The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella (23 page)

For socializing, existing recreation centers
and school buildings could be used to continue with sports, music,
arts, drama, leadership and other extra-curricular activities. But
these would be organized and managed by parents, professional
coaches or expert instructors, and other interested citizens which
would have the added effect of ending a reliance on teachers as
babysitters, and improving the community’s level of engagement with
children.

THE PROBABILITY:
While the basic curriculum is already available for home schooling,
the next step will be the creation of advanced online tools, and
whole communities demanding the transition away from their
traditional, failing school.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

No License to Kill: Civilian law enforcement
protocols for armed drones

THE ISSUE:
Law enforcement drones equipped with cameras and
sensors are used to patrol urban areas. All are weaponized,
programmed with automatic disarmament protocols, and the ability to
shoot-to-kill. Civil liberties groups argue that a human must
always authorize the machines’ capabilities. But police forces want
to activate automatic features in certain situations.

Civilian drones, unmanned aerial vehicles
used in non-combat situations, are everywhere. The machines are
used to deliver packages, assist emergency rescue, handle manual
labor, and gather close up and detailed information for weather,
news and the paparazzi. The acceptance of drones as operational
tools in many professions is extended to the use of the machines in
civilian law enforcement.

For law enforcement, the capabilities are a
mirror of the military’s use in war. Police officers can use the
drones to chase criminals, disarm them, and even shoot them if the
situation arises. Prior to several court cases, every police force
developed their own rules on the drones’ deployment. And despite an
acceptable safety record, stricter protocols were implemented.

For example, drones can be flown in any
public space provided the machines are trackable, noiseless,
broadcast a unique light signature, and are equipped with sensors
to detect humans, birds, buildings, trees and other objects. Drones
can be any shape or size. For civilian uses, most resemble the
purpose such as boxes for deliveries, but law enforcement uses
mini-helicopter style vehicles that can curve around corners like
an accordion bus.

Police can use drones as extensions of the
human force, “flying officers,” anywhere a human officer would
normally, and legally, go, a drone can go too. However, once the
drone expects to engage with a suspect, it must come under manual
human control. For example, if the suspect is wearing a mask, the
human operator must have authorization to remotely remove it. If
the suspect is brandishing a weapon, the human operator must survey
the entire area to ensure the safety of civilians prior to
attempting disarmament. And the human officer can activate the
drone’s weapons only after assessing the situation as if the
officer were there live. The operator who fires a weaponized drone
is considered to have discharged a service weapon and would be
subject to the standard review process.

THE PROBABILITY:
Likely that law enforcement drones are already in widespread use
but few know where, how or how many.

*

CONSUMER CREDIT

Money Never Ends: Continued access to credit through
online protocols

THE ISSUE:
Bankruptcy and
credit
access issues disappear when c
onsumers
default all financial accounts and credit data to automatically
search for, and access, any available commercial source of money,
including new loans, whenever funds are about to run
low.

Money is whatever we want it to be. If the
public believes in the power of the dollar, then it is accepted as
a tradable instrument. In a completely online world, physical
money, paper and coins are rarely seen, and almost never used in
transactions. Instead consumers use cards, or more likely numbers
representing cards, for purchases, and allow online applications to
automatically pay their bills from savings accounts. When the
savings account runs dry, sophisticated applications could
automatically search the entire Internet for a new source of funds,
scanning thousands of offers from financial institutions to extend
a line of credit or loan. The consumer’s pre-defined prerequisites
from a cap on the amount borrowed or annual interest rate, to even
the location of the funding institution, would define the
parameters for an acceptable lender. The consumer’s account would
then receive approval, before the next bill is due, and the system,
without input from the consumer, would transfer the funds, and
spending could continue with impunity.

Qualifying criteria applies, and interest
rates are based on familiar factors, but the bottom-line is that
everyone continues to have access to credit. Performing a function
now dominated by high-interest payday loan companies, this service
would allow consumers the best rate available anywhere, not just in
their neighborhood. The image of families being forced out of their
homes by foreclosure fades as online applications crunch available
data on employment history, family profile, and reliability to find
a solution that prevents the bank from registering a missed
payment. This is a scenario where borderline credit consumers would
have to provide details for the analysis of their personal online
profiles, and allow that information to be regularly updated based
on their utilization of the credit services. But, the service
provides stability for individuals who would no longer face the
fear of losing it all, or of the money ever running out.

THE PROBABILITY:
At
some point America’s debt dependence will run aground and this
process will either be a disaster, or used to force everyone back
into financial discipline by completing preventing spending when
funds are no longer available from weary international lenders.

End of Documents

###

Dear Friends,

I hope you enjoyed The Origin Point. Please post a
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For more information about the Life Online world and
all the links to my books, please visit my website
http://www.claneworld.com
.
Thanks for being a reader.

Hope you stay on the side of the thinkers, all the
best,

Case

Want to keep discussing future tech issues?
Do you have a Book Club? You can download a FREE PDF copy of Dallas
Winter's excerpted summary of the 2100 policy files from The Origin
Point at Case Lane's Spinning World
http://www.claneworld.com/life-online/the-files/

Did you just finish reading The Origin Point? The
novella ended at the beginning of the Life Online books series.
What happened next to Louis Santino and the controlled world we all
now live in? Read the bonus addition of
Chapter One of The Motion Clue
to find out.

About Case
Lane

Case Lane is a global writer, traveler and observer
to the future. Educated in communications, political science,
business, law and economics, she has lived and worked all over the
world as a reporter, diplomat and digital media corporate
executive. Building from her interests in international relations
and technology, Case envisions a next century world where the
essential battle is between the advancement of technology and the
instincts of our basic humanity. The majority of people will be
non-technologists who have to learn to live and manage in a
technology-controlled world that they do not understand.

Connect with Case Lane

At my website
http://www.claneworld.com

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BONUS
READING

Here is Chapter One of The Motion Clue: A Future Tech
Cyber Thriller, Book One of the Life Online series. Enjoy...

Chapter One of THE MOTION
CLUE a Future Tech Cyber Thriller by Case Lane

Experience should teach us to be most on our
guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are
beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel
invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
well meaning but without understanding.

Justice Louis Brandeis, United States Supreme Court,
dissenting in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)

CHAPTER ONE - THE BROKEN SILENCE

An intense burst of energy surged through a plain
plastic and copper data cord. Internally, the physical piece of
hardware succumbed to the overload pressure created by an
unexpected wave of digital code. Externally, the cord burned until
the wire split in half, and the pieces fell into the organized rows
of connectors hanging, u-shaped like jump rope, between the server
racks. No human saw the break happen, and no human intervened. On
monitor screens from twenty feet to eight thousand miles away, an
error message appeared. Error messages occurred from time to time,
then disappeared after a Network fix. By design, The Network
functioned on a continuous, seamless, unyielding schedule
programmed to direct all electronically-managed activity. But to
The Network's surprise, this error message was not reacting to the
design.

Louis Santino, a burly, 43 year old former
professional football player from down south in Fargo, North
Dakota, was the technician in charge, the only human located at the
148-acre hydroelectric power facility on the craggy lakeside in
northern Manitoba. Inside the fiberglass walls of the main Control
Room, Santino could not see the error message displayed on a
monitor two feet above his line-of-sight. He was lying across his
chair watching a football game. Enraptured by the competition,
Santino kept his eyes on the screen, his ears tuned to the loud
volume, and his body balanced across the industrial furniture. Like
many humans, he relished viewing a spectacle of men engaged in
dangerous, physical hand-to-hand competition. To keep the game at
levels of continuous brutal contact, professional football players
wore body armor shields. Fans logged on to watch hulking men of
swift athletic skill tangle with skilled players with lightening
hands, directed by coaches using thought strategies to outwit their
opponents. Eagerly anticipating trick plays, spectators waited for
the novelty of witnessing humans execute unpredictable options by
using only their brains and bodily strength. But the coaches also
used The Network. They had computer applications, called apps for
short, running pattern simulations on completed games, and
analyzing player moves and statistics over his lifetime. Still,
most fans ignored the programmed assistance in favor of the
thrilling live play.

Santino focused on the intensifying game
action until, without warning, the words 'Alert Signal' displaying
in 64-point red block letters, flashed, like the bullet from a
firing gun, directly in front of his eyes. Shocked into a swiftness
that recalled his own playing days, Santino jumped straight up and
out of his chair. Having never previously seen the alert message
projection function used, he stood stock still in the center of the
room. Without prompting, the game volume on the viewing monitor
decreased, and The Network switched his viewing preference from
'live' to 'record.' The Network knew Santino would continue
watching the game at a later time, and its automatic behavior
prediction feature reacted by saving the broadcast for him.

As his shaking legs settled into an upright
place, Santino slowly lifted his handheld com to eye level. All of
the facility's operations, the signals, reports and alert data,
could be tracked through his com, a palm-sized, flat-screen,
black-rimmed, plastic electronic device he had strapped to his
belt. All communication devices, or electronic tools with similar
features, were called a com even though the equipment had a range
of fading names like phone, radio, television, camera, personal
electronic device, or palm, because most literally fit into a hand.
Some were branded after fruits including berry, apple, cherry or
orange, but those were favored by children. The choice of size,
shape and materiel used to manufacture coms was almost limitless,
but all had one shared function, all were wirelessly connected to
The Network.

People in cities usually kept the com
functionality attached to a part of the body like the wrist, or to
clothing like a flap on a shirt pocket, but Santino preferred
holding the physical device, and the feel of identifiable material
between his fingers. The display screen fit snuggly into his large
hand tightly grasping the edges as he guardedly read the message
The Network was displaying - Employee Intervention Required - for
an error, an electrical shortage on the grid in Sector 2G. In
sixteen years on the job, Santino had never received an alert
requiring him to personally engage in an error repair action.
Puzzled, he took a deep breath and began to feel slightly
anxious.