Fox News (yes, I know) is reporting that a digital road sign in Austin, Texas was hacked recently. The impish hackers changed the sign to read “Zombies Ahead”. Heh, zombies.
Foxnews.com says that:
“According to the blog i-hacked.com, some commercial road signs, including those manufactured by IMAGO's ADDCO division, can be easily altered because their instrument panels are frequently left unlocked and their default passwords are not changed.”
The speculation is that it was the work of university students, which is the digital equivalent of drunkenly stealing a street sign for the dorm room.
In addition to reminding me to watch L.A. Story and Land of the Dead again, it made me think about what happens when digital information is more widely dispersed among our real, physical environment. Will it take the ‘true-for-now’ tendency of the web out into the wild?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
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9 comments:
What do you mean by "true for now"?
Hey Chris,
Just that I think that if you think about something like Wikipedia, which I love, there isn't really any one point at which you would say it's 'true', as a continually morphing thing, it's in a perpetual state of true-for-nowness. I guess you could say some of the same things about all learning, but it seems more pronounced, more fluid, online. Thanks for commenting!
Hi Nora.
Thanks for clearing that up.
I agree 'true-for-now' is much like learning the old fashioned way when knowledge was (and still is) added, changed and expanded by scientists, philosophers, artists and the like.
The notion of the web's souped-up version of 'true-for-now' entering the wild sounds chaotic to me.
Under the original 'true-for-now' scenario, what was true would have been more regulated and in the hands of the few, and presumably responsible.
I would think the fluidity of the web wouldn't translate well into the real world and result in a rockier ride than what we experience on the Internet.
With truth set by anyone with the savvy to write a convincing post, edit a photo or hack a road sign, the impacts on people, especially those unaware of what can be done with today's technology, could be disruptive.
Cheers
Thanks for the thought-provoking comments, Chris.
In Jr. High, a friend of mine changed the scrolling marquis outside the cafeteria to read "Free Pizza!" He's not certain that anyone actually noticed, but this in 1999 when being able to "hack" anything was still pretty new exciting. Well, that and we were 14 . . .
Oh, Jaynie I love that!! Zombie DIY. Thanks for that!
Hey Nora --
True-for-now puzzled me at first. Thanks to your comments to Chris above, confirming what you meant, I agree it's interesting that the "truth" is in a state of evolving fluidity, but I don't think it's the most interesting aspect of today's superconductor communications.
After all, Aristotle (heavier items fall faster) and Pythagoras (all numbers are rational) each had a "true for now" worldview which was accepted but eventually overthrown too. It just took a lot longer.
Maybe "instant history" describes the fluidity you note. Once the truth becomes a twitter/facebook feed and a set of wikipedia edits, the gap between reality and history approaches zero.)
The usual view of Wikipedia's fast but unreliable truths is their "Never-wrong-for-long" philosophy. Tie them together and maybe you get something like "the lifetime of a historical lie approaches zero", which can't be all bad, right?
P.S. Everyone does indeed love Zombies.
http://www.amazon.com/Pride-Prejudice-Zombies-Classic-Ultraviolent/dp/1594743347
Hi Steve, yes, it's true that it's not unprecedented, and that paradigms have always been overturned, but I think that we may be developing norms that are *defined* by being in-process. Twitter is probably the most obvious example of this.
Lord, looking at this, I really have to write more often. January! That's just embarrassing. I was gently chastised at a talk I gave recently!
Thanks for the comments!
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