Something about duality is intriguing to me, particularly the strand of secrets and identities. Maybe thats why spy and superhero fiction has fascinated me so much - something about a person risking their life but never their identity, to keep everyone safe. What about our identity is so sacred? In the superhero stories, revealed identity means no safe place to recoup and plan, and harm to loved ones. Maybe even the hanging up of the costume. For spies, it means certain death and mission failure. I suppose both outcomes are equally devastating in the corresponding contexts.
On the Internet we can also have hidden identities, akin to the seemingly unreachable worlds of superhero and spy. Internet users assume a second identity, and when revealed in the form of doxing, can lead to real consequences. Sometimes even fatal. Why does knowing someone give us power? We see each other on the street everyday, but nobody knows nor can they prove, what each person does under the cloak of anonymity.
Something else about these stories fascinates me and thats that anything could happen and the masses would have no clue. Many spy stories (I think of Le Carre, but James Bond work too) have immense world-ending plotlines however, being a spy film, how much of the general public really know that their lives rest solely on someone who orders incorrect martinis?
In 1983, half the Earth's population was almost destroyed when a false nuclear alarm went off in the Serphukov-15 bunker near Moscow, alerting Lieutenant Colonel Stanislov Petrov that the United States had launched multiple nuclear missiles to the Soviet Union. Nobody knew at the time, of course, but Petrov decided to go against orders and not launch the USSR's nuclear missiles in retaliation, as he suspected the alert was a malfunction. The public would only find out about this event 15 years later. This both terrifies and intrigues me. How many of these type of events are happening everyday? How many happen without our knowledge, and if they are revealed, will it be too late? Its not the Earth ending that I worry about (that ship has sailed), but its the duality. For those 15 years, people across the world had no idea they were alive solely because of one Russian man. Life simply goes on while we are threatened with its end. While we eat and sleep, so many things happen in our countries and within our reach, but we'll never know. In some cases if we do, we might have to disappear. We can't know. Its someone's job to ensure we can't know.
Now the war is online. Intelligence agencies employ thousands to simply comb the Internet for terrorist plots or illegal shipments. Perpetrators deal and send through the satellites. ...