FlamingText

Voices

Pt 4: The Web

2014: The controversy around PanGenTech's CEO and "Phantom Pharmaceuticals," as it is dubbed in the press, creates an outcry for laws restricting the claims that can be made by the manufacturers of cell-implant systems, but in August InCelCo files suit against the U.S. government under the provisions of Article 12 of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, arguing that the proposed restrictions represent an unfair restraint of trade. The court rules in InCelCo’s favor.

Documentation of subsequent instances of CEO cheesing attacks is not publicly available, although unofficial reports have circulated of other alleged corporate victims resorting to the Federal Restrictions On Trade-Damaging Speech Act of 2006, which allows corporations to seek compensatory damages against media outlets that publish stories resulting in loss of revenue for the company. The extreme reluctance among executives to discuss these incidents even with their own boards prevents any accurate assessment of the prevalence of this type of crime, and provisions in the Homeland Security Act that allow corporations to classify internal documents as "Critical to National Security" further complicate any public investigation. As a result, after the initial furor over PanGenTech, the matter is quickly forgotten by a public already grown weary of stories of corporate scandal and malfeasance.

2015: InCelCo, in a message to shareholders, proudly reports that in the last three quarters none of the Elite CEO level customers have elected to have their implants removed. Sales of the new Platinum Security line, which boasts an "infallible Turing Test" capable of screening for artifical intelligences of all varieties, are higher than expected. Thanks to a hugely successful PR campaign, InCelCo has managed to turn the fear generated by the Phantom Pharmaceutical scandal into an advantage, with sales of their highest level military-grade encryption services exceeding projections.

2016: InCelCo prepares to release a stripped-down version of the Elite Executive implant with fewer security measures and pretty-good encryption (PGE), marketed as the Vice President Class of implants. Prices for the surgery are within the budget of a broad range of customers, with a price tag comparable to breast augmentation or rhinoplasty. InCelCo stocks climb sharply in anticipation of its release.

In the wake of the "Phantom Pharmaceuticals" incident, the new joke repeated to the point of cliche goes "What's the difference between a schizophrenic who talks to imaginary voices in his head and a CEO talking to the Tokyo Branch? The suit!"

This joke reflects the environment in which we find ourselves halfway through the second decade of the twenty-first century: A world where, thanks to the increasing ubiquity of implant technology, more and more people find themselves holding conversations with voices in their heads that only they can hear, and everyone up to the highest level decision-makers is daily expected to act on the whispered confidences of secret interior voices, voices which may or may not have ever originated from the mouths of human beings.

It has been said that we weave the web of our reality from the threads of individual facts, known pieces of information from which we construct the framework for our understanding of the rest of the world. In the modern world, the bulk of what we profess to know comes from exactly those sorts of whispered confidences, facts originating from disembodied voices, facts which can only be credibly confirmed or denied by other, equally intangible voices.

Note:In compliance with the Online Speech Provision of the Federal Restrictions On Trade-Damaging Speech Act, names of certain parties have been fictionalized or, in some cases, omitted.

Posted by flamingbanjo at August 15, 2005 02:27 PM