Nowhere to Hide (24 page)

“And I was wondering something too,” King said. He'd prepared for this a few days earlier. “Why is it a shipment when you move something by car, but when a ship moves it, it's called cargo?”

As MJ struggled to answer that one, King finally fell asleep.

END NOTES

Lying

Humans do tell lies, and according to one researcher, this “may be an unavoidable part of human nature.”

Deceit as a part of human nature and its impact on our public and private lives—these topics are well worth discussing. For example, when politicians and spies lie for the good of their country, are they eroding the public trust?

To start exploring the damage lies can do, check out the thought-provoking book
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life
by Sissela Bok. Be warned, however—it might force you to examine the lies you tell in your own life!

The BBC has provided a series of brief and helpful articles about lying.
¹
Use them to start a discussion with your friends and family about the ethics of lying.

Psywar

Since prehistoric times, psychological warfare (pyswar) has been a part of battle tactics, but not always to induce terror. For example, Alexander the Great held on to his conquered territories by inducing the local elites to join Greek administration and culture. Similarly, Roman emperors offered citizenship to conquered tribes.

More often, however, pyswar is used to frighten opponents into submission and to defeat the will of the enemy. In the thirteenth century, Genghis Khan showed mastery of this by having each of his soldiers carry three torches at night to give the illusion of a much larger army. During the daytime, his army tied objects to the tails of horses to raise larger clouds of dusts and give the same impression.

Modern pyswar began in World War One with propaganda delivered by flyers dropped from airplanes. More recently, the CIA has broadcast propaganda on pirated television channels.

It should be noted that pyswar is often based on deceit.

Intellitars

Intelligent avatars are on our technological horizon. Consider these related current technologies and trends:

Lifenaut.
The website
www.lifenaut.com
“offers participation in a long-term computer science research project that explores how technology may one day extend life through digital technology.” Lifenaut allows you to upload your photos, videos, and documents to a digital archive and create a computer-based avatar.

Artificial intelligence.
AI continues to advance. World-renowned scientist Stephen Hawking warns that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” After all, nearly twenty years ago, Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by IBM, defeated a world-champion chess master. Deep Blue was capable of evaluating 200 million positions per second.

The Turing Test, named after computer pioneer Alan Turing, examines whether a machine can show intelligent behavior that cannot be distinguished from human intelligence. “A human judge engages in natural language conversations with a human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable from that of a human being. All participants are separated from one another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to give the correct answer to questions; it checks how closely the answer resembles typical human answers. The conversation is limited to a text-only channel, such as a computer keyboard and screen, so that the result is not dependent on the machine's ability to render words into audio.”
²

A Turing Test competition at England's prestigious University of Reading was organized in June of 2014 to mark the sixtieth anniversary
of Alan Turing's death. It also marked what many consider to be the first time that AI passed the test—a chatter bot convinced 33 percent of contest judges that it was human.

And of course, digital voice assistants, such as Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google Now, are part of many people's everyday lives.

Digital cloning.
The final technology necessary to make intellitars a reality—digital cloning—is continuing to advance. In 2008, Digital Emily introduced many people to “image metrics” on a YouTube video.
³
Most viewers were surprised to discover that her face was completely computer generated.

In 2012, the University of Southern California began the Digital Ira project to “create a real-time, photoreal digital human character which could be seen from any viewpoint, any lighting, and could perform realistically from video performance capture even in a tight closeup.”
⁴
You can see the results for yourself on YouTube.
⁵

Holograms.
Can a digital clone really be converted into a three-dimensional hologram? Stephen D. Smith of the University of Southern California demonstrates that a conversation with a hologram is now eerily realistic.
⁶
He shows how holographic technology is being used to allow Holocaust survivors to interact with students and to keep survivors' stories alive after the survivors are gone. If you prefer reading instead of watching, see “Is Digital Cloning the Future of Movie Making?” on the CBS News website.
⁷
Note that the lab for this digital cloning project “gets much of its funding from the Department of Defense.”

Human consciousness.
Lifenaut, the website that is dedicated to eternalizing humans through digital cloning, is based on this: “By combining detailed data about a person future, AI software will be able to reanimate the person's consciousness.” It uses a Mindfile, which is “a database containing a person's unique and essential characteristics,
made up of memories, photos, videos, documents, conversation logs, and personality test results.” In short, this project goal is to graft human consciousness into a clone for a version of immortality.
⁸

The CIA

As for the CIA developing and using intellitars for pyswar, some would declare this to be nothing but fiction.

¹
www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/lying/lying_1.shtml
.

²
“Turning Test,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test.

³
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYgLFt5wfP4

⁴
ict.usc.edu/prototypes/digital-ira/

⁵
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzKb6YVAyQI
. The digital face speaks at about the sixty-second mark.

⁶
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAk9WODP43Q
. See especially at 2:45! If you prefer reading, see

⁷
www.cbsnews.com/news/future-of-movies-digital-cloning-in-maleficent/

⁸
www.cbsnews.com/news/future-of-movies-digital-cloning-in-maleficent/

Also from Sigmund Brouwer and Harvest House Publishers

Dead Man's Switch

William King's mind is reeling because of the email he received, partly because of the secrets it claims to unveil and partly because it was sent from his friend Blake—who drowned two weeks earlier trying to escape the island.

Worse, the email threatens that King's father is involved in criminal activity on McNeil Island, where King's dad works at a high-security prison. King embarks on a high-tech and high-stakes search to hunt down answers he's afraid to learn. But when King becomes the hunted, he has to decide—whom can he trust?

If you love a great mystery and the quest for justice, you'll think about this book long after you read the last chapter.

About the Publisher

To learn more about Harvest House books and to read sample chapters, visit our website:

www.harvesthousepublishers.com

HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

EUGENE, OREGON