3rd cent. Leiden papyrus: medical information gets enciphered to stop abuses
8th cent. - Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Khalil ibn Ahmad ibn 'Amr ibn Tammam al Farahidi al-Zadi al Yahmadi finds the solution for a Greek cryptogram by first of all finding out the plaintext behind the encryption, a method which never got out of date. Afterwards he writes a book on cryptography.
- cipher alphabets for magicians are published
1250 the English monk Roger Bacon writes cipher-descriptions. At that time the art of enciphering was a popular game in monasteries
1379 Gabrieli di Lavinde develops the nomenclature-code for Clement VII (114); a code-system made out of ciphers and codes, which kept being irreplaceable until the 19th century
1392 (probably) the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer writes the book The Equatorie of the Planetis, which contains several passages in ciphers made out of letters, digits and symbols
1412 for the first time ciphers including different substitutions for each letter are developed (in Arabic)
~1467 invention of the "Captain Midnight Decoder Badge", the first polyalphabetic cipher (disk); the inventor, Leon Battista Alberti, also called the father of Western cryptography, uses his disk for enciphering and deciphering at the same time
15th/16th century nearly every state, especially England and France, has people working on en- and deciphering for them
1518 the first printed book on cryptology is written by the German monk Johannes Trithemius. He also changes the form of polyalphabetic cipher from disks into rectangulars
1533 the idea to take a pass-phrase as the key for polyalphabetic cipher is realized by Giovan Batista Belaso
1563 Giovanni Battista Porta suggests to use synonyms and misspellings to irritate cryptoanalysts
1585 Blaise de Vigenère has the idea to use former plaintexts or ciphertexts as new keys; he invents the
1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded for the attempt to organize the murder of Queen Elisabeth I., whose agents find out about Mary's plans with the help of decryption
1588 the first book in shorthand is published
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- Education files, insurance files, tax files, communication files, consumption files, medical files, travel files, criminal files, investment files, files into infinity ...
Critical Art Ensemble
Global data bodies
1. Introduction
Informatisation has meant that things that once were "real", i.e. whose existence could be experienced sensually, are becoming virtual. Instead of the real existence of a thing, the virtual refers to its possibility of existence. As this process advances, an increasing identification of the possible with the real occurs. Reality migrates into a dim and dematerialised grey area. In the end, the possible counts for the real, virtualisation creates an "as-if" experience.
The experience of the body is also affected by this process. For example, in bio-technology, the human body and its functions are digitised, which prepares and understanding of the body exlusively in terms of its potential manipulation, the body becomes whatever it could be. But digitisation has not only affected the understanding and the social significance of the body, it has also altered the meaning of presence, traditionally identified with the body. The advance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has meant that for an increasing number of activities we no longer need be physically present, our "virtual" presence, achieved by logging onto a electronic information network, is sufficient.
This development, trumpeted as the pinnacle of convenience by the ICT industries and governments interested in attracting investment, has deeply problematic aspects as well. For example, when it is no longer "necessary" to be physically present, it may soon no longer be possible or allowed. Online-banking, offered to customers as a convenience, is also serves as a justification for charging higher fees from those unwilling or unable to add banking to their household chores. Online public administration may be expected to lead to similar effects. The reason for this is that the digitalisation of the economy relies on the production of surplus data. Data has become the most important raw material of modern economies.
In modern economies, informatisation and virtualisation mean that people are structurally forced to carry out their business and life their lives in such a way as to generate data.
Data are the most important resource for the New Economy. By contrast, activities which do not leave behind a trace of data, as for example growing your own carrots or paying cash rather than by plastic card, are discouraged and structurally suppressed.
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