The coming war on general computation & Anonymous

I just stumbled across this video and found it excellent. During the Q/A and his answers on "failure modes", a FMECA (failure modes effects criticality analysis) concept comes to mind. At 44:00, his discussion of Anonymous and OWS is really good too - how & why they buck the pyramid organizational structures. Of course most here prolly realize that "Anonymous" came from fake screen names that have been used by engineers since the early days of the internet. Especially for sharing opinions and POVs that aren't kosher with employer's POV and stuff like that... and now grown up beyond its original community and prolly also a bit manipulated to stoke fears for the sake of clamping down on the internet and computation technology.


Description:

Cory Doctorow: The coming war on general computation
The copyright war was just the beginning

The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.

The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to "secure" anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.

And general purpose computers can cause harm -- whether it's printing out AR15 components, causing mid-air collisions, or snarling traffic. So the number of parties with legitimate grievances against computers are going to continue to multiply, as will the cries to regulate PCs.

The primary regulatory impulse is to use combinations of code-signing and other "trust" mechanisms to create computers that run programs that users can't inspect or terminate, that run without users' consent or knowledge, and that run even when users don't want them to.

The upshot: a world of ubiquitous malware, where everything we do to make things better only makes it worse, where the tools of liberation become tools of oppression.

Our duty and challenge is to devise systems for mitigating the harm of general purpose computing without recourse to spyware, first to keep ourselves safe, and second to keep computers safe from the regulatory impulse.

"the future will be better tomorrow." d. quayle

very good talk about what might be coming down the road at us.

unfortunately government worries are directed in so many wrong directions, and when it comes down to it,
are directed at their own citizens more and more.
i dont worry about the paranoias of other people much, but the paranoias of governments are something that should not be left to fester they have a nasty habit of biting one in the ass.

You could solve this by making every component sentient....

but seriously...........

So for me this is one of those amazing threads that dies of no comments. Is it really not interesting? IDK (= i don't know).

WTF how is that going to become legal, if they do that they can keep their damn computers. Why is nobody looking at this thread.

Originally posted by KwisatzHaderach
WTF how is that going to become legal, if they do that they can keep their damn computers. Why is nobody looking at this thread.

Right on bro, please star every post and flag the thread.

Bump ...

I was disappointed this thread didn't get more replies, flags, stars... I thought it was more important than the ATS members seem to think.

Originally posted by reitze

Right on bro, please star every post and flag the thread.

How will starring every post give the thread attention?

I watched the whole thing and really enjoyed it.
Thank you!

Originally posted by FelixFelicis

Originally posted by reitze

Right on bro, please star every post and flag the thread.

How will starring every post give the thread attention?

I have no idea. I've been quite frustrated trying to find the threads I've already commented in. It seems some of them just vanish and don't even seem to have a reason for disappearing. And the ones that get to the top? IDK why either. I didn't notice how challenging it was to follow a thread here till about a month ago when I started to intentionally try rather than just occasionally lurking.

And that seems relevant because not only is the war on general computation & anonymous after the CPU... its after control of the audience.

I think anonymous (the movement) suits the government just fine. It will be used to push and rationalize whatever controls are desired for the internet.

The future will also most likely bring much more un-auditable programming because of national security and business secrets. People may want to rethink how they spend money on technology.

if you have problems following threads you post in then open up the ribbon and select my posts. you can also finds threads you posted in somehow with myats or your profile but it is weird to find for some reason. i finally just bookmarked my ats profile which made it much easier.