Dr. Dobb's Journal October, 2005
I have been following with considerable interest the challenge that bloggers present to the mainstream media (MSM, to use the blogosphere acronym). On important news stories—political or technical—I now find that I need to track both the MSM and certain key bloggers to get anything like a true picture of events. I also find that my list of prime news sources changes from day to day and issue by issue. In all of this, I pretend to myself that I am a bemused observer rather than a confused participant.
I'd love to see the MSM respond to the challenge of blogs by getting better at its job and welcoming the bloggers as a force to keep it on its toes and honest. The optimist in me believes that this is possible.
The cynic in me says that all the MSM seems to be picking up from the blogosphere is an independent attitude toward spelling and fact-checking. That same cynic notes that while the MSM gives us more channels of news today than in the 1950s, those channels are all controlled by a small clique of large corporations increasingly willing to shape the news to their partisan interests, and that they seem to be sliding down a steep decline in professionalism from the bright days of Edward R. Murrow to the present dark night of Bill O'Reilly—and the cynic thanks whatever cynics thank for Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos.
So naturally, when I heard reports that Apple was including Intel's Trusted Platform Module (TPM) security chip in its Intel-based Macintoshes, I skimmed the whole range of technology news and Apple-watcher sources for reactions. What I got was a correspondingly wide range of views, from "Let's wait and see" to "I'm having my Apple tattoo removed."
The TMP chip contains a serial number that lets the OS check that it is running on particular hardware, and some of the news sources, such as the U.K.-based VNUnet, figure that this is Apple's reason for including the chip—to keep anyone from (too easily) installing Mac OS X on a nonMacintosh computer. Then, too, Microsoft is a member of the Trusted Computing Group that is behind the chip, and Open for Business suggests that Apple might be motivated by the belief that you will need a TCG-friendly chip in your computer to talk to Microsoft platforms in the future. Neither of these scenarios is in itself particularly frightening.
But paranoia about this chip and the organization behind it is entirely appropriate. This Trusted Computing business looks to me to be all about industry control over computer-user behavior, including the possibility of prohibiting perfectly legal behavior. And it opens doors best left closed, doors to government and corporate monitoring of individuals and remote censorship (Microsoft seems particularly interested in this capability).
I won't try to summarize the concerns that have been raised about Trusted Computing here, nor will I prejudice your own research by telling you what sources to read, I will just suggest that you google "Trusted Computing."
Trusted Computing seems to me to be part of a larger threat, one of useful technology being subverted to the illegitimate power grabs of governments and corporations. Maybe your paranoia is of a different flavor than mine, and you'd point to the danger of white-collar criminals and international terrorists misusing technology. In any case, technology is power today, more than ever in history, and new technologies are emerging at a rapid pace. And by and large, these new technologies are being released into the wild without thought for how they might be misused. If that was ever morally justifiable, I suggest that it isn't now. Those who build and deploy new technologies need to think about how they might be used. And a little paranoia is entirely appropriate when imagining the possible misuses of your technology.
When the news gets me down, I turn to fiction. I've just been rereading Roger Zelazny's ten-volume Amber series, and I came across this exchange between a software engineer/sorcerer and his mentor:
Mandor: "You designed a remarkable machine, and it never occurred to you it might also become a potent weapon."
Merlin: "You're right. I was more concerned with solving technical problems. I didn't think through all the consequences."
Me: You live in the world, Merlin. Think through the consequences.