Friday, October 22, 2010

A Kinder Fate: Chapter 1

Episode 1 of a short story.  ANYTHING REFERRED TO OR MENTIONED IN THIS IS PROBABLY FICTIONAL.
A revolutionary service designed to make life work. Normally, life operates on chance. You meet friends, discover a hobby, find an employer, maybe even a soul mate, all if you're lucky. Fate Engine tilts the odds in your favor by bridging the gap between you and your friends, interests, career, and even romance. Fate Engine has the advantage over traditional search, networking, and dating sites in several ways:

Non Interactive Operation.  This may at first seem like a downside, but in fact it is not.  An interface allows the user to input and receive information in a convenient, logical manner.  With Fate Engine, this is not needed.  Data does not need to be inputted; Fate Engine collects data itself.  There is no way to directly interact with Fate Engine.  Real life does not have a control panel or list of settings.  Neither does Fate Engine.

Fate Engine is Completely Cloud Based.  It operates completely separately from all platforms you own.  It may install applications on your hardware, but they are merely designed to automatically supplement your user experience, and do not interact with the user.
Really, Really Smart.  Through partnerships with several supercomputing firms, Fate Engine can provide an unprecedented amount of computing resources to each user, leading to the most powerful user experience ever.  Fate Engine can analyze and make connections like nothing ever before.
Other services create a construct in which social interaction takes place, such as chat rooms, "walls", inboxes, etc.  Fate Engine does not have any sort of construct, rather it integrates into the construct already in existence; the world around you.  Fate Engine Suppliments Reality Instead Of Creating A Virtual One.
Completely Free.  Fate engine is provided to users at no cost.  This is made possible through advertising contracts with various corporations.  Advertising is introduced at a low level, such that the user never actually sees any ads.  Rather, organizations can sponsor a slight influence in Fate Engine's calculations in favor of their product.  If you are interested in advertising with Fate Engine, please click here.
Fate Engine goes beyond a simple quiz or list of friends; it profiles you based on everything related to you ever recorded online.  We have partnered with major software, telecom, analytics, intelligence, and web companies to bring you the best possible experience.  Simply sign up, and let Fate Engine mine your data and connect you to your future.
Scott was slouched on his sofa, laptop perched on his knees as he slowly browsed.  This was an interesting idea.  Not that some random web service could somehow improve his dead-end life, but that someone would attempt to create such a service... interesting enough to distract him from the slowly growing stack of bills on his counter.  He hit the Sign Up button.

There was a simple form: name, email address, email password, cell number, and a quick CAPTCHA.  He hit submit, and the form reloaded.  He had forgotten to check the little box that showed that he agreed to the Terms of Service, which he obviously wasn't going to read.  He checked the little box, and hit submit.

Somewhere far away, a virtual machine, distributed across a ridiculous number of blade servers began reading emails.  It soon found an old message containing his Facebook password.  Data was quickly downloaded and archived.  His IP address was aquired, as well as browser configuration, web history, and sketchy geolocation data.  The machine was soon querying his wireless router, as well as DNS servers around the world, to catch any history Scott may have deleted.  IP logs of websites, forums, and search engines were easy enogh to snag, and soon Scott's entire online existence was laid bare.

A pop-up message appeared, asking for permissions.  Scott agreed to more Terms, and hit OK.  A small binary file downloaded and began running.  It installed a couple of small patches to his kernel, and began uploading files.  Documents, pictures, videos.  His entire offline experience, and a large portion of his real physical life.

A few minutes later, the client-side stuff was done.  The machine was at the time profiling his face from his photos, and comparing it against the vast database of CCTV footage it had accumulated.  The data would be archived, and converted into a complete profile of his personality, psyche, interests, skills, friends, and practically any other aspect of his existence that could be defined.  This included things that Scott didn't necessarily want others to know.  All his personality flaws, financial problems, personal failures, things he had said and regretted.  Even things he didn't know about himself.

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