You don't get to cut that chain of evidence and start over. You're always going to be pursued by your data shadow, which is forming from thousands and thousands of little leaks and tributaries of information.
Interpretation
Our past digital actions continuously influence our future, as all information leaves traces behind.
This quote emphasizes the concept that our digital footprint is inescapable and accumulates over time from numerous sources of data. Bruce Sterling vividly illustrates that no matter how much we may want to forget or restart, the information we generate is like a shadow that accompanies us, composed of countless bits of data that reveal our habits, decisions, and identities.
In practice
In a talk on digital privacy, you might quote this to stress the importance of understanding our online actions.
If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.
Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes. THAT is cyberpunk.
When you can’t imagine how things are going to change, that doesn’t mean that nothing will change. It means that things will change in ways that are unimaginable.
If the Net becomes the center of the universe, which is what seems to be happening, then the dizzying array of machines that will be plugged into it will virtually guarantee that the specifics of which chip and which operating system you've got will be irrelevant.
People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.
Somehow in the last 100 years, every time there is a problem of getting more spectrum, there is a technology that comes along that solves that problem.
Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine, but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions.
Technology causes problems as well as solves problems. Nobody has figured out a way to ensure that, as of tomorrow, technology won't create problems. Technology simply means increased power, which is why we have the global problems we face today.
Disclosure and transparency are the currency of the Internet, and they are at odds with authoritarianism.
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