IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 56

audience. Shortly thereafter an electron appeared on stage to introduce
the guest speaker - this time, and
as an exception, a human - who
was to speak via oneiric cloud-presencing, a special technology that
electrons had developed themselves
for convenient communication with
selected humans whom they felt
they could trust. Due to Willy P.'s
covert domination of the human
world, trustworthy humans were
few and far between. One such was

"The microworld," Gamma
continued, "has been invaded
and colonized for the sake of a
grand automated set-up."

Gamma, whom the electron presenter now announced. He appeared on
stage oneirically, since the electrons
had figured out that humans' minds
could be anywhere while dreaming.
They had approached Gamma to ask
him if he'd like to speak to an audience of clever, interested electrons,
to which he immediately assented.
The oneric hook-up with his mind
worked perfectly. After thanking the
audience for the invitation and their
attendance, he proceeded without
further ado with his lecture on the
cyberworld, about which electrons
living in the wild knew little. All they
knew was that it wasn't a nice place
for an electron to be. They were also
thirsty for greater knowledge of the
human world, which was having an
ever greater impact on their own
existence in diverse ways.
"I've been told that you've
already heard a couple of lectures in the present series on the
nature of the Land of Matta, so

I'll proceed assuming you possess
a certain level of foreknowledge,"
Gamma began. "The cyberworld is
a normally invisible colony within
the Matta called Turingia, a dominion populated primarily by electrons forced to perform labour
along circuits etched minutely into
silicon chips resembling broad,
flat river plains of mighty rivers,
which are the circuits themselves.
In addition, along the circuits there
are also countless steps resembling weirs where electrons are compelled to
jump up or down. The
primitive blue-print for
this miniaturized country
was drawn up by a brilliant
mathematician called Nala
Gnirut with whom Zinbeil
became acquainted in his
efforts to tighten integration in Matta. As you may
know, integration is a calculus for summing up the
tiny, infinitesimal steps in a movement so as to precalculate it and
thus control it. Each tiny step is
like a little stone on a board used
to keep track of a counting process. Calculations are performed
by shifting calculi back and forth.
In Turingia the steps are not infinitesimal, but tiny, discrete ones performed by binary digits called bits,
so the calculations of movements,
which are mainly continuous, can
only be approximated.
" Together with his famous
accomplices, Fritzitoo and Bossymac, with whom he rules Matta,
Zinbeil has indeed succeeded in
extending the control of movement into every crevice of society,
to the detriment of the so-called
private sphere which - despite
pr ivacy being celebra ted as
ostensibly one of Matta's most
cherished values - has been perforated by so much State intervention that it resembles Swiss
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

cheese. Being able to withdraw
from public disclosure, exposure and surveillance has largely
become a self-delusion cultivated
by many, egged on by State propaganda. The control of movement
in the production and circulation
of goods, transportation as well as
the bureaucratic State administration of society demands ever greater efforts to achieve efficiency.
There is constant pressure to lower
costs everywhere by improving productivity and efficiency in general
in processes of whatever kind.
"As it turns out, the automation
of processes is the key to solving (or maybe exacerbating?) the
problem of continually enhancing
efficiency and effectiveness. This
is where Gnirut comes in. In long
nocturnal sessions at the back of
a smoky restaurant with a bottle
of whisky, Zinbeil found out that
Gnirut had come up with the solution to a problem over which Zinbeil
had racked his mind long before
in attempting to develop computing machines. He'd dreamt even
of a machine to 'objectively' compute juridical decisions from universal axioms of law, thus obviating
legal strife once and for all. Justice as automated calculation! With
Gnirut's blue-print, social order was
finally to be instituted and maintained by a universal calculus. Zinbeil was ejaculating enthusiasm for
his project to rationalize society.
"Gnirut's genius stripped the
problem of computation down to
its bare essentials. He saw that any
sort of logically formulable problem
whatsoever, not merely problems
of calculating with numbers as in
arithmetic, could be translated into
a computing procedure consisting
in having one number work step-bystep on another number to produce
a third number. If these numbers
all related to some process, some
movement or change of whatever
∕

december 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015