I have been giving a lot of thought to computer/internet viruses lately. It’s really starting to fascinate me, the whole thing. I was speaking to my friend Pavan about how they add another important element of chaos into an ever-more-chaotic system. I no longer find viruses annoying. I’m not irritated to have to patch my computer, I am glad that I have to, because it’s like a cool game, and I revel in the play of it.

Before I get really abstract, let me point out something that I have noticed. First, this is just sort of silly, but did you know that if you discover a virus, you supposedly get to name it? I was thinking that I would name my virus something horribly obscene, so that when it got into the media, they would be forced to use the horrible obscenity over and over. It would be delicious. I mean, of course they would make up some other name that wasn’t obscene, because everything is whitewashed, but some places would still pick up the original name, I’m sure.

But that brings me to my real point. You may have noticed that whenever you get one of these new viruses, once they crack the code, and whatever, they always contain like a secret message. Usually it is like, “Microsoft sucks” or “I love you San!” or just something totally useless. Why? How come all these activists and people with agenda who supposedly rely increasingly on “viral campaigns” aren’t actually creating and distributing viruses that do or mean or say anything culturally important? I mean, I have read of a couple viruses that criticized like some political thing in England. But, I mean, like these viruses are a free pass to say and do anything that will immediately get picked up in world media, if it gets big enough. Why isn’t anyone utilizing this?

Like I feel as though viruses are something really important that is emerging that people aren’t looking at what it really is or what it could be pointing at for the evolution of knowledge. Viruses are cool to me because they are almost autonomous, and they have a highly specific (if negative) purpose that they fulfill. There’s something there. Something really really important. I can’t articulate it too well yet. I will.

I was also thinking more about how China is waging information war on Taiwan, and breaking into their corporate and government databases, to gather information. What information I wonder? Why is information such an important commodity? What if, in the future, information wasn’t attained by learning or purchasing, but by viruses that collected, scanned and collected. What if they and other technological innovations change the shape of ownership of knowledge by forcibly blowing the doors off the vault with TNT? Its interesting to me, I think, because its a new model for information & technology that isn’t about networks, but it does EXPLOIT networks. What could we create in turn to exploit viruses? And in that process, what are the other models/paradigms that would have been rendered archaic and obsolete?

Perhaps this is the real threat of viruses - that they force us to adapt to a new mental model, before we have fully adapted to the current network one. Just look at all that RIAA shit, with suing people over file-sharing? To me, and my (possibly) advanced understanding of the network paradigm, that’s as preposterous as suing someone from creating a folder on their home computer! Computer networks are MADE to share files. CD burners were MADE to copy CD’s. Viruses, what will they enable us to do. How will they enable us to think in new ways, and progress to new vantage points? That’s what I want to know.

UPDATE

Another thing I was thinking of - in what way does an XML/RSS news aggregator simulate a virus? Can a virus be created which will collect and organize information into useful patterns? Can we make viruses that are self-organizing information patterns, which suck relevant information to themselves (like a magnet - or an archetype), and then organize that information somehow around this viral core? I think this is a pretty important concept that I want to try and toy with some more in the near future.

UPDATE

And what about distributed computing?!? Couldn’t that be conducted using viral software? I think there is a definite convergence point for these ideas. I’m going to find it.