The jungle isn’t greenery. It isn’t land. It’s nothing more than the mineral in tiny computer chips that switch electronic impulses.
But a jungle it is:
● Airline X accused Airline Y of electronically sabotaging X’s reservations operation and contributing to a $733-million bankruptcy. The charges may have been false. But their very existence dramatized the increasing link between computer security and corporate survival.
● Car thieves have computerized to keep better track of hot auto parts. That’s bad news not only for police but also for rival thieves with antiquated record keeping. Meanwhile, a hooker ring, too, has automated. And a gambling operation analyzed its profits daily through a big computer hooked up to smaller ones in forty-three cities.[[1]]
● An editor confesses he snooped on the competition by figuring out the computer password of Brand X newspaper (“it’s like playing Scrabble—a matter of time and an interested mind”).
● Millions of more scrupulous Americans are increasingly relying on micros to outwit their rivals.
Consider two deadline-ridden lawyers locked in combat over the same case. Lawyer A might ferret out legal precedents through eye-straining research at libraries, while B could cover the same territory in minutes through the right taps on a new IBM personal computer.
Siliconized war is “in” between and among giants and gnats.
“One hundred years ago in Colorado, the Colt .44 was a great equalizer,” a westerner once said; now he said his suitcase-sized micro was.
Today better machines sell for around $1,000. With trimmings they can: