Logless

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.”