As we all know, history is written by the victorious. This simple but powerful fact has led to a number of long lasting and sometimes impactful changes in mankinds culture(s). The breach of the chinese wall by the mongolian empire, aswell as the infiltration of troy with a wooden horse are just a few examples of that statement. Sometimes these events are so detrimental that carefully cultivated phenotypes were manipulated to a degree, that even hundreds of years, if ever at all, wouldn’t make up for the implemented changes.
Furthermore the medium of data perseverance changed over the span of millennia, stoneblocks changed into broncetables, papyrus changed to paper, radio changed to television and data storages changed to cloud systems. If you argued that cloud systems still contain of physical data storages and paper is still as plant based as papyrus, i would probably agree. That said, there is still a trend towards centralized solutions, even though those are keen to manipulation, i.e. the library of rome falling victim to nero’s madness or the library of alexandria to a generic fire.
There is also different types of arguing of how these losses of knowledge are somewhat connected to documents of possession, like land ownership and the abuse that comes with that. But also interesting insights of individual lives of population are being lost in these cases, priceless for historians.
In our world these problems seem so far away, but only because we didn’t adapt to our set of technologies. If major knowledge is being stored in data centers, those who own these are powerful. If physical data storages are being manipulated, i.e. because vendors and merchants work with secret agencies or other national institutes, it is possible to infiltrate businesses, other institutes or unpleasant parts of a population.
Recently i ordered an hdd drive to store my amateur entertainment media safely. The order contained a physical protection for the drive plus the drive itself. Both were in store available and could have been send in one package. The plastic protection for the drive arrived, while the hdd did not.
Of course it is inappropriate for a single amateur individual as me to conclude, that someone tempered with my drive. Mostly because the amount of work for a single individual would be so costly and painfully inefficient, that no sane person would ever come up with that. But in an era of stuxnet and other highly intrusive codes, plus our current climate leaves a sour taste, even for someone like me.
I therefore ask myself, how good are our governments prepared for events like that? Do they have proprietary solutions of hardware manufacturers or are they depending on monopolized manufacturing and transportation of these, sometimes very important, hardware components.
I think we all know the answer. I don’t think that everybody knows the impact of such manipulation though, neither for themselves, nor for other parts of our governments, police departments, infrastructure controls or businesses.
I would therefore recommend to change direction and implement solutions that would allow to divert such dependencies into national hands, if not further. Either that or prepare that at some point a catastrophic event will disrupt our access to knowledge and control of our society.
Cheers.
Laeyzii's Leftovers 