We are taking the concept of the armored car, used to safely transfer large sums of cash between financial institutions, and moving it to the Information Superhighway.
Where will the courts draw the line between speech and action? Is the person who writes a virus a criminal? What if she releases one accidentally? What if she does so on purpose? What if her activities are part of an academic study program focusing on viral behavior and dissemination? Can writing a virus be considered aiding and abetting a crime (such as vandalism)? And what about computer intrusion? Are “hacking” and “cracking” more analogous to burglary than to trespass? Or do they not fit any traditional crime at all? Should the law distinguish between “malicious” and “exploratory” computer intrusion? Questions like these will dominate discussions of computer-crime legislation.
No streets need to be dug up, no wires pulled through ducts and ceilings … It is now plausible to expect that within this decade we will see a chip that can send full-motion color video down an ordinary analog telephone line. And the chip will sell at a price comparable to a few months’ subscription to cable TV.
Technology is transforming the face of democracy … With modern technology, vastly more is possible. We are moving to a full-blown network of two-way television, in which anyone can be an orator or inquisitor. The network offers the pamphleteer and soap box proselytizer not just a place in Speaker’s Corner but the whole of Hyde Park. It gives the man on the couch precisely the same chance as Dan Rather to raise his hand and say something rude when the President steps into the room.
Someday you’re going to back a 20-year-old kid who writes some software that will change the world.
People who want it to be an escapist thing … will be disappointed. Everybody else will be having these amazing experiences … It’s only in its dynamic quality that virtual reality becomes real. There might be some people who veg out in it, but I just think that’s extremely unlikely … If, 20 years from now, what’s going on in VR is just an amplified version of what goes on in television sets, it would be an overall failure.
Imagine the possibilities when GPS and a cellular telephone can be combined on a cheap chip set and installed almost anywhere. Huge amounts of time and money have already been invested, for example, in trying to perfect collision avoidance systems for planes and jets. But combine GPS with a simple transmitter and computer and you have a system that might well be far cheaper and more accurate than any current alternative … If you want to track migratory birds, prisoners on parole or (what amounts to much the same thing) a teenage daughter in possession of your car keys, you are going to be a customer sooner or later.
[Whereever] neo-Luddites may be found, they are attempting to bear witness to the secret little truth that lies at the heart of modern experience: Whatever its presumed benefits, of speed, or ease, or power, or wealth, industrial technology comes at a price, and in the contemporary world that price is ever rising and ever threatening.
The plugs and jacks and sockets have taken over the telescreen world; the Ministry is dead. Every untilled plug, every unconnected jack, is a loose end, a new entry into the network or an exit from it, a new soap box in Hyde Park, a new podium, a new microphone for poetry or prose, a new screen or telescreen for displaying private sentiment or fomenting sedition, for preaching the gospel, or peddling fresh bread.
In the future complex programs such as large databases will be virtual-reality cities which the user will move through to find information. “I believe in that not just because I think it’s a cool idea. It’s because I think that is the method of managing complicated things that people evolved to be good at.”