Down these mean cyber channels ...
Who can you trust and rely upon in a dangerous cyber world?
There are individuals and groups out there who would use our digital interconnectedness to do us ill. Sometimes in the name of a cause. Sometimes out of resentment. Sometimes just for fun. Always with criminal intent.
They may try to burgle information … to corrupt or destroy data … to steal money and commit fraud … to close down physical systems and services … and to plant disinformation and dangerous propaganda.
We need to do everything we can to stop them. Which is why those who provide and market data and cyber security services are so important for the well-being of all of us. Often, it is they, and they alone, who can identify and counter The Bad Guys (#1 - Insiders, #2 - Hackers, #3 - Industrial Competitors, and #4 - Terrorists & Organized Criminals) who would cause chaos for us all.
Writing in the mid-20th century about a much simpler world, before the earth and all its peoples and all its affairs were bound and bounded, as now they are, by a vast and intricate digital net, author Raymond Chandler wrote about the private detective …
… down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.1
Approaching midpoint in the second decade of the 21st century, the world’s societies, governments and enterprises need to be able to rely upon those specialist data and cyber security providers and detectives who, by forensically peering into the mean corners of the cyber world, make it their business to keep abreast of - nay, ahead of - those who wish us harm.
Genesis
The genesis of this post was a meeting that I had, earlier this week. The topic was cyber and data security marketing. I’ll no doubt talk more about the specifics of the meeting in the near future.
For now, however, it has prompted me to play with a few thoughts and ideas, informed to an extent by some of my past working experience. That’s because, at the end of the 20th century and start of the 21st, I was involved in writing a lot of business materials to do with the emerging digitalized world.
And, although age doesn’t confer many advantages, one of the few useful things it can do is give some perspective to see things with greater clarity in a broader context.
So, here goes.
Heaven and Hell
When you look out at the twenty-first century world, what does it look like?
Do you see a utopian world of opportunity, powered by ubiquitous digital integration, enabling exciting new things? A world where products, services, knowledge and understanding whiz around the globe? A vision of democratization, of innovation, of empowerment? The potential to enfranchise, ennoble, educate and assist increasing millions across our planet?
Or, do you see a dystopian horror show? An Orwellian vision of a depersonalized society of soulless drones whose most intimate secrets are cataloged in mammoth databases? A vision where society’s technology assets are used against itself as instruments of hatred, greed and subversion, with the potential to manipulate, divide, rob and harm increasing millions across our planet?
The reality is, of course, a blend of both scenarios. Heaven and hell co-existing in the same space and time.
Security/Safety & Solicitude/Sanity
Then there’s another issue. Twenty or so years ago, with the Digital Era still in its infancy, we understood that there was, and would always continue to be, a need for Security/Safety issues to be taken into account, but we couldn’t, at that point, truly comprehend the Solicitude/Sanity component.
The Security/Safety need was innately understood because, right through human history we have known that any tool can be used for good or ill. The flint axe of the Stone Age, the wheel, the automobile, the nuclear reactor - any and every tool can be used for positive or negative ends.
And Digital Technology is a tool - a tool that can bring immeasurable good and can deliver appalling evil - the coexistent heaven and hell mentioned earlier.
In fact, it is, I suggest, salutary to note that this particular tool possibly makes us more vulnerable to attack than anything ever before in our entire history.
Yet security is one of the most powerful words in any of the languages of the world. Safety. Peace of mind. Protection from those who would harm us. Freedom to go unimpeded about our legitimate affairs. Every government, institution, enterprise and single person on earth strives for it.
But, because the value of digital technology to humanity lies literally in its ability to interconnect, intercommunicate and interact, the more sophisticated it becomes and the more dominant in our lives, the greater the potential threat to our security.
When, as now, so many of our life support systems (in the broadest sense) are always connected to a network, always conscious of their location and context, always seeking proactively to anticipate what will be required next, the potential for mischievous intervention is inevitably huge.
It’s also where the Solicitude/Sanity issue figures prominently:
Q: What happens when an open, global communication channel is created?
A: It can be used for honest and dishonest communications, information and disinformation.
This, as we are now all well aware, can contribute to a fragmentation of society where individuals are connected with the whole but, counter-intuitively, feel isolated, anxious and possibly doubting their own sanity.
As is now being shown, by Jonathan Haidt and colleagues, the effects can be particularly devastating for young people.
But it’s not just the young. Everybody is affected. As it happens, in this week’s issue of the Spectator, Douglas Murray has written …
We have entered a new dark age. … The first dark age was characterised by a lack of information. … The second dark age by contrast, is characterised by a surfeit of information. Indeed there is so much information around us that nobody has a chance of absorbing even a calculable portion of it.2
Vision & Protection
What’s my conclusion from these few thoughts? Well, for what it’s worth, two imperatives come immediately to mind.
One - there is an ongoing Visionary imperative. The technological frontiers require some deep ongoing thinking about the way the possible is transformed into the actual. You might say we’re already doing that. I think we need to give it broader remit, so that our best minds are ever better equipped to tackle the issues of …
Two - the Protection imperative. Where does that all start? Not inside the technology, that’s for sure! By all means involve AI but maintain the real human control over it all. Start with the human head:
Identify the nature of actual and potential threats.
Assess their scale, the direction from which they may come and the likely consequence and cost of their being successful.
Analyse what must be done by whom and at what price within what timeframe to preempt and circumvent them.
This all, of course, means that our cyber warriors carry an onerous responsibility. Can we think of new ways to empower them to achieve ever more assured positive outcomes?
More about this very soon.
Thanks for reading
Image at top: Shutterstock
Chandler, Raymond. The Simple Art of Murder (1950)
Murray, Douglas. The new dark age (The Spectator 13 July 2024)
"When you look out at the twenty-first century world, what does it look like?"
Layered.
I live primarily in 'basic reality', in 'realia' if you will. I walk the same streets and attended the same gymnasium as my father and his father before him. Some new buildings are added as others are torn down, the old trees are felled when they become unsafe, but saplings are planted to replace them. Babies are born and old people die, and in between we hustle and bustle, living our myriad lives while the seasons turn in sedate procession. I know the basic laws of nature (at least for practical purposes :-) so nature is not scary or chaotic, but varied and interesting; I can bend the wind to my purposes with my sails and I can navigate using three different techniques. This world is my home. I know it and I'm safe here.
I am also a man among many others, with a life of the mind, interacting with other minds. I started life as a clever schoolboy with an aptitude for science. As I matured, I started to realize that other humans were ... very, very complicated! Irrational! Foolish! Unpredictable! Spellbinding! Unfathomable? And so my interests shifted towards the social sciences and the humanities; in response to the realization that I was quite illiterate, or at least inept, regarding interpersonal relations. Strange thing: I was perfectly able to follow and understand the nuanced relations between fictive characters in literature, but often baffled by real-time interactions. My interpersonal skills (did I just use that term? Jeeez ... shoot me now!) improved markedly while I lived with a personable, feisty and socially gifted girlfriend -- monkey see, monkey do. Anyways ... that's why I read anthropology, sociology and computer science at university. Humans are damned interesting animals! And when they band together in societies there's no telling what they'll get up to! So ... I also live in the world of man.
"What a piece of work is a man,
How noble in Reason, how infinite in faculties,
how like an angel in apprehension
how like a God ! "
And perhaps it is that godlike spark in us, that ceaseless inventiveness, our relentless scrabble for better, bigger, faster, stronger that will be our undoing. There is great wisdom in knowing how much is enough, and satisfaction to be found in being content with that. Nature has been more than generous to us; our world is bountiful and beautiful beyond compare! If we had restrained ourselves and sought to maintain balance -- balance in perpetuity -- we could have used our talents for making a new Eden for ourselves. Instead, we got greedy. Perhaps it's just who we are ... a bit childish, a bit greedy, too clever by half ... We're always making 'an even better tool'. As I am, as I do.
"[...] this particular tool possibly makes us more vulnerable to attack than anything ever before in our entire history."
Oh, yes. When I studied computer science, it was not because I was especially interested in the hardware, or because I wanted to learn programming, but because it was obvious that we had invented and mass-marketed a fundamentally new kind of tool; a kind of universal machine. Or at least; the digital brains for any machine you would care to programme. Young people often flatter themselves by assuming that they are 'digital natives' because they are fluent in whatever trend twitches the mass-market threads of the web, conflating the amount of likes harvested by their latest silly, little dance with 'digital clout' (re. the hilarious attempts to spin Kamala Harris' bid for the US Precidency on SoMe -- LOL!)
No, the 'digital brains' pose a different set of challenges to human life than we've been accustomed to: 1) the ubiquitous presence of 'choice architecture'. Call any organization and you will have " seven choices: press 1 for ... press 2 for ... " An increasing amount of our lives will be limited by 'choice architecture'. It's built into the Boolean logic. 2) "Computer says no." The possibility of human intervention will be limited. No one will hear your plea for mercy, much less your strident and well-reasoned defence. There is no one there, just a machine masquerading as a mind. You are banned and your money is confiscated (for the greater good, of course -- however that may be defined this week).
Now, here's the kicker: I love computers and the web! But I only own a laptop, no smart phone, and have no desire to become entangled in the 'internet of things'. I use it as an electronic reading device with a really good selection sources, and AdBlocked YouTube for all manner of video content -- and wonderful music! I treat the digital world as an addition to the material world that is my real home. My work and income is not digitally dependent -- heck, I hardly need electricity to do my work if push comes to shove (although both electric light and tools are a great benefit, of course.)
A digitally interconnected world, as we've been fortunate to live in these last thirty years, has been an exhilarating experiment, but I'm not sure it'll last. Fukuyama was too optimistic, Huntington was right. Will the web fracture, too?
Well done, David. The target is morally corrupt players in the online world. But lets understand that is was not a simpler and, necessarily, a kinder world in the past. This is a process of intellectual corruption, on both side of politics, which has been long evolving.