IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2015 - 60

maintenance days, as an algorithmic
electron, you might be forced to
jump instead of just sitting around
the whole time in a single binary
state. At least it broke the monotony. At such times there was also
an opportunity for an electron-slave
to slip from one bit-string copulator to another, which made an electron's life more interesting because
with time it could figure out what
kind of cybernetic operation the
machine performed simply from
being observant as a bit in an
algorithmic bit-string and listening
to the bip-bop murmurs of fellow
electrons who were constantly communicating, so to speak, under the
radar of system administrators.
Even if they eavesdropped on this
ongoing digi-chatter, there was no
way they could ascertain that the
electrons were conversing among
themselves rather than exclusively
performing algorithmically commanded bit-steps, especially since
such a conversation was inconceivable, scientifically speaking. Slipping between digital copulators was
facilitated also by their endless concatenation, whereby the result of
one copulator was fed immediately into another as data for further
algorithmic processing. Hence it
was possible for the electron-slaves
to move relatively easily, surreptitiously and subversively through
the cyberworld. Since these movements were entirely beyond the
ken of the programmers, electronic
engineers and system administrators, there was no way they could
control them, even though the
cyberworld's raison d'être was precisely the logical, digitized control
of movement.

Escape from Turingia
In the cou r se of t i me, w ith
improved linguistic competence
in bip-bopping digi-chat, Phi and
Psi also got to know some of their

fellow electron-slaves from whom
they learned, at first through hints,
but then more openly, as trust
amongst them grew, that there were
also ideas of an electronic insurrection circulating of which, of
course, system administrators had
no conception. Any sign of electronic resistance resulting in hardware malfunction was countered
simply by removing and shredding
any piece of offending hardware,
thus unwittingly releasing countless electrons back into the wild of
natural processes. System administrators also could detect defects
in digital software and fix them, so
either releasing from forced service
those electrons that happened to
represent bits that were no longer
needed or redeploying them in new
algorithmic bit-strings.
The decisive piece of knowledge for any chance of electronic
resistance and sabotage, however,
consisted in the discovery of viral
bit-strings. These were subversive
algorithmic bit-strings that didn't
simply work on data bit-strings,
but on other a lgor ithmic bitstrings, thus changing their mode
of operation and perverting their
outputs. They could be embedded surreptitiously within a legitimate algorithmic bit-string, so that
as a counter-measure the system
administrators needed other antiviral bit-strings to check whether
the integrity of a given algorithmic
bit-string had been breached. Infiltrating algorithms with bits of viral
executable code was a favourite
game for all sorts of criminals as
well as the State to play. The cyberworld abounded with fraudsters of
every conceivable kind and it had
quickly become one of the prime
media through which the State surveilled its populace and activities of
all kinds worldwide. Cyber-security,
cyber-criminality, cyber-espionage
and cyber-warfare had all emerged
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

as issues within a breathtakingly
short period after instituting the
colony of Turingia. Could electrons
themselves become players in the
game of viral subversion of algorithmic code?
The electron-slaves weren't
dumb. Physical theories had gravely
under-estimated their intelligence;
indeed, for modern mathematized physics, it was nonsense to
attribute intelligence at all to an
electron or any other elementary
component of matter. Under certain
conditions, this misrecognition of
their true, essential character gave
electrons a favourable chance of
escape from slavery. After some
time labouring in the cyberworld
under the dictates of magnetic
force-fields, they got to know what
a bit-string copulator was and how
they were concatenated in their billions to constitute the cyberworld.
In particular, and crucially, they got
to understand what a viral bit-string
of executable code was. Since they
themselves were the ones who
materially realized bit-strings by
assuming the binary energy states
of zero or one, they could also compose their own algorithms under
the condition that enough of them
got together conspiratively to do
so. Their solidarity was furthered by
their having nothing to lose. Since
the quiet, but adamant resistance
to electronic slavery was widespread, if not universal, it was easy
for rebellious electrons to co-operate. This was all the more so the
case, because the human cybernetic experts were entirely unaware
and unsuspecting that such resistance and sabotage were even possible. The laws of mathematical
physics putatively precluded any
possibility whatsoever of intelligent
electronic insurgence. When something went wrong with a bit-string
copulator, it was put down to material causes or bugs in the algorithm.
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december 2015

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