The Acceptance of Advancement
David was woken by the sound of his phone ringing. He thought he had turned it off. It was 3 am in the morning. It was work.
“Yeah…” he said in a daze.
“We have a situation.” The voice over the phone said.
It was unprecedented, but David somehow knew this would happen. It was 2 years since the implementation of RFID chips as an alternative method of cash transaction. The chip would usually be inserted into the left arm of the person. With it, money could be stored, along with the individual’s identity, passport numbers. It also functioned as a credit card.
The chips were connected by a global network. A bad choice, some said. But the security for the bio-wallet (as it was colloquially called) was impeccable; the only way to steal the money in it was to steal the chip itself.
But nobody said anything about completely erasing all the data held within it. And nobody knew how that happened.
David got into the car and slowly drove from the suburbs into the city, where he was called to. He scanned his arm, hoping for the impossible
“Nothing…” he muttered to himself. The scanner showed a zero balance. Thankfully, he had only about $60 in there. But most people won’t be so lucky.
Oricorp would never have existed without a $500 million capital boost from a VC consortium. This left many analysts baffled, considering that their idea was nothing new (an RFID cash transfer device). But that later revealed their plans to have it connected to a global network, via a special encrypted spectrum. It was considered to be almost impossible to hack because that would require the use of a nearly $100 million device. Altogether, there were twenty of such devices ever made, the size of a telecommunications tower. All of them were owned by Oricorp.
David parked his car at the sidewalk and made his way in. Already there were a group of reporters staking out at the entrance. A reporter who knew him immediately rushed to him and asked him some questions. David just shook his head and entered inside. He was, at the moment, entirely ignorant of the situation.
“Thanks for coming David.” Stella said and shook his hands. She was the head of the network security department. “It happened at around 2:24 a.m. today.” she said as she walked, David following her. She continued, “We’ve already totaled the balances of every single bio-wallet in the world.” “And?” David asked, knowing full well the answer. She shook her head. “Any suspects?”
“At the moment, we’re all thinking it’s internal.”
“No doubt.” Unless someone had found a way to build a $100 million dollar tower, then it was clear that one of Oricorp’s transmission devices were utilized in the hack.
“But I don’t understand,” David said, “why you need me here.”
Stella smiled. “We need you to co-ordinate with PR. You are our top shrink.”
“Technically, I’m a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. But ah, I see why. Calm the panicked masses, yes?”
She nodded. “David, two and a half billion dollars have been erased overnight. While we can reimburse that sum, the damage to our organization will be irreparable if we cannot persuade our clients that this will not happen again.”
“Hmm…”
Just then they met up with a tall and burly man. “Hey Jim, this is David. David, Jim, head of our North America PR department.” Stella introduced them. They shook hands.
“We have four hours,” Jim said, “before
Two months later
David sat down on the couch, and sighed. He now knew how it felt to be unemployed. But he wasn’t quite that surprised.
He had always suspected that people only took Oricorp’s new method of payment with a pinch of salt. But while they were enthusiastic to adopt the new technology (governments were all relieved from printing less paper bills), the Wipeout (as it was now called) had erased, along with their money, the people’s confidence. No assurance could change their minds. As quickly as they had their chips inserted, they were removed.
In other words, Oricorp’s fifteen year experiment came to a close in a most dramatic way possible: in total failure. David speculated that this probably meant the public was subconsciously never confident with Oricorp’s program to begin with. That was what doomed it, although the hackers might have helped.
He recalled a debate he had with a friend of his, who objected that the RFID scheme will result in diminished privacy. Governments and corporations could track what people spent, their identities and such.
“But,” David said, “you forget that privacy will always have to be surrendered in exchange for benefits. For example, you give down your personal details when you want to enter a contest. Of course, you might win a prize, but you are also exposing yourself to the person you give the form to. The question is whether surrendering a certain amount of your privacy will enable you to gain the benefits that the bio-wallet will provide.”
His friend thought for awhile. “True. But in the end, do we really need more and more advanced gadgets?”
“There’s no clear cut line to say that enough is enough. Computers have developed so far because no one said we have had enough of technology. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with advancement. It almost always has brought innumerable benefits.”
Someone piped in. “What about those who say that chips will be used by the Antichrist?” Everyone chuckled. “Yeah,” someone else said, “Oricorp is a front for the Devil’s schemes!”
“Well,” David thought now. “The Devil had a lousy scheme indeed.”
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