Terminal Compromise by Winn Schwartau (my reading book .txt) 📖

“Let’s eat.” He hastily leapt off the slow moving vehicle.

Scott followed him across the boulevard and dodged cars, busses

and bicycles. They stopped in front of a small Indonesian res-

taurant, Sarang Mas, ably disguised with a red and white striped

awning and darkened windows.

“Ever had Indonesian food?”

“No, well maybe, in New York I guess . . .”

Miles dragged Scott into the unassuming restaurant and the calm-

ing strains of Eastern music replaced the city noises on the

street outside. The red and white plastic checkered tablecloths

severely clashed with the gilt of the pagoda shaped decorations

throughout. But only by American tastes. Sarang Mas was a much

touted and reputable restaurant with very fine native Indonesian

chefs doing the preparations.

“Let me tell you something,” the Spook said. “This food is the

absolute finest food available, anywhere in the world, bar no

idyllic island location, better than a trip to Hershey, Pennsyl-

vania to cure a case of the munchies. It’s delicate, it’s sweet,

it’s taste bud heaven, it’s a thousand points of flavor you’ve

never tried before.” The Spook sounded like a hawker on the Home

Shopping Network.

“Shut up,” Scott joked. “You’re just making it worse.”

“Think of the oral orgasm that’s coming. Anticipation.” The

waiter had appeared and waited patiently. It was still early and

the first seating crowd was two hours away. “Do you mind if I

order?”

“No, be my guest. Just make it fast food. Super fast food,”

Scott begged.

“Ah, let’s have a couple of Sate Kambings to start, ah, and we’ll

share some Daguig Goreng, and some Kodok Goreng and ah, the Guila

Kambing. And,” Spook looked at Scott, “a couple of Heinekens?”

Scott nodded. “And, if there’s any way you could put that order

into warp drive, my friend here,” he pointed at Scott, “would

appreciate it muchly.”

“Very good,” the dark skinned Indonesian waiter replied as he

scurried back to the kitchen.

It still took half an hour for the appetizers to arrive. Scott

chewed up three straws and tore two napkins into shreds while

waiting.

“What is this,” asked Scott as he voraciously dove into the food.

“Does it matter?”

“No,” Scott bit into it. “Mmmmmmm . . .Holy shit, that’s good,

what is it?”

“Goat parts,” the Spook said with a straight face.

Scott stopped chewing. “Which goat parts?” he mumbled staring

over the top of his round glasses.

“The good parts,” said the Spook taking two big bites. “Only the

good parts.”

“It’s nothing like, eyeballs, or lips or . . .” Scott was gross-

ing himself out.

“No, no, paysan, eat up. It’s safe.” The Spook made the Italian

gesture for eating. “Most of the time.” The Spook chuckled as

he ravaged the unidentifiable goat parts on his plate.

Scott looked suspiciously at the Spook, who seemed to be surviv-

ing. How bad could it be? It tasted great, phenomenal, but what

is it? Fuck it. Scott wolfed down his goat parts in total ecsta-

sy. The Spook was right. This was the best tasting food he had

had, ever.

The rest of the meal was as sensorally exquisite as the appetiz-

er. Scott felt relieved once the waiter had promised that the

goat parts were from a goat roast, just like a rib roast or a

pork roast. Nothing disgusting like ear lobes. Ecch!

“So you want to know why we do it,” said the Spook in between

nibbles of Indonesian frog legs. Scott had to think hard to

realize that the Spook had shifted the conversation to hacking.

“It had occurred to me,” responded Scott. “Why do you do it?”

“I’ve always liked biology, so hacking became the obvious

choice,” Spook said laughing. Scott looked perplexed but that

didn’t interrupt his voracious attack on the indescribably deli-

cious foods on his plate.

“How old are you?” Asked the Spook.

“The Big four-oh is in range.”

“Good, me too. Remember Marshall McCluhan?”

“The medium is the message guru.” Scott had admired him and made

considerable effort to attend a few of his highly motivating

lectures.

“Exactly. He predicted it 20 years early. The Networked Socie-

ty.” The Spook paused to toss more food into his mouth. “How

much do you know about computers?”

“I’m learning,” Scott said modestly. Whenever asked that ques-

tion he assumed that he was truly ignorant on the subject despite

his engineering degree. It was just that computers had never

held the fascination for him that they did for others.

“O.K., let me give you the low down.” The Spook sucked down the

last of the Heineken and motioned to the waiter for two more. He

wiped his lips and placed his napkin beside the well cleaned

plate. “At what point does something become alive?”

“Alive?” Scott mused. “When some carbon based molecules get the

right combination of gases in the proper proportions of tempera-

ture and pressure . . .”

“C’mon, guy. Use your imagination,” the Spook scoffed with his

eyes twinkling. “Biologically, you’re right, but philosophically

that’s pretty fucking lame. Bart Simpson could come up with

better than that.” The Spook could be most insulting without

even trying. “Let me ask you, is the traffic light system in New

York alive?”

“No way!” Retorted Scott. “It’s dead as a doornail, programmed

for grid lock.” They both laughed at the ironic choice for

analogy.

“Seriously, in many ways it can be considered alive,” the Spook

said. “It uses electricity as its source of power or food.

Therefore it eats, has a digestive system and has waste product;

heat. Agreed?”

Scott nodded. That was a familiar personification for engineer-

ing students.

“And, if you turn off the power, it stops functioning. A tempo-

rary starvation if you will. It interacts with its environment;

in this case with sensors and switches that react to the condi-

tions at any particular moment. And lastly, and most important-

ly, it has purpose.” Scott raised his eyebrows skeptically.

“The program, the rules, those are its purpose. It is coinciden-

tally the same purpose that its designers had, but nonetheless it

has purpose.”

“That doesn’t make it alive. It can’t think, as we do, and there

is no ego or personality,” Scott said smugly.

“So what? Since when does plankton or slime mold join Mensa?

That’s sentience.” Spook walked right over Scott’s comment.

“O.K.,” Scott acquiesced. “I’m here to play Devil’s Advocate,

not make a continent of enemies.”

“Listen, you better learn something early on,” Spook leaned in

over the table. His seriousness caught Scott’s attention. “You

can disagree with us all you want, that’s not a problem, most

everyone does. But, we do expect fairness, personal and profes-

sional.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” the dimples in Spook’s smiling cheeks radiated cama-

raderie. “Don’t give up on an argument so early if you believe

in it. That’s a chicken shit way out of taking a position. Real

kindergarten.” The Spook finished off his Heineken in two gulps.

Scott’s tension eased realizing the Spook wanted the debate, the

confrontation. This week could be a lot more fun than he had

thought.

“At any rate, can you buy into that, that the traffic systems are

alive?” The Spook asked again.

“I’ll hold my final judgment in abeyance, but for sake of discus-

sion, let’s continue,” acquiesced Scott.

“Fair enough. In 1947, I think that was the year, some guy said

that he doubted there would be world wide market for more than

three computers.”

Scott choked on his beer. “Three? Ha! What mental moron came up

with that?”

“Watson. Thomas Watson, founder of IBM,” the Spook said dead

pan.

“You’re kidding.”

“And what about Phil Estridge?”

“Who’s that?”

“Another IBM’er,” said the Spook. “He was kind of a renegade,

worked outside of the mainstream corporate IBM mold. His bosses

told him, ‘hey, we need a small cheap computer to tie to our

bigger computers. This little company Apple is selling too many

for us not to get involved. By the way, Corporate Headquarters

thinks this project is a total waste of money; they’ve been

against it from the outset. So, you have 8 months.’ They gave

him 8 months to build a computer that would set standards for

generations of machines. And, he pulled it off. Damned shame he

died.

“So, here we have IBM miss-call two of the greatest events in

their history yet they still found ways to earn tens of billions

of dollars. Today we have, oh, around a hundred million comput-

ers in the world. That’s a shitload of computers. And we’re

cranking out twelve million more each year.

“Then we tied over fifty million of these computers together. We

used local area networks, wide area networks, dedicated phone

lines, gate ways, transmission backbones all in an effort to

allow more and more computers to talk to each other. With the

phone company as the fabric of the interconnection of our comput-

ers we have truly become a networked society. Satellites further

tighten the weave on the fabric of the Network. With a modem

and telephone you have the world at your fingertips.” The Spook

raised his