The Real Rulers of the World

Last week I was chatting with Chris from my parents' house (where I should have been more usefully staining their decks). I mentioned to him a strange problem they were having with their phone bill that was possibly connected to their wireless router. It's a complicated miasma of a story I won't bog you down in; the short version is that someone is calling an ISP on their line and they're not sure how. I asked Chris about it because he's a tech-type guy and good with computers and has actual skills. Okay, he's got a lot of skills, but it's always so hard for me to imagine Chris being able to do something useful that it's hard to admit.

He threw out a couple of ideas, and then spread the word around the office chat line for all the tech-security guys. Within moments they had compiled a list of 13 possible causes for the problem and 38 solutions, as well as managing to gently mock my family and I for our lack of technological ability. It was impressive and quite helpful.

It was also scary. It was clear that, given the incentives, these guys, in the space of that fifteen-minute chat, could have accessed all my computer files, drained my bank accounts, changed my government files to reflect that I was a 78-year-old Pakastani ex-con, signed me up to receive endless quantities of granny porn, melted my hard drive to slag, and caused my screen to burn with such intensity that I'd be struck instantly blind. I considered the fact that they did none of these things (that I'm aware of yet...) to be kind.

It was eye-opening. Not that I didn't realize I'm a computer gimp, but being reminded of it was jarring. I usually consider myself relatively computer-savvy, mainly because I know a bit more than those I'm usually around and much more than, say, most of my coworkers. But it turns out, of course, that I'm a complete duffer. Following Chris' instructions, I accessed my parents' router and could have encrypted the thing right then. Moments later, I realized that Chris could have done the same thing long before I got the chance and locked us out of our own system. It's only his sterling sense of morality that kept him from doing so (though he did admit that he's often tempted to become a meglomaniacal evil hacker... Not sure how much it would take to push him over the edge at this point).

Our lives are now mostly held in the hands of people based not on their moral merit but on their skills in technology (see, it used to be people with skills in persuasion and con-artistry; hence the change). Think about it: when was the last time you had any significant portion of your net worth in your hands? It's all virtual. I receive my paycheck and pay my bills without ever having seen any actual money. I only get cash when I have to buy fast food or pay for parking. Every piece of personal information about me is somewhere online and can be manipulated thereby. Amoral computer geeks with too-tight Han Shot First t-shirts and posters of Inara Serra on their walls could crush us in an instant, slashing our credit ratings and reassigning us the Social Security Numbers of wanted pedophiles (yes, I'm aware that most Tech-Folk are probably well groomed and have excellent personal hygiene and are socially well adjusted. But that's not funny).

Worst of all, we'd have no way to fight back. We just don't have the wherewithal. Their skills lie outside our domain. It'd be like a Green Beret fighting a housecat; we wouldn't even realize what was happening until it was too late, and when we did see it coming we'd be unable to retaliate. They're holding all the cards and they only allow us to continue to function as a society at their whim.

I'm not quite ready to go into conspiracy theory full-Luddite mode, keeping all my money in precious metals in jars under my foundation or checking my living room for electronic bugs each afternoon (though maybe I should be...), but it was a sobering thought. Hopefully they'll be too tied up in arguments over George Lucas' relative merits and whether Beneath the Planet of the Apes or Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is the better movie to get together and take us down. And we've got brave souls like Sir Slater on our side (at least for now...).

If you see a computer geek this week, give him or her a big hug and a pat on the buttocks to show that you appreciate that he or she hasn't yet gone rogue and killed us all. It'd be a nice gesture toward our technocratic overlords.