Efforts to fight piracy and limit computer functionality converge on malware/spyware being pre-installed on every machine that ships. As an example, Intel has teamed up with video streaming services in the design of their new Sandy Bridge chips, which will supposedly allow for only DRM content to be streamed in HD. (Not that you have to utilize DRM-ladden content; you can find and play things in HD on your own still, but it’s the beginning of a larger trend — i.e. cars that can be remotely shut down, iPhones whose cameras turn off at the request of the authorities, etc.)

This trend is most disturbing in particular in regimes where the populace is not media-literate enough to get around these restrictions, unlike in wealthy, western countries where we can assume, as always, someone will find a way to hack into it (or out of it). [Maybe these people: ccc.de?]

Doctorow refers to all of our iThings and other increasingly restricted forms of hardware as Appliances, but what they are, he goes on to elucidate, are general purpose computers that ship with malware inside. With SOPA and all this copyright mess what we are seeing is just the first battle of the war on general purpose computing.

Even in this Apple-esque, highly-dramatic presentation of Canada’s new anti-counterfeiting technology can we see the unfolding of the evolution of technology, what I like to call extropy: It is seen in the accumulation of techniques and tools used to create novel products and services, to build something new and improved.

Even in these plastic bills can we see the increasing complexity of technological life, greater levels of complexity and information density. How many different safeguards do these new bills include? How many times is the number 100 written, in how many different fonts and directions?

I am not one to say what the future holds, but could future versions be made of carbon nanotubes, indestructible, spliced with some wild combination of maple-leaf DNA to lend it a deeper, more natural red color, or maybe a unique new leafy texture? Who knows? The specifics are yet to be determined, but the point is that the driving force for change and innovation is there, now built into our society. As an example, compare this new bill with Canada’s first few iterations to taste the unrelenting push of progress, the inertia of extropy (after the jump)…

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Key Ideas from This Talk:

• No man is an island; we’re all ‘born in funk’ and we all will ‘die in the funk’.
• Denial, dodging, and dismissal of death, maximum distraction and “deodorized” discourse.
• Learning to die, through/with Philosophy, as a means to real growth.
• A more just society requires more critical, courageous thinkers that can even give up their dogmas when necessary.
• Holding opposing ideas simultaneously in our head, and yet still continuing to function, e.g. the U.S. as both a Noble Experiment in Democracy and an Ignoble Experiment in Empire.