Fortunately, Daniel Suarez's Daemon (lent to me by best friend and better-pedigreed geek H.) hasn't done that yet, although the flashbacks to Stephen King's Christine and the HAL-meets-The-House-of-Usher schtick were both a tad cheesy. (I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the book; I'm hoping it redeems itself.)
But aside from the thought of a manipulative, powerful, and well-funded artificial intelligence (AI) co-opting humans via their weaknesses, one little bit actually did send a shiver down my spine, and partly because of the fortuitous intersection with current state events.
...Sobol was employing an optical license plate reader. Gragg knew it was commercially-available software--used all the time on interstates and downtown roads. But Sobol needed access to DMV records to determine who owned the car. He must have cracked a DMV database in order to get his registration information. Gragg considered the hourly rate of the average DMV worker, and realized that gaining access wasn't a problem for Sobol.And I can't help but remember how, after the Western zeitgeist bored of cheering for German reunification, Glasnost, Peristroika, Presidents Walesa and Havel, Mother Russia and her fourteen baby republics, etc...then woke to worry about assets of the former Soviet Union put on the black market by employees who no longer had any loyalty to a system that wasn't paying them. I'm talking, of course, about the more, errr, radioactive assets.
Now. That's an extreme case. But Governor's thinly-disguised attempt at scapegoating state employees (and unions in general) to a populace already disgruntled at job losses, bank bailouts (that emphatically did not open the sluices of small business capital) underwater mortgages, stagnant wages is not doing the taxpayer any favors in the long run. (Nor, I might add, is baking in $140 million in tax breaks while threatening jobs when you don't get cooperation. Nor is reserving the right to sell off state assets without competitive bids--'cuz, you know, Halliburton worked out soooo well that way--when your campaign contributions are now under the microscope.)
Look. I don't work for the state of Wisconsin. Neither does anyone in my family. I've never belonged to a union, and have held some pretty mixed opinions of them. But the fact of the matter is that the folks at the DMV--just like the the state police and the Governor himself--ultimately work for me in the sense that my taxes are paying part of the bill. And such ham-fisted tactics--right at the outset, no less--don't even qualify as "management," much less "leadership." And that's even without the "cui bono?" questions now surfacing, thanks to Gov. Walker's transparently self-serving courtship of the media spotlight.
Government doesn't exist for the same reason as business, so I frankly consider that comparison ill-considered at best and a canard at worst. But even if the analogy were true, it's never good business--in the long run--to give your employees nothing to lose. (That should be tattooed on the inner eyelids of every MBA grad ever.) And it's certainly not a good idea in a state environment, which is so much more responsible for your well-being than any business. Which is why I refuse to have this (cough) budget (cough) perpetrated in my name without making any protest. Ultimately, it is ordinary schlubs like me who will the price if not enough people stand up to this particularly textbook example of failed management.
