The Dwarf Lords: tiny devices, tiny minds and the new enslavement

Once upon a time the suspect might perhaps deny it or try to bluster. Now, confronted with kilometres, tonnes even, of accusatory detail about one’s private life - most of which has long fallen out of memory - what can one do but own up? “Yes. I’m a terrorist. I’m plotting to bring down the state. Let me give you the names of my associates.”

The subtly of this process is that it no longer need operate through brute force. The pain that can be inflicted by waterboarding or electrical shocks to the genitals is small, perhaps, in comparison to the life-long pain which can be inflicted by reconstruing an innocent person as an enemy of society - and most sensible “suspects” will quickly recognise this.

They will comply. They will obey whatever it is that the inquisitor asks of them.

This is the dawn of the nanocracy, the rule of the Dwarf Lords.

It is the tyrant’s dream come true.

It is a power that no state, nor authority and probably no big company anywhere on earth, can refuse. If one adopts it, all must. None can afford to stand outside it.

Besides, for the first time, it gives them a true method for controlling dissidents - whether in politics, society, the media or the workplace.

Each tool of control will be introduced from the best of motives - to keep us safe and healthy, to reduce crime, to improve workplace efficiency, to raise productivity, to protect the environment, to cater to our personal needs and tastes.

It is their storage, fusion, mining and synthesis which is so fearsome.

I have pondered who the Dwarf Lords really are in this scenario and I have concluded - with some dark amusement - that the real wielders of power in the nanocracy will not be the presidents, prime ministers, heads of department or corporation. Or even the chiefs of police or the intelligence services. Of necessity, these can only oversee its application and use our money to build it.

The real wielders of power will be those who run the quantum computers. These spiders at the heart of the informational web will have the dirt on everyone, the president included. They will know what he did behind the football sheds as a teenager, what he smoked at university, and how many times he drove when drunk. (Bill Clinton would never get to first base.)

Perhaps anticipating such developments, Sir Francis Bacon remarked about 500 years ago “nam et ipse scientia potestas est” - knowledge is power.