The thing I like about Science Fiction, and to certain extent, fiction
in general, is it's ability to illustrate to the reader what might
happen if certain key things about how we live had been changed.
Science fiction does this with gadgets. What I want to illustrate is
not so much a gadget as a whole bunch of them, doing what doors and
tables have done for generations. The technology we are being buried
under can, like nuclear physics, be used in one of two ways. When
people think about cameras in the home, most like myself, will be
reminded of the classic 1984 scenario. The key element though, is the
control of the gadget. When you have a hammer in your hand, it is
entirely under your control. One hopes. When it is linked back to some
external controller, it is not the same thing. So, unless some external
force is in operation, he who pays the piper, calls the tune. Gadgets
like the ones in this tale, are expensive. In my normal field, we have
a law, it states the speed at which technology will evolve and links it
to the number of electronic components in a single silicon chip. So far
he has been right on the money. The price of the techology tends to go
down by a factor of 10 over a predictable-ish period. If a handheld of
the type described costs 359 Sterling now, it will be 30 odd quid in
short order. It doesn't get to 3 quid quite as fast. Digital watches
did it in the end though. The big screen will be about the same at the
moment, so that will be something of the same order. As for the rest of
the costs for all the computrickery, read on.
Good Morning
When Lou's away, I tend to let the Screen wake me up. Frankly, I need
some heavy guns to bring me round and get me under the warm and
invigorating. Her summons is usually plenty. Today I elected to get the
ITV "wake-up and get fed" show. They tend to soften the blow with mush,
which usually works a treat. They've got weather and a set of local
faces they wheel in every now and then to tell you about traffic jams
and muggings.
There's a remote that gets you onto the VCR. Well actually the Home box
that's sat in the hall cupboard. It's this little metal thing 12"
square and 4" deep. People come and plug wires into it. Telephone, roof
aeriel, Sat dish, some people can get an optical fibre if they live in
the right area. Then the rest are all pretty much obsolete. Nowadays
they're all just different ways of getting the same stuff. They don't
send as many bills as they used to though.
Having contructed myself, I strap on my watch and invade the cooking
spaces. Pressing the little detach button makes the room go dead as I
leave. When one of us is not "Logged in" to the room, the Screen is as
empty as a guest room drawer.
If Lou is in residence, she has usually launched the preliminary asault
on the tea and the cats. Leaving me with the toast and a local audio
station. If I'm very late up, the sitting room is filled with people
renovating houses, or maybe one of the recurring films. The screen in
there is exactly the same as the one upstairs except bigger and with
more speakers. The kitchen one is on the front of a cupboard door with
a jam proof screen over it. The bathroom one doesn't have a camera, the
others all do. They now cost what a decent lamp used to and some of
them even look like lamps. The one in the sitting room sits on a table
by the window. When you switch it on, it opens up the wall. The
wallpaper had previously been left powered down with a photo mess all
over it. Holiday snaps, friends, family, that sort of thing. Now it was
up and running again, it was that film with the brooding hero fella,
you know the one. The Hobbit is doing the homework on his knee screen.
Mine can do all the same stuff as the stationary ones, as could his if
he could log in to it as me. I use a watch for that. If someone wants
to point guns at me for it, I can take it off. Others have them
implanted. Businesses sometimes make you do that. It is supposed to be
being outlawed, but that's still pending. The problem we found was that
if it was important enough to bury away under your skin, then it was
important enough for someone to dig out with a big knife. The deeper
you bury it, the closer to dead you are afterwards. They dropped
fingerprint scans for the same reason. Forget making little gelatin
contact lenses for your pinkies that dry on like glue and give you a
whole new outlook on life; somebody elses. Sometimes its a one shot,
and the nest thing is the genuine article. Host not required. They
weight too much.
The Hobbit has his on a flimsy looking wrist band. They used to use
this stuff at rock concerts and bike rallies. It looks like paper,
moves like cloth and is all but impossible to rip off. We get em by the
box. The new ones have a little computer in them, like the old radio
loop tags in the department stores, but a bit smarter. Lou or I can
pick one out of the packet, hold it up the sweet spot on the sceen and
make it into The Hobbit's. Cutting it off makes it into a piece of
strange feeling paper again. As dead as the bedroom Screen now snorning
through the day, but unable to wake up and wait for you to tell it who
you are ever again. Some adults I know still use them, I prefer a
watch. It's more useful. In order to wrangle a Screen, you need to have
another solid object, some look like one of those smart phones of yore.
A little 3 inch screen with a mini-button keyboard underneath. Others
are just like the TV remotes when TVs were around. Either way, the
screen already knows it's relevant handheld and is just waiting for you
to kick it off in your favour. I got a watch. I just touch the metal
strap to the little metal stud and press the same button I pressed to
pole-axe the bedroom. The Hobbit has to have one of us help, but soon
he'll get the hang that you touch your wristie to the silver bit on the
remote and you can open up all sorts of books and playschool toys. We
do seem to forget though, that when we leave a toy behind and march off
in search of who knows what, they will all switch off and forget all
about you when you get out of range. I like a watch. You get a bitton
that does that. It doesn't need to be shouting all the time. I prefer
it that way for the one The Hobbit wears.
If you are required to hold a warrant, like a police badge of a
military ID card, you would have to cary the one they give you. The
rest of us aren't obliged to have one at all. The bill they brought in
to repeal the second ID card act made that clear. If you are required
to have to prove your identy to a member of the public, on behalf of
the government, in order, to ask them about Taxes, arrest them or shoot
them then you have to carry a warrant. This gives you certain powers,
but renders you subject to somewhat more scrutiny than someone who does
claim to speak for and act in the name of the law. If a court grants a
Freedom of Information request, your location, 24x7 for the prescribed
period becomes a matter of open public record. If you testify in court
or are testified about in court and you carry a warrent, your life
becomes an open book. If I get dragged up in front of the beak, my
backtrail can be used in evidence as well, but only the bits that are
relevant to the case and only if I felt the need to press that button
and connect to an official terminal Screen. You get these in the
library. Most of the Screens in the library are like the ones at home.
In fact exactly like the ones back home with all the same stuff on
them. They also forget all about you when you log off. They started
taking all the actual books out fo the library years ago, but realised
by the contrinued attendance, that that didn't really matter any more.
The Screens they use are made out of similar stuff to The Hobbit's
wristie. They even have some blank paper in and a cover and weight
about the same as a mid sized paperback book. You pick one up on your
eay in and open it up by pressing your whatever on the crest on the
front cover. This crest is the effective part of the Library Privacy
Act. The Library Service became a diffeent kind of organisation when
this act was brought in. No power of law or parliament can make a
Library reveal what went on on a terminal Screen opened through that
crest. If the crest is that of The Crown, then everything you do is
recorded and sealed as part of the official record. Courts require a
heavy burden of proof before allowing access to those bits and bytes.
What's more they are held sealed under a number of different lids. If
the court opens your financial records to a copper, that's what they
get. All the records of what you spent and where, as long as you didn't
use cash. I use cash quite a lot. Sometimes the solid objects and
others the watch based equivalent. I prefer a watch for the non solid
version. It's got a button. They don't get your travel history. What
you spent does not include where you spent it. It's just a number. If
they managed to get your money numbers and they found that you suddenly
got a million quid and then didn't have it any more, they might be
given further leave to open that one up a bit further. There'll be a
public record of that being done though.
It was worrying for a while in the olden days. The government of the
time had got things sort of turned around backwards on itself with the
population being under closer scrutiny than the criminals. The NIR act
seemed to turn that back where it came from. The criminals are still
completely off the radar of course. They're criminals. They always will
be by definition. The act clicked off the spotlight on the ordinary man
in the street and instead focused it on the former watchers. We nearly
got the full 1984 package, but instead of striking while the iron was
hot, they waited years after the second ID Card Act was signed into law
before doing an election. By this time so many people had been bitten
by one or other of their new regulations or bans that they toppled in
true sunset style. We didn't see their rossettes grinning and waving on
the podium for many a long year after that.
Good job too as well. If they had managed to get themselves another 4
years at the crucial point they could have made a lot of their crackpot
schemes a deal more difficult to delete given a bit more time. They
kept waiting for that great shining moment, like Maggies War. Something
to stand under the spotlight and beam to a grateful nation about.
Lukily they couldn't shining-moment themselves out of a wet paper bag.
They did score some non-negative airtime from time to time; you throw
enough dice and you get a 6 eventually. Bet on all sixes like they
seemed to favour and you land up losing 5 to 1. They did love gambing,
but they never did understand the odds. Their downfall was really that
they believed their own propaganda. Maybe the puppeteers didn't, but
numbers will out and the whole herd grinned themselves out of a job
trying to live down a scorecard full of must-do-considerably-betters.
In a way they did us all a favour. They became like a sort of childrens
cautionary tale. An example of what not to do and why. We have a whole
collection of them from wartime leaders to Emporers and Kings. This is
what happens when you try and round up the population like cattle and
stamp them all with a barcode. They get all ratty and make you take
your own medicine. It has happened every time so far. Sometimes quicker
than in other history books, but then I guess they only have to get it
right once. We have to keep on finally sussing them out and kicking
them over, again and again.
This isn't the sort of thing I usually discuss over breakfast, but then
again. You did start it by bringing the subject up.
Off we go
Most days I will be heading off somewhere after the days fast is
broken, if only to wander off with The Hobbit to the Hobbit Guards.
Hopefully they'll manage to fit something useful into the grey mater,
that is if it stops still long enough to notice of course. I will quite
often finish off the wander and go and work in the Library for a while
after that. They've got nice seats and good screens and there's a bunch
of people I work with that tend to be there. Sometimes they have to go
and visit another town library to meet up, but usually you can do that
with your Library Book if you take it to the talking room. You open up
the camera wedged in the top of the book and the microphone just below
it and the rest of the people you are meeting pop up and look back at
you across the middle pages. This can be used to great effect on a wall
sized Screen like the one in our dining room if you want to have a
closed door meeting rather than an informal chat in a public place. One
thing you can't do in a Library is eat. You need to wander off
elsewhere for that. They do all have Screens in the tables, but you
have to trust the bloke behind the counter that he isn't watching. I
usually bring my own in the form of a hardback book and use the one
underneath it for ordering stuff and paying for songs on the jukebox
Screen if it has one. Screens are really very simple things, but you
can very easily watch everything that goes through one if you can get
control of it. A cafe table screen is not exactly a difficult target,
especially if you happen to own it.
Lunch
If I am playing Honoured Hobbit Guard for the day, I will probably be
better off at home and in my own controlled environment when attempting
mid day refuelling. There's various things that are Hobbit beneficial
and certain others that are not. Oh and they vary given time of day and
age and shoe size and all sorts of other scientific variables.
Apparently. Thankfully we have a Screen on the fridge to ask what we
have on the menu today. usually it is a short list. More often than not
almost entirely composed of the stuff that food eats when the planning
authorities consider smaller citizens. I tend to favour food that used
to move about a bit more. Whatever we select, it gets taken off the
stock list and eventually lands back on the shopping list. This is
hanging on the fridge door. If you take it, you can pick up some bits
and bobs while your out and about. Or you could tick them off and let
the local everything shop run them over to you for when you get back. I
used to buy stuff I wanted and then find it again, much changed a few
weeks later. Now when we go to the fridge to see what we want for
elevensies it's there at the top of the list, with a note that you'd
better grab it now before it grabs the cottage cheese hostage and
demands a helicopter.
Pick up some Milk!
My uncle likes using his shopping list to do the actual buying. Its
made of the same stuff as the wristie and has some electronic cash
built in. He can't stay out of the browser markets. Stall holders bring
their stuff along and put a prive tag on it. If you press you shopping
list, or watch strap in my case, to the price tag, it passes over the
relevant amount of money and releases the price tag which then fuses
itself and dies. Even the stall holder doesn't know who actually bought
it, just that person stood in frint of them did and they've been paid.
The shopping list now knows that it has bought some milk and where
from. Lou's shopping list now no longer has milk on and the fridge is
waiting for it's new temporary friend.
We own the fridge, the paper the shopping list is made of, the wrist
watches and hand Screens and more importantly, the keys that cloak the
conversations they have with each other. The writies and shopping
lists, hand Screens and watches are all ours. There are no secrets held
against us by them. Only secrets held by them for us. The vital part
being that we own them and we get to say what is on them, and how it
can be used. They are usually bought on a kind of monthly subscription.
We have to fork out an intial lump to get them, and then we pay a
little bit each month so that if it conks out we can have another one
sharpish. i don't always pay for this. Some of the Screens and other
gadgets are now so cheap and hard wearing that I don't actually need to
do anything to it for several years, by which time I'm bored with it
anyway and fancy another one anyway.
Phone Home
Lou has got back from talking to a supplier in their company meeting
space further out towards the Industrial Estate. It's like a shop, but
doesn't actually have anything you can carry away. It's easier to get
to by shuttle and doesn't need access for goods carriers. The bloke she
was supposed to meet cried off at the last minute and she met him like
she usually does via one of their Screens. I think they might regret
that. He was supposed to take her out to the plant and demonstrate that
they could do what they said they would do. If they can't do it after
all, then they really would be better off negotiating a different deal
than messing about like that. Ahh well. They'll learn. Either way,
she's back home and phoning me to say I need to buck it up if I am
going to get away in time for tomorrow. My watch vibrates quietly to
let me know my attention is required. Lou's picture on the watch face
tells me who by. I touch the watch down on the book and move off to the
talking room. Banter is prevented by the big cartoon of a 1950s stage
microphone with a red line through it on Lou's Screen showing that I
cannot yet talk, but am heading in that direction. When I get sat down
by the window and touch the bisected microphone on my Screen, the
picture clears. I have got milk and I am on my way in 10 minutes. I
need to be home and out again fairly soon I suppose. No matter how
slick it's all become, it still takes time to go to another place that
is over a hundred miles from the one you are in at the moment. You
don't have to drive any more if you don't actually want to, but it
still soaks up the hours.
Monotrain
I finally get myself home, fed, packed and suitable goodbyed by about 8
pm. I'm using one of the companies cabins so I dropped in and picked it
up before heading home. They're always a bit bland, but at least they
always have decent chair beds, there's usually a brewer for tea or
coffee and the company pays for the juice. Tonight it was being picked
up by local taxi before being bodily lifted up and clamped onto the
back of the intercity train at the dock. If this were a holiday, we
would probably get our own cabin dropped onto a barge. The cabin has
the stuff that used to be in our cars before we could do this instead
and the barge would have the stuff that didn't. Tonight the role made
famous in our tale by the canal barge would be played by a cabin motel,
but rather a good one. Your cabin gets clipped onto the side of the
building at some point during the night and you wake up with a view
into a room with a shower, a big Screen and breakfast all laid out.
Tomorrow according to the theory, I would awake to my own en-suite and
the breakfast in the next room would be communal to all the others at
the powwow. The place we are booked into specialises in big meetings.
The suite we have for this one is a 75 berth number with breakout rooms
and everything.
The side-by-side-Screen
Lou and I just put one of these in our cabin, but the company one had
one as well. It is a Screen like all the others, but is placed down
what would be the midline of a double bed. The cabin has one and the
single in our spare room has another on the wall it stands up against.
You can get mobile ones that cover up the other half of a double bed,
but most people end up stubbing heir toes on them in the night. Unless
the forces of Hobbitry are strong tonight, Lou will probably climb in
to the spare bed and watch something with me seemingly a foot away
through the magic electronic muslin or chat, before turning in. In any
event, she'll be back tomorrow morning with words designed to speed me
on my way to work out how the shower is supposed to make me wet and
warm. Some things are still done with pipes and bits of rubber and
never seem to do so to the same design twice running.
Author: Andrew Meredith <andrew@anvil.org>
Date: 17th March 2007
Copyright: The Anvil Organisation Ltd
2007
