Computers, technology... and crime

They call this the information age. Perhaps because we can't call it the industrial age, that one's already taken. But information, who are you kidding? The cumulative knowledge of the world is at our fingertips, but we really shouldn't be taking credit for something that we had no control over. The information just accumulated, like dust bunnies, we just happened to be here.

But maybe it's the information age because those who can, somehow, access, control, manipulate information have become more popular, more influential, that everyone else. Bill Gates the nerd (or is that the third) wouldn't have been so successful in medieval Europe trying to sell software for the newly invented abacus. Then again, he might have cornered the market on square, coloured abacus balls, that could slide easily and lock into place putting Steve Jobs and his newfangled idea to use chestnuts out of business. The information's there, and if you know where to find it, at the right time, you can get lucky and become successful.

It isn't a wonder that about 2% of Canadians are employed on farms. I found that number somewhere, not on Wikipedia, the source of all semi accurate information, not even on Statistics Canada's website, but hunting and pecking through the vast sea of opinions on the web, I came across that number. 2%. See, if I were doing a research paper, I would have done it entirely on the seat of my pants. No wandering off to a farm to ask questions. Why bother? It's all online.

And so you have our top citizens working primarily in this information space. Our presidents are lawyers, or business people, politicians, clergy and even actors. The more syllables you can use in a single word, then the higher your hourly rate usually is. More syllables, equates to more mental energy, which in turn means more effort, which requires more pay. Fewer syllables although possibly contained in more words to say the same thing, don't require as many synapses to fire, hence don't require as much pay.

So it seems.

But let's take a quick look back shall we? The kings of the past, the leaders, the conquerors were in their own right strong and powerful. Genghis was supposed to have lead the charges in his conquests. And it is said that when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more lands left to conquer. Even the kings of England were brutish fighting types. Men of the sword. Richard III himself was killed in battle after leading a charge when some of his allies switched sides weakening the numbers in his army. But there were also some rulers who were there without physical power. They ruled by design. They were appointed, sometimes because it was ordained and they had some spiritual power, but mostly because of family ties. Tutankhamen himself was said to be deformed. But who knows, it's all speculation based on information that's highly suspect. Like trying to reconstruct what he told his sister before he died by looking at a fragment of dirt logged in between his teeth in his mummified body. No wonder historians are so engaged in story telling.

Empires were obtained, land was the currency, and servants, serfs, livestock, women all signified accumulated wealth. The more you had, the more wealthy you were. Gold was good too, but you used it to buy more stuff.

Criminals, back then, stole things. Real things, physical things that you could touch, and take. At first it was your shoes, or your clothes. Then, if you had a house, they'd steal your cookware. Perhaps your drinking tankard. In many cases, I doubt that they'd have gotten too far. After all, everyone knew what your favourite drinking tankard looked like. And shoes, well, they'd better wear them in the next village or someone would find out. And stealing too was risky business. Organising a heist required months, years sometimes, of planning. You had to go to the location and case it. You needed to watch carefully and consider all obstacles. Were the shoes left carelessly in the dining room when the man went to sleep. How many dogs were in the house and did anyone else sleep in the dining room. Being caught wasn't an option. We've read stories about the consequences of being caught, some may be true since there are instances where that type of justice is being carried out today, however, criminals were specialised and few. Once they were outlawed, then they stayed in a band, all to themselves, singing songs and robbing travellers on the highway.

In this information age, having brute strength guarantees nothing, unless you're Hulk Hogan, Mohammed Ali, Mike Tyson or Bruce Lee. And there aren't too many of those. In this information age, you need to pick up books, write a few exams, add a number of cryptic letters after your surname, and then join the millions trying to out sell, out argue, out finagle, out smart, out do each other. Sure you could do it without the additional letters by your name, and a few have done so, but our society today requires that you show your credentials before you walk in through the door. You have to prove who you are before you can take a sip at the trough. And we don't need battle axes, swords or strength to build our empires. We can convince those who work for us to take on the task of the actual labour. We'll just watch, earn our 20%, and sip cafe latte's while we figure out our next move.

This actually makes it a lot easier. It would have been tough surviving in medieval times. I'd have really sucked as a knight. I could have made a good builder, a bricklayer or a carpenter, but some brute would have stolen my tools at night when I was asleep. I'd have been forced to go into hiding, into a monastery, living out my life in quiet contemplation while copying out sections of the bible, with my own edits of course.

Today's criminals have it easier too. The research to commit a crime has probably already been done, a quick search on Wikipedia and perhaps the Deep Internet will probably unearth detailed plans of the Louvre including the alarm system configuration. Further inspection will reveal the name of the company that monitors security at the Louvre, including their off-shored immediate response team. A delivery of curried delights to a disgruntled programmer will soon lead to delivery of the codes required to disable the alarms and carry out your deed. What deed you ask? Of course you're not going to do anything as crass as actually travel to France to manually pick locks and steal Leonardo's Last Supper. Of course not. You only need to get into the database so that you can siphon funds from the museum's fat account to a small savings, no interest, numbered account on an island in the Caribbean that begins with the letter C. You don't need to go to that island to make sure that your funds have been transferred, with the beauty of the Interac system, you can safely withdraw legal tender bills from ATM's worldwide.

That type of crime is becoming insanely popular among the get-rich-quick demographic. These seem to be people in their late teens to early thirties. They have a lot of energy, seem to survive on liquid diets consisting mostly of caffeine beverages with powers of concentration that would make Houdini look like an infant. Not only can they sit in front of computers for an entire month without moving a muscle and typing at a thousand words a minute, but they seem to lack the requirement for bowel movements. Single-mindedly drilling down computer code, line by line, looking for that loophole that will grant them entry. Fearless in the knowledge that even though they're being tracked by IP address, they'll be long gone before someone realises a crime's even been committed.

And so we await the next revolution, the next turn around, cycle, movement of human evolution. And here's my take on it.

We're becoming redundant in the physical experience to the point where there's no need for some extremities any longer. These we need to lose. Our brains work much faster than our hands and typing and writing is becoming a chore. We think. It happens. That's where we need to be. In today's world, this accumulation of wealth goes to buy more stuff, but we won't be bothering with stuff any more. We'll need to accumulate stuff just so that other people can't have it. Like a game. Like a video, or Internet, game. Killing people off in cyberspace results in actual penalties, real physical consequences. After all, the Nintendo generation will be running the world soon. And after we're dead, we'll be deleted, usable parts recycled and fed back into the system to make the next generation abacus.