On a bright but chilly summer morning in Edinburgh, Peter Lonsdale entered the campaign headquarters at his usual time of seven o’clock. No one else had arrived yet, but the computers had been active overnight, scanning the world’s media for news stories and offensive terms. Pete glanced at the big screen, pleased to see that the trend lines still sloped downward for IDIOT, CRETIN, MORON, and the rest. News items were spiking upward, as expected. This week marked the tenth anniversary of the Campaign Against Intellectual Discrimination, and Pete had spent the last few days writing articles and giving interviews.
He’d been so busy that he hadn’t had time to examine the patchmakers’ latest releases. A pile of padded envelopes teetered in his in tray. Looking at these gave Pete a rush of anticipation. His hand reached for the pin-port at the base of his skull, stroking the plastic cap that protected the interface to his brain. Later, he told himself. The new patches weren’t urgent; he had plenty already.
Pete began scanning through the email that had arrived overnight. He didn’t need to; the secretaries could deal with it. But reading the mail kept him in touch with the public that the campaign existed to serve. Some of it came from mothers whose children had been diagnosed with Sub-Median Intelligence Syndrome. Some came from adults—or their carers—telling of difficulties in finding jobs, battling harassment, or obtaining the latest patches. Pete read fifty messages, his daily sample, carefully logging each by category and required action.
This data joined all the other statistics that the organization collected every day. Meticulous analysis and sober language helped CAID to be taken seriously as a real institution rather than just a bunch of angry people yelling. Yet the data had its own fascination, and Pete often spent hours delving into the numbers, investigating whether a reduction in idiophobic abuse was a genuine success, or correlated with a wider civility trend (which could be assessed by measuring comparable terms such as CRIPPLE, FAGGOT, BITCH), or simply a shift in language as trolls and bullies invented new insults that needed monitoring.
Today’s email trawl took twenty-three minutes. Pete smiled, contemplating how far he’d come from
