Dear Abbe,
I have just replaced our last electron microscope that used film and find myself nervous over no longer having my data stored as for-real, physical negatives. Now they're just bits of magnetic charge in disconnected patches of some mysterious electronic storage device. Then on top of that, I find that these cryptic bits can be rearranged, lost, or otherwise modified, even by such things as cosmic rays. Am I being paranoid, or do I have cause for concern?
Worried in Worchester
Dear Worried,
You do indeed have cause to be paranoid! In this day and age a little paranoia is healthy, mein Freund. Not only do you have to be concerned about your precious images floating about your computers as fragmented ghosts, but what about everyone else's images? They're all just Geister in der Maschine. And who knows what is really in those data packets? You have no doubt heard of steganography, where messages are hidden within other messages. In this case, images within images. Sometimes, if you look at them in a mirror, mysterious messages appear. Ever wonder why you get hungry for some treat while studying your images? Steganography! Undetected hackers sneak into the computers’ memories and add hidden data to your images. Clever bakers and restaurateurs have used this trick to hide images of beer, pizza, ice cream, Schnitzel, and other delicacies within your images. (I'm not even going to raise the specter of what assistant professors have done for tenure.) So you now understand why, as you study your images of glycogen stores in liver cells, you find yourself craving donuts.
Worried that you're being manipulated? Need a fresh batch of worries? Just contact Professor Abbe via [email protected]and worry no more!
