Verizon connects man with dead wife

If I didn't know better I'd have thought this was from one of William Gibson's novels:

When Verizon upgraded Charles Whiting's telephone service, his wife's voice, saying, "Catherine Whiting," disappeared from his voicemail system.



She had died in 2005 and Whiting said he listened to her voice every day for comfort. He blamed Verizon for the loss, saying, "Now they took her voice away."

There's a whole novel waiting to be written based on that little story, Lost Voicemail of Man's Dead Wife Restored by Phone Company. It really is touching, and not just touching in a sci-fi and cyberpunk sort of way. That man took joy and happiness from being able to hear is dead wife's voice. Verizon accidentally took it away and they oh so nobly returned it...almost like bringing his wife back from the dead. Verizon says, "We have your dead wife on our computers. Would you like to talk to her?"

In other real-life cyberpunk tales, Wired's Threat Level blog has this cautionary tale, Industrial Control Systems Killed Once and Will Again, Experts Warn.

On June 10th, 1999 a 16-inch diameter steel pipeline operated by the now-defunct Olympic Pipeline Co. ruptured near Bellingham, Washington, flooding two local creeks with 237,000 gallons of gasoline. The gas ignited into a mile-and-a-half river of fire that claimed the lives of two 10-year-old boys and an 18-year-old man, and injured eight others.



Wednesday, computer-security experts who recently re-examined the Bellingham incident called its victims the first verified human causalities of a control-system computer incident.

Computers killed people!?

But the factor that intrigues Weiss and fellow researcher Marshall Abrams, a scientist at MITRE, is a still largely unexplained computer failure that began less than 30 minutes before the accident and paralyzed the central control room operating the pipeline, preventing workers from releasing pressure in the line before it hemorrhaged.

An unexplained computer failure? Malicious and/or stupid hackers could've done that. Perhaps hackers backed by a rival company. Perhaps hackers backed by a rival country. Perhaps they were both. Perhaps there's no difference. I'm just sayin'...

the computer knows who I am

This is what trips me out about the whole internet experience, experiences like the one I just had.  I was going through my semi regular regimen of reading various rss feeds when I came across this article on Wired: Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?

What's interesting is the not only the content of the article, which is excellently written, but also the form of the article.  Look at the way it uses links and what I'll call insets, those windows within the browser window, which are in fact mini browser windows.  Weird.  I know I'm in the Googleverse when I just happen to be on an article on Wired and when I look at the insets it has for quoted Google based sites I see a "Hi, ________".  That inset knows who I am!

I read an article about artificial intelligence.  My computer and the internet know who I am.

A Closer Look at the 700 MHz Auction

Let the mental cud chewing begin. Late Tuesday Dec 18, the FCC released its list of applicants for the prime chunk of wireless real estate known as 700 MHz.

What's the deal with the 700 MHz spectrum? Wired has an excellent FAQ here: FAQ: Inside the High-Stakes 700-MHz-Spectrum Auction.

Basically, the 700 MHz spectrum used to be used for UHF TV signals which no one really cares about anymore so it's going to start being utilized for mobile communications. The spectrum is choice because its signal carries better than those currently in use by the major mobile service providers. In other words, tired of getting shitty signals? Help is on the way and it may be provided by everyone's online hero: Google. Google has said it's willing to shell out over $4 billion for a big chunk of the spectrum.

Yesterday I spent a couple hours perusing FCC 700 MHz Band Auction Auction ID: 73 Accepted Applications. Yes, a couple hours...at least. BusinessWeek has a mediocre article about the participants in the auction: Look Who's Bidding in Auction 73. They say:

Due to limited information provided by the filings, many of the organizations listed are nearly impossible to trace to their owners, often turning out to be foreign-backed companies, investment funds, and law firms.

I can attest to many of them being nearly impoosible to trace. I thought it was because I don't normally due that kind of research. I'm glad to see that even the pros thought the fact-finding was tough.

One company that nobody seems to be mentioning, the one I think is most intriguing, is a company called Aristotle, Inc. What is Aristotle, Inc.? From their website:

Aristotle is recognized as the pioneer in political technology. Every occupant of the White House — Democrat and Republican — for more than 20 years, has been an Aristotle customer, as are most U.S. Senators, most members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Democratic and Republican state party organizations. Year round, thousands of Americans involved in the political process — from grassroots organizers to Washington insiders — rely on Aristotle.

Basically Aristotle, Inc. owns huge and alarmingly detailed voter lists. From Aristotle, Inc.'s site I made my way to a truly worthwhile article about the company at Vanity Fair, Big Brother Inc. From the article:

“What we do is help a campaign run more and more like an effective business,” Phillips says as he types on his laptop, bringing up on a large projection screen the profile of an actual voter in Atlanta, whom we’ll call John Smith.

Phillips hits a button and up pops Smith’s basic information—address, phone number, etc. A click of the mouse brings more personal information—his photograph, his age and occupation, the names of his adult family members, his party affiliation and approximate income. Another click summons the exact amounts of political donations he has made. Phillips clicks once more, and a kind of molecular model appears on-screen, showing every political donor and potentially influential person Smith is linked to, in Atlanta and beyond, with dozens of interlocking nodes. Each node leads to the profile of another voter, about whom Aristotle knows just as much or more.

So what the heck is an ultra-tech-savvy political data mining near-monopoly doing bidding on some hugely expensive wireless real estate? Inquiring minds want to know.

Originally posted on my Tumblr blog: Bulging Shorts!

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