Telepathy Might Be Useful Right About Now (MTH 312 #2)

With the invention of the electric telegraph and even before that, the convenience of sending a message to another person over a long distance has always come with a cost. I’m not speaking about the cost of the equipment needed to accomplish the transmission, I’m talking about privacy in any way we choose to measure it.

When the electric telegraph became more widely used, it was always necessary for one or more other people to parse the entire message into Morse code or some other form of alternate alphabet. These translators or operators were not the intended recipient of the original message. Even while the electric telegraph was more widely used, we were aware of the need for a better form of message encapsulation.

This privacy problem persists even today. As smart phones and wireless communications become more prevalent, so does the need for better message encryption and we’re making progress.

I remember a time when an operating system on a computer did not require me to login to it with a password that no one on the planet cared or wanted to know about. Electronic communications have changed, however, to the point where it seems like in the future we may need to have a password for every separate web link we follow. Allow me to observe how many times I need to login to something for me to print on a printer at my university:

I get to school. I use a keycard to enter the “secure” Arch lab. This is basically logging in with a preset password. Then I boot my laptop. I have to login to my laptop. I start the VPN (virtual private network). I have to login to the school’s VPN network. If I didn’t already have the printer’s IP (Internet Protocol) address and the driver installed, I have to go find out what it was and install it. NOW I can print my homework.

So the answer is four. I have to login about four times just to print some kind of course homework or project that may or may not be useful to society. Does this seems excessive to you? Or does it seem reasonable considering the lack of privacy and security we’ve evolved from? Just for the record, I’m happy to do it and I’m grateful for the privilege and convenience. It saves me from eating into my student loans by buying ink cartridges.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could telepathically transmit our spreadsheets, charts, hexadecimal numbers, and essays to the printer directly without any middle man? If that were possible, I would guess that someone somewhere would invent a telepathy antenna and a storage device to go with it.