by definition prove to be of enormous value
in instances requiring the assured ' regulation' of the free flow of ( social elements )especially with regard to grass roots or community level s
the true value of free flowing statistical information was to be first felt in the political arena...five years later ..with the re election of the
One World Party into a second term of office... crucial ratings at the polls ...based upon record low levels of crime reported throughout the nations press
whose chief source material was governmental conferencing archives ... allegedly incorruptable.. had led the country to vote with it's
instincts.. ignoring the opposition's
pro freedom stance adopting a slogen borrowed from the ultra left... no more food for thought
the year had been 2010 AD ...a year notable for the assasination of the charismatic polititian Chrisian Hestor who had been with the eco friends party since it's
birth in the later years of the nineteen ninetys... culminating in his election as party leader the previous year... many believing that his open
membership of the once cult
status....1640 society.. to be somehow linked to his death.... the assassin a man by the name of palmer thompson gunning down hestor whislt he was
attending a political
rally in london's hyde park... he had imediately turned the weapon on hinself ...but had been overpowered by security men...
the intended round being fired into a crowd of newspaper photographers.... the rally had been
organised by the 1640 society in support of the eco friends... both parties being supporters of the 'new' policy of 'fiscal anarchy' an idea first put forward by
the phiosopher and psycologist Peter Donald Kerensky..who almost a century previously..had .' burnt' the then huge sum of ten thousand english pounds in stirling
choosing to do so within the public domain of the Crystal Palace london england... and in a speech made later to the attending students and dons of
the oxbridge debating society he had merely suggested that the phrase money well spent could also include money well earned... pointing out to the audience...
the presence of a small porceline urn
containing... he claimed... the remains of the money...he had gone on to point out that
he had broken no law ... and was ready to undertake any questions to his state of mind....
the speech had been recieved with much laughter and applause but the philosophy had soon disappeared into obscurity... only to be discoverd nearly a century later
and adopted by the eco friends and other new wave political groups
throughout the months leading up to the general election the drop in reported crime had stunned many around the globe...
creating an almost unstopable ground swell of support for the government's stance on crime... the figures... it seemed spoke for themselves...the cookie was
drawing support from every corner...of the press
Astonishing Statistics Concerning Crime... the broadsheets had been vocal in their support of the government ... editors blithely ignoring
the state of the economy which had been decline for a nmber of years... in fact
geo-cookies were first used used as evidence in a cout of law ...a mere eighteen months after a parliamentary members bill
concerning 'electronic software and questions of innocence'had been put forward
the bill had made it through the second chamber...and become the uk's first law by virtue whereby any member of the public
not in possession of a geo cookie
correlating to his or her address or stated abode would face a minium fine of one percent of their monthly income or
one hundred and thiry nine hours community
service
cookies had of course been used in evidence since the very early twenty first century century a case in point being the
case of 'Holzmer versus the crown'.....2005 AD....the case in point being that a solitary geo-cookie found stored
on the defendant's wrist watch memory chip
turned out to be the vital and damning piece of evidence needed by the prosecution in order to place Steven
Holzmer.. an analyst for the w3.org the nets self styled watchdog...
at the scene of the crime...the case in point .. Holzmer had claimed his home computer's registery held proof of his whereabouts
at the time stating in court and under oath that the virtual domain would
' prove.. without a doubt..the fact of my innocence '
the special nature of electronic fingerprint password material...had.. according to the defence underlined the claim that he had been working at home
on a personal project at the time of the murder
some fifty killometers away from the scene..of the crime.. an exclusive address.....W1a 8TJ.34nm
...deep in the heart of london's fashionable but now faded west end...
the flat had belonged to a computer software magnat known to his friends as psion Sam ... a refernce to his famous hostile takeover
of the blue chip computer conglomerate PSION his body being found in the flat's basement bound and gagged
.the discovery of the geo-cookie...or more commonly termed GECO..Document.Cookie ="W1 8 TJ Expires=".
...by a team of expert technical forensic scientists had been in their own words as 'a chance find in a million...'
the geco being only temporarily stored in the memory bank of the self confessed web guru's wrist watch
the discovery had given the proscecution time enough to investigate and eventually rebuff
the defence's claim of an electronic aliby and led to proof positive that Holzmer had indeed tampered with his personal
computer's registry... a laborious and complicated
task of copying the nesarsary fingerprint data files ..files employed in encryption software
and painstakingly pasting the copies throughout the length and breadth of the registry... Holzmer had.. upon advice from council ... changed his plea
to that of guilty and been given a seven years detention ..order .
news of the case had at the time highlighted growing calls among a 'conspicuous and vocal minority'... for the establishment of an international register or central data
bank that would store information appertaining to all known personal and business computer records including all computer registrys
....in the name of a moral democracy.... the headlines had proclaimed loudly ... calling for information to be be kept safe and open to all
stories such as these were the mainstay of a public diet that consisted on the whole ..of numerous scare stories and true to life tales
concerning the lives of everyday people and the modern sciences..in general ...
.