"All nature is merely a cipher and a secret writing."
Blaise de Vigenère
In the (dis-)information age getting information but at the same time excluding others from it is part of a power-game (keeping the other uneducated). The reason for it eventually has found an argument called security.
Compared to the frequency of its presence in articles, the news and political speeches security seems to be one of the most popular words of the 90's. It must be a long time ago when that word was only used for and by the military and the police. Today one can find it as part of every political issue. Even development assistance and nutrition programs consider it part of its work.
The so-called but also real need for information security is widespread and concerning everybody, whether someone uses information technology or not. In any case information about individuals is moving globally; mostly sensitive information like about bank records, insurance and medical data, credit card transactions, and much much more. Any kind of personal or business communication, including telephone conversations, fax messages, and of course e-mail is concerned. Not to forget further financial transactions and business information. Almost every aspect of modern life is affected.
We want to communicate with everybody - but do not want anybody to know.
Whereas the market already depends on the electronic flow of information and the digital tools get faster and more sophisticated all the time, the rise of privacy and security concerns have to be stated as well.
With the increase of digital communication its vulnerability is increasing just as fast. And there exist two (or three) elements competing and giving the term digital security a rather drastic bitter taste: this is on the one hand the growing possibility for criminals to use modern technology not only to hide their source and work secretly but also to manipulate financial and other transfers. On the other hand there are the governments of many states telling the population that they need access to any kind of data to keep control against those criminals. And finally there are those people, living between enlightening security gaps and at the same time harming other private people's actions with their work: computer hackers.
While the potential of global information is regarded as endless, it is those elements that reduce it.
There is no definite solution, but at least some tools have been developed to improve the situation: cryptography, the freedom to encode those data that one does not want to be known by everybody, and give a possibility to decode them to those who shall know the data.
During the last 80 years cryptography has changed from a mere political into a private, economic but still political tool: at the same time it was necessary to improve the tools, eventually based on mathematics. Hence generally cryptography is regarded as something very complicated. And in many ways this is true as the modern ways of enciphering are all about mathematics.
"Crypto is not mathematics, but crypto can be highly mathematical, crypto can use mathematics, but good crypto can be done without a great reliance on complex mathematics." (W.T. Shaw)
For an introduction into cryptography and the mathematical tasks see:
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Many years ago, the German philosopher
The "third industrial revolution" is characterized by men becoming the "raw material" of their own industries. Product and producer, production and consumption, technology and nature are no longer meaningful pairs of opposites. The third is also the last revolution, as it is difficult to think of further revolutions when the distinction between subject and object becomes blurred. The world is becoming a Bestand and the human body and mind are no protected zones. They are something like the last safety zone of human being which is now itself becoming a basis for technological innovation. When the subject is weakened by its technical environment, the use of technical crooks for body and mind becomes an obvious "solution", even if the technically strengthened subject is strengthened at the cost of no longer being a "subject" in the traditional, metaphysical sense. Biological processes are dissected and subjected to technical control. This technical control is technical in two senses: it is not only control through technology but by ttechnology itsself, since it is not carried out by unaided human minds, but increasingly by intelligent machines.
The point where this Andersian third industrial revolution reaches an unprecedented logic seems to lie within the realm of genetic engeneering. This example shows that the dissection of humanness - the decoding of genetic information - is tantamount to commodification. The purpose of the commercial genetic research projects is the use of genetic information as a resource for the development of new products, e.g. in pharmaceutics. Genetic products carry the promise of offering a solution to so-far uncurable diseases such as cancer, Alzeheimer, heart disorders, schizophrenia, and others, but they also open up the possibility of "breaking the chains of evolution", of actively manipulating the genetic structure of human beings and of "designing" healthy, long-living, beautiful, hard-working etc. beings. Here, the homo creator and the homo materia finally become indistinguishable and we are being to merge with our products in such a way that it "we" loses the remains of its meaning.
Since 1990 research on human genetics is organised in the
But exactly this patentising is of paramount importance in the emerging "post-industrial" society where knowledge becomes the most important resource. A patent is nothing else than a property title to a piece of "know-how", and an necessary consequence commodification. When life no longer simply a natural creation but a product, it, too, will be patented and becomes a commodity.
Against the idea of the human genome as a public good, or an "open source", there is a growing competion on the part of private industry. Companies such as
But the commodification of life is not limited ot the human species. Genetically altered animals and plants are also suffering the same fate, and in most industrialised nations it is now possible to patent genetically engeneered species and crops. The promises of the "Green Revolution" of the 1960s are now repeated in the genetic revolution. Genetic engeneering, so it is argued, will be able to breed animals and plants which resist disease and yield more "food" and will therfore help to tackle problems of undernutrition and starvation. Companies such as
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American corporation founded in 1892 and today engaged primarily in the manufacture and sale of syrup and concentrate for Coca-Cola, a sweetened, carbonated beverage that is a cultural institution in the United States and a symbol around the world of American tastes. The company also produces and sells other soft drinks and citrus beverages. Corporate headquarters are in Atlanta, Ga. The post-World War II years saw diversification in the packaging of Coca-Cola and also in the development or acquisition of new products. In 1946 the company purchased rights to the Fanta soft drink, previously developed in Germany. It introduced the lemon-lime drink Sprite in 1961 and the sugar-free cola Tab in 1963. By purchase of Minute Maid Corporation in 1960, it entered the citrus beverage market. In 1982 the company acquired a controlling interest in Columbia Pictures, a motion picture and entertainment company, but sold its interest to Sony Corporation in 1989.