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| Bots are everywhere from the bot in Microsoft
Office to the Web robot that roams the Web gathering URL’s and the
spambot
that delivers offers of pornography pictures or bargain viagra priced when
you check your email. You do not see a bot, but their existence is
evident in the work they perform. Their existence grew out of the early
experiments in artificial
intelligence, but today, their home is cyberspace. The good bots
are at work making sense out of the plethora of information on the Net,
assisting Net users with e-commerce activities, and simplifying our life
in cyberspace.
Throughout his enjoyable social history of bots, Leonard has managed to alert us to many of the importance issues surrounding bots. Bots can be created by anyone who can write computer programs. These bots writers can be amateurs or professional programmers, but all bot writers exercise power when they release their bots in cyberspace. Some bots create chaos in cyberspace; other bots will be written to remedy this chaos. Bot creators have a god-like power in their creation and their creation or control of chaos in cyberspace. Bots are a cyborg interface, bridging the man/machine connection. Bots follow Darwin’s principle of natural selection, the survival of the fittest. Strong useful bots survive; weak bots disappear or are destroyed. Bots evolve;when they are strong, they proliferate. Not all bots, however, survive the battle for life in cyberspace. Bots can be both good and bad, and sometimes, the distinction is not clear. Bots may lead a dual existence. Bots that were created for good purposes turn into surveillance bots. Leonard sees this ability of bots to create electronic profiles of individuals as the most troubling aspect of the bots’ future. That future is now. Since the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, there is growing concern among civil libertarians about the amount of personal freedom people are willing to give up in the name of security, and governments are busy enacting legislation to invade personal privacy in the name of security. New surveillance bots will be at created, and increased pressure is being exerted by government to garner personal information gathered by the surveillance bots that already exist The events of September 11, 2001 have made people willing to forego personal liberties and be less concerned about basic freedoms than personal security. Since September 11, Americans have been surveyed on issues of civil liberties, and survey results have been analyzed. Seventy nine percent of Americans told the CBS/New York Times poll that they will have to give up some personal freedoms to make the country safe from terrorist attacks. (“Surveys show”, 2001). Eighty percent of respondents to a Canadian survey stated they would willingly provide their fingerprints for a personal identification card that they would carry at all times. Britain dropped the practice of using the card after the end of the Second World War,but is thinking of reinstating its use. (Leblanc, 2001) Bots are a way of life in cyberspace, and as Leonard predicted at the end of his book, bot chaos continues to cause disturbancesin cyberspace: The technodialectic is no security blanket. It is only a thin strand of gauze fluttering at the edge of chaos, bending and weaving with every gust of disorder…No matter how deft our helpers are, no matter how cunning our daemons become, we cannot solve the problem once and for all. There will always be more chaos along the way. (Leonard, 1997, p.237). |
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