Jipi and the Paranoid Chip

Last updated

"Jipi and the Paranoid Chip" is a science fiction short story by Neal Stephenson that appeared in Forbes magazine's July 7, 1997 issue. It is part of the Baroque Cycle/Cryptonomicon universe.

Contents

Plot

The story deals with the concepts of mindshare and evolutionary software.

Jipi, a former Pacific-rim airline flight attendant, is staying with her friend in a high-rise luxury apartment building inside Manila's walled district of Intramuros. The fiftieth floor of a neighboring high-rise houses the Asian-Pacific headquarters of Mindshare Management, under regional supervisor Mr. Cardoza. Goto Engineering is conducting a citywide sewer replacement project which produces unpleasant gases that have hurt the city's hospitality industry. Jipi, looking for work, is given employment by Mr. Cardoza at the Manila Hotel in order to monitor guests in the lobby for signs of having noticed the unpleasant sewer gases and having the guests distracted by Cardoza's actors before they become aware of the construction across the street and lower the hotel's reputation by word of stay experiences.

Mr. Cardoza explains a new job to Jipi. A California software firm, under contract with requests from law enforcement, have produced evolving software inclined to detect paranoid schizophrenics during conversations over the Internet. Eventually, several million descendent generations of software are evolved that mimics the persona of a paranoid human, thus making them ideal against a hacker trying to shut them down. Shenzhen begins to make pirated wholesale copies of the chip, which are sold to a tariff -free zone city in North Africa, leading to the manufacture of an evolved theft-deterrent - an alarm-activated car bomb. Not knowing a proper amount of explosives to use with the car alarms, one manufacturer's particular shipment of Czech Semtex is equally divided into 48 customer deliveries, each with enough charge to level part of a city block. After one levels a mall in California, Mr. Cardoza, in Manila, is hired to track down the remaining 47 vehicles using each vehicle's wireless internet modems. Recognizing Jipi's charm, he recruits her to type messages in internet conversation to the next of the remaining schizoid-induced personality car alarms via satellite connection to track down clues to its location until local police can shut it down.

Genre

The story takes place in the same universe as The Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon . Mention is made of Homer/Homa Goto, presumably a descendant of Goto Dengo, and his firm, Goto Engineering; of the Bank of Manila and Kinakuta; and of the Black Chamber, also known as the International Data Transfer Regulatory Organisation. It is presumably set in the first half of the 21st century, a generation after the events of Cryptonomicon.

See also


Related Research Articles

The study of galaxy formation and evolution is concerned with the processes that formed a heterogeneous universe from a homogeneous beginning, the formation of the first galaxies, the way galaxies change over time, and the processes that have generated the variety of structures observed in nearby galaxies. Galaxy formation is hypothesized to occur from structure formation theories, as a result of tiny quantum fluctuations in the aftermath of the Big Bang. The simplest model in general agreement with observed phenomena is the Lambda-CDM model—that is, that clustering and merging allows galaxies to accumulate mass, determining both their shape and structure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neal Stephenson</span> American speculative fiction writer (born 1959)

Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque.

<i>Cryptonomicon</i> 1999 novel by Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson, set in two different time periods. One group of characters are World War II-era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park (UK), and disillusioned Axis military and intelligence figures. The second narrative is set in the late 1990s, with characters that are descendants of those of the earlier time period, who employ cryptologic, telecom, and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a long-term objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vogon</span> Fictional alien race in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project for a hyperspace express route. Vogons are slug-like but vaguely humanoid, are bulkier than humans, and have green skin. Vogons are described as "one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy—not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous", and having "as much sex appeal as a road accident" as well as being the authors of "the third worst poetry in the universe". They are employed as the galactic government's bureaucrats. According to Marvin the Paranoid Android, they are also the worst marksmen in the galaxy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clipper chip</span> Encryption device promoted by the NSA in the 1990s

The Clipper chip was a chipset that was developed and promoted by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) as an encryption device that secured "voice and data messages" with a built-in backdoor that was intended to "allow Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials the ability to decode intercepted voice and data transmissions." It was intended to be adopted by telecommunications companies for voice transmission. Introduced in 1993, it was entirely defunct by 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kill switch</span> Safety mechanism to quickly shut down a system

A kill switch, also known as an emergency brake, emergency stop (E-stop), emergency off (EMO) and as an emergency power off (EPO), is a safety mechanism used to shut off machinery in an emergency, when it cannot be shut down in the usual manner. Unlike a normal shut-down switch or shut-down procedure, which shuts down all systems in order and turns off the machine without damage, a kill switch is designed and configured to abort the operation as quickly as possible (even if it damages the equipment) and to be operated simply and quickly (so that even a panicked operator with impaired executive functions or a bystander can activate it). Kill switches are usually designed to be noticeable, even to an untrained operator or a bystander.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Derry (Stephen King)</span> Fictional setting of the "It" universe

Derry is a fictional town in the U.S. state of Maine that has served as the setting for a number of Stephen King's novels, novellas, and short stories, notably It. Derry first appeared in King's 1981 short story "The Bird and the Album" and has reappeared as recently as his 2011 novel 11/22/63.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fry's Electronics</span> Former American big-box store electronics retailer

Fry's Electronics was an American big-box store chain. It was headquartered in San Jose, California in Silicon Valley. Fry's retailed software, consumer electronics, household appliances, cosmetics, tools, toys, accessories, magazines, technical books, snack foods, electronic components and computer hardware. Fry's had in-store computer repair and custom computer building services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online game</span> Video game played over the Internet

An online game is a video game that is either partially or primarily played through the Internet or any other computer network available. Online games are ubiquitous on modern gaming platforms, including PCs, consoles and mobile devices, and span many genres, including first-person shooters, strategy games, and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). In 2019, revenue in the online games segment reached $16.9 billion, with $4.2 billion generated by China and $3.5 billion in the United States. Since 2010s, a common trend among online games has been operating them as games as a service, using monetization schemes such as loot boxes and battle passes as purchasable items atop freely-offered games. Unlike purchased retail games, online games have the problem of not being permanently playable, as they require special servers in order to function.

In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is the observed exponential nature of the rate of technological change in recent history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future and may or may not be accompanied by equally profound social and cultural change.

Brian Thomas Swimme is a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, in San Francisco, where he teaches evolutionary cosmology to graduate students in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program. He received his Ph.D. (1978) from the department of mathematics at the University of Oregon for work with Richard Barrar on singularity theory, with a dissertation entitled Singularities in the N-Body Problem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Space Technology 5</span> Experimental space technologies

Space Technology 5 (ST5) of the NASA New Millennium program was a test of ten new technologies aboard a group of microsatellites. Developed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the three individual small spacecraft were launched together from the belly of a Lockheed L-1011 aboard the Pegasus XL rocket, on 22 March 2006. One technology involved antennas that were designed by computers using an evolutionary AI system developed at NASA Ames Research Center. The ST5 on-board flight computer, the C&DH system, was based on a Mongoose-V radiation-hardened microprocessor.

<i>Noise</i> (2007 American film) 2007 film

Noise is a comedy drama film written and directed by Henry Bean. It stars Tim Robbins and Bridget Moynahan. Robbins plays a successful lawyer in Manhattan named David Owen who is bothered by all the noise in the city, and who resorts to vandalism to put a stop to it, adopting the identity of "The Rectifier". His acts of vandalism provoke the mayor of the city, played by William Hurt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arm (company)</span> British multinational semiconductor and software design company

Arm is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England. Its primary business is in the design of ARM processors (CPUs). It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, RealView and Keil brands, and provides systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip (SoC) infrastructure and software. As a "holding" company, it also holds shares of other companies. Since 2016, it has been owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnetic Fields (video game developer)</span>

Magnetic Fields was a British game development company founded in February 1982 and best known for developers Shaun Southern and Andrew Morris. The company was originally named "Mr Chip Software" but renamed "Magnetic Fields Ltd." usually simply referred to as "Magnetic Fields", in 1988.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Nest</span> Brand of smart home products by Google

Google Nest is a line of smart home products including smart speakers, smart displays, streaming devices, thermostats, smoke detectors, routers and security systems including smart doorbells, cameras and smart locks.

<i>The Heart Machine</i> 2014 American film

The Heart Machine is a 2014 romantic thriller film written and directed by Zachary Wigon based on his own 2012 short film Someone Else's Heart. The film is about a man who attempts to track down the woman that he has been in an online-only relationship with when he suspects that she has lied to him about key details of her life. The film was released in a limited release on October 24, 2014, by Filmbuff.

In artificial intelligence, researchers can induce the evolution of language in multi-agent systems when sufficiently capable AI agents have an incentive to cooperate on a task and the ability to exchange a set of symbols capable of serving as tokens in a generated language. Such languages can be evolved starting from a natural (human) language, or can be created ab initio. In addition, a new "interlingua" language may evolve within an AI tasked with translating between known languages.

Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC) is a division of Samsung Electronics. It works with entrepreneurs and corporate partners to invest in disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, digital health, mobility, Internet of Things and other consumer-facing applications of data-driven technology.