# Is Fahrenheit 451 becoming relevant again?  

Ray Bradbury's novel _Fahrenheit 451_ envisages a future where books -- all
books -- are banned, because of the risk they pose to a totalitarian state.
Books, after all, contain knowledge, including the knowledge of how things used
to be. They inspire us to look beyond the narrow confines of our experience, and to
ask whether things could be better.  In the world of _Fahrenheit_ the role of
the "fireman" is not to put out fires, but to start them, using books as fuel.

The novel follows the fortunes of one such fireman, Guy Montag, as he gradually awakens
to the pointless destructiveness of his day-job (been there!) and finally rebels.

_Fahrenheit_ has, on the whole, not stood the test of time. 

Attempts to adapt the story for TV and cinema in the last twenty
years have been dismal failures. That's because we no longer rely on books for
knowledge or, in fact, on any physical medium. Knowledge is distributed around
the world on a vast network of computing devices.

One TV adaptation has Montag and his associates destroying personal computers, rather than books. 
When I saw this I was appalled. Did the writers not know, I wondered, that the
computer itself was not the repository of the information the state feared? 
You can destroy my laptop,
but that won't destroy the information I access with it. Montag would have done 
better to bomb the huge server farms in Nevada. 

Recent developments have made me wonder whether I was too hasty in my condemnation.

In the US, and elsewhere, moves are afoot to force the vendors of computer operating
systems to carry out age verification at the platform level. Doing this _properly_
-- not in the half-arsed way it's currently being done -- would turn every
computer into a surveillance platform.

We're already most of the way there. All the mainstream
desktop operating systems, and much of the software that runs on them,
are essentially telemetry agents, collecting data
about their users and sending it of to goodness knows where. Software
vendors do this to profile their users, with a view to showing them more
effective advertising. Whatever the motive, the consequence is that
we're all under surveillance, whenever we use our computers. And
our smartphones. And many other computer-based appliances. Even our cars.

At the same time, operating-system vendors are acting to regulate the
kind of software we can run on our computers, by restricting us to authorized software
marketplaces. Apple has always done this to some extent; Microsoft and
Google are starting to do it. It might not be long before we're simply 
unable to run the kind
of non-tracking, ad-free open-source software that privacy enthusiasts
advocate, because there will be no source for it that our computers
will accept.

It would be nice to think that the Linux operating system, at least, would be
immune to this kind of outside interference. After all, Linux isn't controlled
by the tech giants. But no: it seems that legal developments in the US _will_
apply to Linux, and the maintainers of Linux distributions are already
panicking about what to do. 

What's striking about the recent
US age verification regulations is that they show -- perhaps for the first time --
direct, state control over
how we may use our computers. We've gotten used to corporations
acting this way, but at least their motives are clear: profit. 
The motivations of our legislators are muddy: ostensibly these
recent developments are to protect children from harmful online content 
-- a worthy enough goal.
In reality, they're attention-seeking, bandwagon-jumping tactics 
to garner votes. Once our political leaders get a taste for
this kind of thing, there's no limit to the absurdity of the
regulations they'll create, because they won't be tempered by any
kind of technological knowledge.

I fear that the era of "open computing" is coming to an end. At present,
if we're careful in our choice of hardware and operating system, we can
still install the software we like, from whomever we like, and use it
as we like, free from corporate or governmental oversight.

But if we carry on as we are, before long every computing device will be controlled by a
cartel of governments and mega-corporations. We'll only be able to run approved
software, selected for its willingness to monitor us and monetize us. Everything
else will be banned, and our governments will be able to use the bogeyman
of child protection to stifle dissent.
When this happens, "unregulated" computers and software -- those not subject to 
governmental and corporate oversight -- could become an unlawful,
black-market commodity. 

We could thus end up in a situation where Guy Montag
and his crew _are_ burning computers after all; not the shiny, new ones
that have been deemed safe for the public, but old Thinkpads and
bootleg DVDs of Ubuntu and Fedora. 

In _Fahrenheit_, Montag eventually joins a community of rebels who
have made themselves into living books, each member memorizing one of
the classics. Perhaps we'll rebel by building retrocomputers 
like my _Bear80_.

![The Bear80](img/rc2014-aug-2023.jpg)

Bear80 runs the CP/M operating system, which had its heyday before most
people now living were even born. For all its faults, CP/M is incapable
of being used for digital surveillance, and could one day be deemed a threat
to the state.

Of course, the computer itself isn't the problem, because that's not
where the subversive material is stored. My floppy disks containing
copies of _David Copperfield_ and _Pride and Prejudice_ are safely
hidden behind the loose brick in my bedroom wall.

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