Matt Dyas: "Dear Chuck Wendig: The Machine Hasn't Stopped... Yet"

Dear Chuck Wendig: The Machine Hasn’t Stopped… Yet

by Matthew Dyas

I completely agree with the notion that the value of fiction lies in its ability to address both the interesting and the troubling at the same time. I applied this idea to the piece I wrote for our class’s world building assignment in which I explored the implications of a society without privacy. Based partly upon the reality of cryptographic weaknesses, the story describes the thought process of an amoral genius who builds the first quantum computer in an effort to unlock the secrets of a web secured by previously unbreakable cryptosystems. The paper embodies what interests me and what troubles me, since both happen to be the same.         

What bothers me is the fragility of society, the fact that society is just one big system of systems that has reached the level of complexity at which perfection is impossible. Every moving part in our global contraption is interconnected, each with its own role as well as its own flaws. One problem in one component can snowball out of control, especially in the age of the internet where a network of devices connects people and entities around the globe. For now, it somehow all remains intact, but the prospect of chaos is undeniable. All it takes is one person to exploit a system currently taken for granted to reveal society’s crippling dependency upon it.

This brings me to what interests me, finding the vulnerabilities in existing infrastructures and rulesets before they can be used for wrongdoing. The systems most susceptible to attacks are those too often overlooked. For example, the process used to verify and record deaths was recently proven vulnerable, enabling anyone to virtually ‘kill’ anyone else through a bit of paperwork. Similar exploits could be used in the birth process as well in order to generate false identities and raise virtual babies complete with birth certificates and social security numbers. These kinds of loopholes are exceedingly interesting to me, but they are also very scary, the perfect combination for a work of fiction. The researcher who discovered these particular vulnerabilities fortunately chose not to abuse any of his findings for evil, but this makes the implications of other possible exploits no less frightening.

Several stories in the genre of science fiction have captured the themes I present here quite well. The Machine Stops is one fantastic example that highlights an alternate society’s dependency upon technology, but there is still so much untapped potential in the subject. in Fantasy and science fiction are powerful because they can engage readers with relatable characters and breathtaking worlds, but they can also be leveraged to convey new perspectives and inspire action. By writing more about the processes and systems that govern our society, authors have the ability to shape not only the worlds they create, but the world in which they live.