Data and Terrorism "We are unable to integrate it into (what we experience as) our reality, and are therefore compelled to experience it as a nightmarish apparition -- " -Slavoj Cizek, author of Welcome to the Desert as quoted by Stephan Mexal in the essay "Spectacularspectacular!:Underworld and the Production of Terror" If the transmissions and output making up the Post-Modern and Avant Pop reality constitute an information glut, or an endless stream of verbiage and data, then this influx of information may begin to take on a similar tone to the oversaturated consumer.
However monotonous it may seem, a steady flow of sanitized information suitable to the recursive social machine may be preferable in many ways.
Voices outside of the mainstream may be marginal for many reasons.
Disruptions in the transfer of information result in concrete problems and the pictures that emerge from aberrations in the data flow are not always pretty, even if the disruptions are inventive or poignant in their own way.
Panic, death, and the irreconcilable have been a focus of modern fiction, indeed an anxiety of the modern genres, has been the phenomenon of terrorism.
Terrorism is a distinction and a threat to media consumers who are in a mode of otherwise placid indifference.
When people gain access to information and public consciousness through extralegal and violent measures they become a glitch in the system, an intellectual irregularity, and if their actions and presence is anomalous and threatening to the public consciousness, terror ensues.
This forced access to and acknowledgement of the public mind, whether through undermining the technology that releases such information or through the authorship of such phenomena as can not be seen and forgotten readily is evident in the novels Coming Soon!!!
and The Gold Bug Variations, neither of which have a primary focus on terrorism, but both of which have experienced its disruptions. In Coming Soon!!!
terrorism constitutes a literal interruption or aberration in sections of otherwise predictable, or even patterned (which is not to say uncreative) text.
Pages 252-258 are made up of three columns listed as "The News," "The Novel Emeritus," and the "Novel Aspirant" respectively.
Near the start of this chronological organization of the lives of the two main characters and the events "external" (if that can be said about anything in Coming Soon!!!), we have updates on the lectures and writing of the Novel Emeritus, the rivalry with the Novelist Aspirant as well as a summary of the more mundane things, described as "the usual work and pleasures" (252).
Yet early in the summation, rather incongruously in the spring of 1996 News column, we find events of what is thought of as traditional terrorism along with events with terrorist implications interspersed with an update on the theatrical/written project that so much of the novel is centered around.
The column reads "'Unabomber' suspect arrested, T II launches preview season.
Ex CIA Chief Wm.
Colby disappears while canoeing near home on Chesapeake (heart attack)" (252).
The third fact is especially significant as The Central Intelligence Agency is synonymous with fighting terrorism and for a former chief to go missing only perpetuates the anxiety induced by terrorism.
After all, if they conceivably had the head of America's premiere secret agency in their clutches what knowledge could they extract? The columns go on to track the lives, activities, and potentially threatening, but ostensibly cyclical weather patterns affecting the lives of the characters of Coming Soon!!!
However later that fall, business is as usual in many respects with the news about Clinton's election activities, stock market surges, and financial affairs of the plot vessel "Floating Opera II," when all of the sudden the information takes a disturbing turn again "Shining Path guerillas seize hostages at Japanese embassy in Lima" and then mentions the famous murder of child model Jon Benet Ramsey, which although not terrorism per se, seems a bit out place with earlier listed events.
This particular section of news ends by returning to the activities of the stock market.
Terrorism plays no less a prominent role in much of the remaining space allotted for news, with the unresolved Shining Path situation, the conviction of Timothy McVeigh, and atrocities of Islamic terrorists in Algeria being listed in continuing, stark and frightening contrast to the activities of the ship, Clinton's peccadilloes, and activities of the stock market.
It becomes clear that terrorist activities, once the localized concerns of Europe and the Middle East, are manifesting themselves in a frequent way, one that remains noteworthy to public consciousness. Richard Power's The Gold Bug Variations are indeed peppered with references to events unfolding in early 1980s Beirut and the language of the characters does at times suggest that terrorists/Islamists of the traditional variety are already starting to claim spaces in everyday consciousness.
For instance Jan's ex boyfriend, Keith Tuckwell describes an aggressive football defense as "Mujahadin." That said, the terrorism that is the focus of The Gold Bug Variations is of a different strain and is enacted on fictitious computer networks that exist only within the novel, whereas references to terrorism in Coming Soon!!!
, by referencing and reacting to external events and more traditional terrorism primarily alter the experience of the reader.
Specifically, Jan refers to the information sabotage that she, Dr.
Ressler, and Frank engage in as "data terrorism" (342), whereas terrorism in Coming Soon!!!
manifests itself by awkward appearances in the text and incongruous relationships to other information. The three main characters in The Gold Bug Variations commit acts of terrorism by either stopping information flows entirely or gaining control of and dispersing their own altered data.
A hint at the casual vulnerability of the then fledgling internet and electronic financial network is given to the reader when Franklin teases Jan, who responds by playfully threatening a power switch, "ready to wipe out the evening's work" (290).
In as much as interruption of normal information flow and the resultant anxiety that may ensue can be seen as terrorism, the trio's first act of terrorism may have been inadvertent.
Away at a friend's cabin in the woods, Todd and Ressler find themselves unable to maintain the computer network at Manhattan Online.
Their lack of activity results in problems in the transferal of electronic funds throughout the nation, or as a newspaper in the novel puts it "'Digital Blit Ripples Through System'" (434).
By the end of the novel, they have gone from stopping data transfer, to recreating it to their own ends.
What starts as Franklin Todd trying to illicitly increase a friend's paycheck, ends up with them having to take over Manhattan On Line's (MOL) computers with unauthorized messages pleading on behalf of that same friend.
Ressler, Todd, and Jan are forced to pull off this act of terror because of unreliability on the part of insurance companies and MOL, relatively powerful entities who have a legal claim to the machinery that transfers electronic assets and coverage status of the friend in need, or in other words, control of the information and data related to his standing in the information age.
In order to manipulate the transfer of data to their own end, the "terrorists" need to insert themselves into areas where the expression of their presence is not expected.
Given that the rescinding of insurance coverage amounts to status change and a withholding of funds by an employer and insurance corporation that maintain such vital statistics electronically, Ressler, Frank, and O Deigh's response seem to confirm Ressler's speculation as to whether or not "Marx's class warfare might be fought between information rich and information poor"(402).
Following this interpretation, we can imagine how bourgeois and empowered classes could develop expectations for the type of information that will be transferred; messages that are challenging to the balance of power and therefore aberrant would almost reflexively be labeled "terrorist." Terrorists are of course, concerned with what they have to do to be effective in making known their particular grievances to the information age.
Just as Jan, Ressler, and Frank know that they have to put an attention attracting virus into the system, so too are the terrorists mentioned in Coming Soon!!!
aware that their actions must be seen in order to be effective, thus necessitating an interruption of typical data flow in favor of more striking messages.
In Anthony Kubiak's essay "Spelling it Out: Narrative Typologies of Terror" he quotes an alleged Al Qaeda hand book which "cautions adherents to reject Socratic debates, Platonic ideals, and Aristotelian diplomacy," and rather to embrace "the dialogue of bullets, and the ideals of assassination, bombing and destruction" (296).
Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a.
"The Unabomber" seemed to calculate the preponderance of media outlets in deciding to substitute his violent methods for more typical information.
In his essay "What is a Terrorist?
Contemporary Authorship, the Unabomber, and Mao II" Ryan Simmons quotes Kaczynski's (or his delusional Freedom Club's) manifesto: "anyone who has a little money can have something printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some such way but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of material put out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect.
To make an impression on society with words is therefore almost impossible for most individuals and small groups.
{ -- } In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression we've had to kill people." (NP) Ressler, Jan, and Todd compensate for their own lack of power by placing messages that are alarming in their randomness in the communications of M.O.L.
and on different bank statements.
At one point the possibility of using data terrorism to advocate for sweeping political change is brought up in the idea of "taking a day of data" and the information transmitted in that time away until certain conditions were met, however the trio ultimately confine their sabotage to the information closest and most relevant to their single issue, and in so doing distinguish themselves from the terrorists inspiring Barth's work who have broader issues that address civilization, religion, and economic reform respectively (606). The "Gold Bug" group has only illegitimate access and randomness in their arsenal when confronting M.O.L., the insurance company, and their respective communications, thus explaining the need for computer screens to ask questions as unexpected as they are irrelevant to their function or bank paperwork that contains excerpts of unfamiliar poetry (618).
However, this anomalous or terrorist information is only random in the context of all the information that is electronically transmitted at any given time; as unimportant as it may be to the general public, it is reflective of the unique thought and concerns of the trio.
In all likelihood, the random, somewhat unimportant concerns and messages of three would not have gotten out if they had not employed the disruptive, attention grabbing techniques of data terrorism. Al Qaeda, the Unabomber, and the Shining Path employ (or have employed) terrorism to move their radical messages from the margins and in to prominence.
Just as these groups and tendencies are aware that without acts of media savvy violence they are irrelevant, merely fringe ideologies, academic abstractions, the terrorists/ main characters in The Gold Bug Variations feel statistically excluded in their existence in the margins of modern life.
This awareness and the need to revolt against dominant numerical paradigms are foreshadowed in the novel by the younger Ressler's colleague, "Woytowich," who is a member of a polling audience for network television. Woytowich would like his vote to help insure the prominence of good television, however he realizes that his opinions are distinctive enough from the norm to that he'll be ignored or irrelevant if he doesn't exercise his non conformity with stealth.
Put another way, he along with the more significant characters of The Gold Bug Variations is a manifestation of marginalized information and his representation in data groupings will reflect that.
In language that wouldn't be entirely out of place in the mind of a "Data Terrorist," he tells Ressler, "The problem with swaying the median is that I must move selectively, a blow here and there where it counts.
Stay within the standard deviation.
Guerilla war -- .
To use one's Stainer vote to subvert popular culture for the better, one cannot saturation-bomb" (243).
Like a terrorist, Woytowich does not try to take on a system or adversary directly or as an equal, but instead clandestinely as a presence within a larger framework.
Moving ahead a few decades it is clear that Franklin Todd identifies himself as an entity existing within an information network, whenever he writes letters or leaves messages he signs "FTODD," which is his logon identification at work.
And this awareness, evident in the minds of many of the individuals in the novel, figures himself and those around him into the mathematics of separation, on the far end of some kind of numerical matrix.
Ressler is initially researched by Todd because he is, as one critic describes it, "the mysterious someone he wants to retrieve from the information network..."(Strecker 9).
Jan describes the trio's isolated friendship on an informational oasis as relying on "calculus [that] required consigning entire boroughs to misery beyond addressing," (291).
In this and other ways, the group exists (or in Jan's perception exists) in a positive distinction from the corrupt reality around them.
She notes that surrounding them in the city of New York are "fourty thousand homeless, three quarters of a million addicts." City life is seen as "a disappointment per square mile that left the three of us several digits to the right of significance" and yet capable of pushing back or as Jan puts it, "Still, exile to expendable stats freed us to do what little we could to rig the numbers game" (292).
This numeric isolation also manifests itself in ways that more positively (and less seriously) maintain the friendship and romance within the novel.
On Jan's birthday, Ressler and Todd program the computer screen to read "Our Dearest O'Deigh.
Welcome to the median.
The U.S.
Bureau of On-Line statistics assures that 30 splits the country in half.
As usual you're right on the fence" (389).
Although this statistic groups her in a median, the language of the men who create the message portrays her as middling, or resisting fitting into one of the broader numeric categories (389).
When Jan visits Frank at work, he jokes to her, "I'm glad you came out on such short notice.
Ninety-five out of a hundred women would not have." Later on, after prolonged kissing Jan thinks to herself "Ninety-five out of a hundred women in their right minds would have known better"(295-296).
To be sure, this offers some allusion to the inevitable complications of intimate relationships, some of which happen later in the novel, but at the same time reflects the light hearted aspect falling into love in what could perhaps be described as a marginal, statistically improbable way. There are other indications of the group(or at least Ressler and Todd) feeling united by chaos within the online networks and their stores of information, "They were an unlikely pair, never more at ease with one another then at this crisis moment, with a hundred essential financial trails teetering on the brink of the ether.
In the unreal solitude of their shift they were at peace, cut off form all others" (311).
When Todd realizes that his and the professor's absence will cause an interruption of M.O.L's transmissions, he is amused at the notion, " 'Oh God'," Todd giggled, despite himself, "Jesus".
East Coast fiscal collapse'" (413).
He will recall this scenario with amusement again, which does not suggest that the trio's deliberate act of data terrorism is an act of thrill seeking, but at the same time would suggest something akin to a casual indifference or removal from the implications of such events.
Jan's language also hints at an attitude somewhat more comfortable with dangerous activities than is typical.
Reflecting on her involvement with Frank she thinks to herself, "On alternate days, I wanted to break laws for him, to take to terrorism rather than give up what little life with him I'd managed to win"(509).
The alienation felt by the characters in The Gold Bug Variations and their relatively insignificant and distinct statistical presence ultimately manifests itself in the electronic networks, taking the form of random information and messages that alternate from normal, routine communications In Barth's Coming Soon!!!
, terrorist anxieties tend to reassert themselves most dramatically by reemerging after prolonged digressions about what could be described as less vital information.
Barth recognizes the relative weight of his work in light of such realities: What if today I launch the fictive "TOFO II" on its 'Final Season' this coming 'April' only to have it happen that agents of the of the Islamic terrorist Osama Bin Laden-taking advantage of our national distraction by the Clinton trial's Quite unforeseen Latest Development of Aftermath '" manage on the ides of March to devastate the whole Washington to Philadelphia corridor, including the entire Chesapeake estuarine system, with a fiendishly coordinated array of biological Doomsday device?
This while we novelers are addressing such loose ends and cannons in story's plot..." (261). Barth, the actual author outside of his meta-fiction, has expressed similar anxieties about threats from the middle east laying waste to his personal efforts, "Who Knows what Allah has in store for us, but assuming that no scud missiles drop on[John Hopkins Baltimore ] Homewood or home land -- I am at work on a new book"("Interview 1991").
In both cases, terror implications outweigh whatever written information Barth is trying to author.
Scud Missiles, and Al Qaeda are life and death whereas Barth's writing along with most other communication form a thin film over those grave, ever present realities. In this way, perhaps mortality itself is the terrorist; however, if it is to be labeled as such, then it is merely the current name of a recurring, irreconcilable anxiety.
The most valuable aspect of such a constant fear is that it seems to result in the strain of the human condition that so often seems to result in the must interesting of creations.
Change and variability as the result of changes in information and/or our reception of it are major themes in both the novels of Barth and Powers.
Disruption of stable genetic patterns results in mutations, and eventually evolution.
Conversely, much of Coming Soon!!!
is written under duress, a ship with an 11th hour curse sailing into an uncertain millennium which will no doubt provoke irrational reactions on the part of those undergoing its change, storms that effect the experimental vessel, modern events and vulnerabilities all provide background to the insecurities of an aging, perhaps outmoded writer who has entered his last decades and less in control of the information around him than he would like to be.
As poignant as his and other emotionally wrought efforts may be, such efforts are temporal and reminders of inevitability will never entirely fail to present themselves.
Even the anxiety inducing efforts of the Gold Bug data terrorists pale in comparison to terrorists who propagate the message and fear of death.
Similarly, any investment, fictional or actual, Barth has in the ontological games and words making up his efforts are easily swept away by storms, attacks, and inevitable oblivion.
For as long as Barth, Powers and anyone else will continue to write and publish, that reality will not be consumed or drowned out, as arranged and homogenized as we might like our information to be, insecurity will not be expurgated .
Anomalies serve as a reminder of our lack of total control, likewise death will be the irresolvable element in our stories for as long as we as a species broadcast them. Works Cited Barth, John.
Coming Soon!!!
New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001. Kubiak, Anthony.
"Spelling it Out: Narrative Typologies Of Terror".
Studies in the Novel.
36.3 (2004).
292-297.
10 November 2006 Mexal, J Stephen.
"Spectacularspectacular!: 'Underworld' and the Production of Terror".
Studies in the Novel.
36.3 (2004).
318-335.
10 November 2006 Powers, Richard.
The Gold Bug Variations.
New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. Strecker, Tray.
"Self Organization and Selection in Richard Power's The Gold Bug Variations".
Critique.
45.3 (2004).
227-245.
Firstsearch.
Northern Michigan U.
10 November 2006. Simmons, Ryan.
"What is a Terrorist?
Contemporary Authorship, The Unabomber , and Mao II." Modern Fiction Studies.
45.3 (1999).
675-695.
Firstsearch.
Northern Michigan U.
10 November 2006.
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