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The Shockwave Rider
The dark side of the information superhighway
The cyberpunk science fiction of writers such as John Brunner predicts corporations and big government will wield the technology to amass power over the individual. The tool of choice to effect this control is a pervasive information network.
Why should any network form in the first place? Electronic commerce is one answer.
Credit information is one tool corporations use to classify individuals. Imagine other commercial services that rank individuals by their propensity to consume certain goods and services: alcohol, tobacco, automobiles, video etc.
Merge this information with demographic data: where individuals lives by zip code, what kind of car they drives, what driving record they have, what legal trouble, if any, they have had. All this information allows corporations to target individuals very effectively.
However, a second reason networks are emerging is the need for individuals to form virtual communities in the face of a society that is becoming increasingly more atomized. Individuals need to interact with others who share their interests.
An Associated Press in the early 1990s, tells the story of how America OnLine had become a forum for victums of spousal abuse. Conversations over the online service had increased in the wake of the O.J. Simpson murder Los Angeles murder trial. The print media had described Simpson as an abusive husband. The AP story described an abused woman engaging in a dialog with a volunteer counseling abuse victums.
The science fiction novel, Shockwave Rider by John Brunner portrays the U.S. wired into a vast communications network that controls every aspect of daily life in the country. The novel also describes an outlaw channel for the common man that provides the only relief from the oppression.
A defect in the network allows this one-way channel to operate without government control. It permits individuals to dial into the service and speak their minds freely knowing they are completely safe from the authorities. In a completely repressed society, the channel is a safe haven for individuals on the brink of breakdown to seek solace.
Our own modern society has become increasingly more atomized. Individuals have become ever more isolated from their neighbors. Online services that enables individuals to regain the sense of community they feel is lost are prospering. The success of special interest groups all over the web testifies to this.
The hero of Shockwave Rider had once worked with the establishment helping to create and maintain the network. As the novel open, he is a hacker who uses his network knowledge to change identity as the authorities' pursuit closes in on him.
As the Shockwave Rider progresses, the authorities are seeking to gain control over the one-way channel and rid itself of this outlaw opreration. The hero's fate becomes linked with the community of hackers who created the channel and who are fighting to keep it from being vanquished.
In the finale to the book, the outlaws force the authorities running the network to execute a nationwide plebiscite on how the network should be run. The novel ends with a question: "How did you vote?"
Considering we are the verge of creating just such an all pervasive network, it is a question we should answer before our creation gets so big it too becomes oppressive.
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