Back in 2009, I began tinkering with writing fiction again.
One short story, Logless, never quite came together though I have been picking
at it again over the last few months. I liked the ideas in it, but as a story I
don’t think that it hung together. Given the recent announcement of Google’s
Project Glass and popular interest in augmented reality, I wish I had been able
to get the story done and out (somehow, perhaps just on the blog) back in 2009.
Like many of my
essays, there are just too many ideas folded in here. The basic one is the
pervasiveness of augmented reality devices throughout our day in the near
future. The process of tagging objects becomes a kind of mobile graffiti and
commentary in the story, and means of viewing the augmented world mentioned in
the story (from glasses to automobile windshields) are getting more press today
in real life. The core idea here is about how this assemblage becomes a kind of
outsourcing of our memories, brought home when someone mysteriously steals the
protagonist’s yesterday (all data from all his sensors, his “log” from
locational information to what he was viewing to his house’s surveillance
footage). He realizes how little he actually remembers of the day, how little
he was paying attention. It’s also a story about the ownership of one’s “log”
or daily data (one must contract with logging companies to manage one’s data;
the more money you pay, the more information you have access to, or control you
have over one’s information; to be very rich means to be able to be virtually
invisible in an augmented world), and the privatization of one’s personal
everyday life. But the protagonist also learns that he can’t opt out; that it’s
actually illegal to destroy his own information since it (aggregated data) is
considered (ironically) an important public resource that the society needs to
function.
There are other pieces that I tossed into the mix here, too.
Mitch, the protagonist, is a writer who pitches a story to his long-term
editor. The story is about a man who becomes increasingly sensitive to wireless
signals (from feeling cell phone calls, getting sunburn from wifi nodes, etc. ;
allergic, in a way, to electromagnetic signals).
So, I won’t inflict much of my
leaden prose on you. But below are some descriptive excerpts that cover aspects
of the scenario that I found interesting.
Logless Excerpts
Idling
at another intersection later, having just missed another light, Mitch took a
moment to flick on his screens. Seen through the windows of his old Audi,
little squares of color suddenly appeared, hovering like little scraps of note
paper over most objects in view. The VW next to him was so covered he couldn’t
see the driver. Most of these tags were personal, joking posts from friends
critiquing the driver’s sexual prowess and set of wheels. A Toyota across the
way had apparently cut someone off earlier that day, stated an angry red tag in
vitriolic language. Traffic streamed across the intersection, each vehicle more
or less spotted in day-glo colors. In the middle of them—and Mitch would
remember this as if it were slow motion from a film—slid a sleek low-slung
black Jag, ink black windows, completely tagless. An untaggable car—a mark not
of perfect driving or clean living, but power. It took quite a bit of wealth to
drop off the system, to glide like a ghost through the electronic confetti.
Then it was gone, hidden behind a truck, then lost down the block. The dry
cleaner’s on the right had a handful of testimonials from loyal customers, and
an article—several years old—from the local paper mentioning its service, and a
request from someone named Jake if anyone had seen a leather portfolio he may
have dropped nearby last Tuesday.
A honk. The light was green.
Mitch switched off the screens (the street regained its normal appearance) and
pulled ahead. A beep from his dashboard told him that someone had tagged him. Don’t
tag and drive!
###
Mitch
nodded and pondered his next move. This was no accident. Someone was after all
his systems and he needed help. At home, he phoned the police, who were less
than helpful: Yes, he had checked with his logging company; No, he can’t prove
someone wiped his car. Mitch remembered his security cameras, but all those
showed of the previous evening was the empty street in front of his house. No
van. No mysterious visitors. In fact, the video showed no traffic at all the
entire night—which proved to Mitch it was fake, but didn’t convince the
officer. Mitch asked about public street surveillance to get the police’s angle
on last evening, but was stonewalled. That was only accessed if there was an
active investigation and nothing warranted one at this time. What of access to
other public systems, Mitch asked. Could he reconstruct his day via public
data? Access to those systems, the officer responded, depended on either level
of account access on a logging system or governmental security clearance. Mitch
tried defining the term “public” for the officer, to no avail.
By dinner time Mitch felt as if
he had been beating his head against a wall for hours. He called his logging
company to upgrade his package to platinum plus—which would give him far
greater (and creepier) access to data on people and places currently blocked to
him—but the coverage would not be retrospective and he’d have to write another
book to pay for it.
Paul arrived around eight and
Mitch had worked up a stir fry as well as a list of pots of data, other traces
from his life: clothing and equipment tags, storefront cameras and detectors
(giving you customized coupons as you passed), traffic sensors, phone and
mobile access data, his shoes, his watch, his fridge, cloud backup, and on and
on. Where this data was kept, and who had access to it, he had no clue, and
neither did Paul, disappointingly. Proprietary, most of it. Even traffic
cameras were privatized, access to the data could be bought but you needed to
be a major marketer to get that data.
###
“Sorry to hear that, I guess. The
usual?” He reached for a cup.
“Yes,
please. Hey, Kyle. Do you know if I was in here on June 12?”
Kyle
was scooping tea leaves. “When was that?”
“Two
days ago. Day before yesterday.”
“Dunno.
I can check the log if you want.”
“No,
that’s OK. Do you remember?”
Kyle
paused with his hand on the hot water lever. “I don’t, I said. Do you want me
to check the log?”
Mitch
shook his head. “Nah. I’m more interested in memories these days.”
Kyle
resumed brewing tea. “Hard to say, days run into each other. Some folks are on
a regular schedule—everyday, every Tuesday—so you kinda remember even if you
don’t. You’re more…haphazard. A regular without regular hours.” He set the tea
before Mitch, who fished out some bills. “Don’t you remember?”
“I
think so, I think I did. But it’s odd, how much we don’t remember.”
“Isn’t
it though?” Kyle was wearing the latest specs; clear with wire frames. His dark
eyes thoughtful. Mitch could see, reflected off Kyle’s corneas, tiny multicolored
colored dots, like fairylights, tags being scanned into his vision. Kyle had
another thought: “You know, if you didn’t always pay cash there might be a
debit trace. Oh, you didn’t want to check the log anyway. Same thing.”
“Same
thing. Cheers, Kyle.”
“Take care, Mr. A.”
###
“Well, Brooke,”
(“Rook,” she corrected. “Rook?” she nodded). “I guess I just realized that I
don’t see the point. Yeah, convenience and all, but really, who cares? Why is
it even there?”
“What?”
said Louis.
“What came to
mind,” Mitch began slowly, “this afternoon, in the coffee shop, was why not
dump it all? Just delete it.”
“Cos
you can’t” said Paul, steering them past a fountain.
“Course
I can, it’s my data. There’s a delete button on the keyboard. There’s a delete
option on the file menu.”
“Yeah,
but that doesn’t really delete anything,” put in Louis.
“There’s
always a backup,” said Mitch.
“Archives
are everywhere,” said Louis.
“All
evidence to the contrary,” said Mitch. “A day of mine was quite effectively
lifted out of the archive.”
“Well,
it can be done,” said Rook. “It’s an old hack, really.”
“Why do I feel that you’re not
just colleagues who happen to be in town?” asked Mitch.
###
Rook jumped in:
“The accumulated data of the citizenry is a treasured national resource.
Destruction of said data, is a crime against the state.”
Mitch
stopped. “Let me get this straight. If I go and manage to delete every grocery
list I ever made for myself…who cares? It’s not a state secret.”
“Not
in and of itself, but as part of the collective, the crowd, it’s a vital part
of who we are. So much of the government and social infrastructure runs based
on statistical analysis of the Cumulation, and accretion of data.”
“It’s
why there are archives of archives,” put in Louis.
“And
no one complains about this?” asked Mitch.
Rook
shrugged. “No one really thinks about it. Just so long as everything keeps
working.”
