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From: rpw3@redwood.UUCP (Rob Warnock)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: Digital Utility Centers
Message-ID: <193@redwood.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Mar-85 06:39:56 EST
Article-I.D.: redwood.193
Posted: Fri Mar 22 06:39:56 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Mar-85 00:07:49 EST
References: <9361@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Organization: [Consultant], Foster City, CA
Lines: 30

For an interesting look at some of the implications of a fully-digital
society, see John Brunner's novel, "The Shockwave Rider" (Ballantine 1975).
Brunner calls the "home digital utility center" a "terminal", but clearly
it has much of the social/personal role as the "utility center".

His speculations of the damage that could be done by someone "out to get you"
in such a world are, well, chilling to say the least. Consider what happens
if your credit rating (and hence your availability of services such as light,
heat, phone, computing) were suddenly AND IMMEDIATELY altered downwards. There
is a scene in which such a spiteful person uses a stolen log-in to get at our
hero, who wakes up in the dark, cold, with no phone, and with his blower-
inflated bubble home collapsing about him.

This novel also introduced the notion of "tapeworm" programs (more than
"viruses") which crawl through the net collecting bits of data (and
capabilities or "authorization codes"), thus adding segments to the
growing "worm".

O.k., so it's one of my favorite books... ;-} 

(See also Shoch & Hupp, "The 'Worm' Programs -- Early Experience with
a Distributed Computation", CACM, March 1982.)


Rob Warnock
Systems Architecture Consultant

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