On a much higher level than some of the recent posters here: "Silver Bullet-ism: Technology Runs to the
Rescue
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
OF all the cultural trends to arise from
the pain and paranoia produced by
the events of Sept. 11, one of the most
obvious is that people are now urgently
looking for something that will bring the
assurance of safety and a sense of peace. It
looks as if a new faith is aborning: "Silver
Bullet-ism."
While attendance at the nation's houses of
worship has pretty much dropped to pre-
Sept. 11 levels, there is instead a rising,
slightly desperate, faith in technology.
Recently, for example, in a talk that might
have been entitled "How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love Big Brother," Peter W.
Huber spoke at the Harvard Club in New
York City on his vision of a new, more
secure New York in which every package,
every vehicle and every person is monitored,
scanned and evaluated.
"We're going to have to learn to watch and
track pretty much everything that moves," he
said.
Mr. Huber, whose speech was actually called, "Killer Apps: Digital
Technology for Digital Defense," is a writer and a Harvard- trained lawyer
with a degree in engineering from M.I.T., as well as a senior fellow of the
conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. He recommended
using technologies developed for the military, for geologists and even for
credit card companies to create a carapace of protection from terror. And
he regaled the crowd with tales of sensors that can "look" through walls, spy-
cams the size of a deerfly, scanners that can sniff for bombs and look for
guns and match retinal patterns to databases of terrorists.
All of this, he said, should be tied together with the kind of intelligent
computing and pattern recognition software that would ensure that if he took
his credit card to a poor part of town and bought four cheap color TV's, he
would get a phone call within two hours from the credit company.
Some members of the audience seemed uncomfortable with this vision of the
future. But while Mr. Huber blithely agreed that it was "Orwellian," he
insisted that "it can be done with due regard to civil liberties."
Huber is only one such seer. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is
another. He told computer security professionals at an industry trade show in
New York last week that innovations like quantum computing ("I frankly
don't know very much about it, but in essence think of it as magic") for code
breaking and sensor systems that can be fitted to a helmet and detect
thoughts in a test subject's head will protect the nation and its businesses.
Ultimately, Mr. Gingrich said, "the concept of physical and information
security will become a basic price of civilization as we become more closely
wired together."
This search for salvation through technology offers a new twist on the term
"deus ex machina." But when the ancient Romans talked about a "god from a
machine," they meant that a mechanical device would lower an actor-deity
from above at the end of a play to dazzle the crowd and tie up the loose
ends of the plot. Today's practitioners of deus ex machina, however, seem to
have eliminated the god, and are trusting that the machine itself will solve our
problems.
WILL Americans be, as Richard Brautigan wrote, "All watched over by
machines of loving grace?" Or is this the recipe for a less than utopian future
of universal eavesdropping? And will it actually help improve security?
Upgrading the technology that government uses is a good thing — to a point,
said John Seely Brown, the chief scientist at the Xerox Corporation. Mr.
Brown, who preaches both the promise and limitations of technology, said
there are indeed tools in the world of business and in research laboratories
"that are far better than what the government currently uses." He cited the
Internet systems that allow newly merged companies to link incompatible
computer networks and share information, which could be helpful in getting
government agencies to communicate more effectively with each other so
that clues and leads do not fall through the cracks.
But technology alone will not do it, Mr. Brown cautioned. "Maybe the real
reason information is not being swapped in the federal government is power,
turf," he said. In a modern society greater security will require, above all,
better communication between people, and that must be viewed within the
context of human foibles and the complexities of social systems.
Putting too much faith in technology is risky in part because its application
tends to have unforeseen consequences, noted David J. Farber, a computer
scientist who helped design the Internet and who was the chief technologist
for the Federal Communications Commission. "Just try to find a package at
UPS," he joked. Mr. Farber worries about the intrusions upon privacy that
widespread monitoring could cause, "creating a greater threat than you
solve."
THAT threat could have to do in part with the fallibility of new technologies.
Facial recognition technology, for example, has been hailed as a potentially
infallible way of identifying someone. But it is still a flawed technology, said
Lawrence Ponemon, the chief executive of the Privacy Council, a consulting
firm based in Dallas. Accuracy of recognition, he said, is often tied to the size
of the database of faces. So if, say, the pool of Middle Eastern visages is
relatively small, it could produce mistaken matches, leading to a kind of
automated profiling of Middle Eastern men.
Then, too, focusing on technology to provide security can shift resources
away from even greater risks, warned Edward Tenner, a visiting researcher
in the Princeton University department of English and author of "Why Things
Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences"
(Vintage Books, 1997).
The ultimate goal, he said, should be improving the hardiness of a nation's
infrastructure, creating buildings less likely to collapse and planes less likely
to crash, and devising standards that keep weapons like bombs and bugs
(biological and computer- related) from being built. And this can be
accomplished only by patiently, thoroughly rethinking how society functions.
Ultimately, said Mr. Brown of Xerox, anyone looking for a deus out of the
current crop of machinas should keep the bigger picture in mind — and get a
good look at the salesman.
Right now, technological Silver Bullet-ism is being eagerly embraced by
companies that sell biometric devices, surveillance systems and every other
conceivable kind of gadget. Those who believe in greater social control in
America also like it.
"In any deal, you've got to look someone in the eye," Mr. Brown said. "And
it's not to read his retina. It's to read his facial expression."
nytimes.com |
