Virus

[scp@plexus.org (Plexus Art & Communication)]

        One of my computers contracted a virus yesterday.  I think I
detected it within an hour of its transfer to my machine and lanced it out
immediately.  It was an NYB virus.  I've seen this guy in action at another
location.  He can only be transferred from a floppy diskette and not through
a network or the Internet.  The virus displaces a sector of the Master Boot
Record with its own program.  When a computer is rebooted with the infected
floppy in the drive, the virus transfers to the Boot Sector on your hard
disk, at the moment the 'Non System Disk' message appears.  It forms a
pseudo friendly symbiosis with its host, in that it does not interfere with,
or destroy, files.  It may also go unnoticed for a while at a site where
disks are shared; because the interesting peculiarity of  NYB is that
computers infected with it have no trouble reading similarly infected
diskettes.  However, an infected computer usually has a problem reading
diskettes with normal Boot Sectors and that's, of course, when the operator
realizes something is wrong.
        International travelers, especially those who reside in a foreign country,
soon realize that their native language is not exactly the same currency in
other nations where it is also the mother tongue.  Obviously there are the
identical words and phrases that are loaded with different meanings
according to the locale.  However, there is an unspoken lingua franca which
has to be learnt in order to attain properly synched communication.  This is
the most difficult, subtle and elusive element of any culture to grasp.  It
can't be taught or gleaned from a text book either: rather the 'learning' of
it is a process of infection.
        Despite the recent intensification in WorldWide communication, I still
think that we are at least a century or more from achieving a truly global
culture.  It is not my opinion that such a thing is desirable - we are as
wonderful in our differences as we are terrible - only that it is
inevitable.  Television and the Internet are certainly among the vehicles
just accelerate the process faster than we can imagine.  One of these is a
discovery, by Tom Zimmerman and Neil Gershenfield (?), that the magnetic
field of the body can be used to store data (perhaps it already does this
?).  They have developed shoes that send low level electrical signals
through the body transforming its magnetic field into what they call an
'intra-body network'.  Presumably a handshake with a similarly equipped
person or device would result in an exchange of data.  The other is what is
happening in the field of 'molecular nanotechnology' with the work of Dr. K.
Eric Drexler.  The concept is simple: the manipulation of atoms to build
three dimensional molecular structures.  This would allow miniaturization on
a fantastic scale.  Molecular 'factories' could be employed to build other
molecular machines with great precision.  AND, OR , NOT are computational
terms but they can also be regarded as basic machines.  With this technology
it will be possible to build these switches on a minuscule scale that will
operate at incredible speeds compared to what can be achieved with today's
electrical circuits: theoretically up to one thousand times more powerful
than our present processors.    The molecule that is at the focus of this
research is a complex protein called 'bacteriorhodopsin'.  It is found in
salt-marsh environments (New Jersey might become new the hub of processor
manufacture) and contains a component called 'chromophore' which behaves
predictably when exposed to light.   Engineers have already constructed
logic gates out of bacteriorhodopsin cubes and lasers that are able to
achieve data transfers at 10MB per second.  In fact they believe that
eventually much faster speeds will be attained as well as the ability to
store tens of gigabits of data on miniature cubes.
        So just imagine the possible scenario of informational exchange in the very
near future.  Powerful processors embedded in your sneakers or dinner
jacket, and for those who can afford it - a super-computer housed in a
nose-job or dental work.    An innocent handshake might either totally zap
your circuits or make you all-knowing.  And we may be just as worried about
contracting a digital virus as a biological one.  In fact they may be the
same.  Or new communities may be instigated by viruses that only allow
communication amongst the hosts it has infected.  And then we might have a
War of the Viruses as the little blighters seek to extend the frontiers of
their human territories.  Imagine ...

Stephen Pusey