[dba-Tech] Do we believe that this what has happened?

Arthur Fuller fuller.artful at gmail.com
Sat Dec 31 14:32:27 CST 2011


I hope not, but fear that this take is correct...

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.

*Update*: Here's a
transcript<https://github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcript.md>,
courtesy of Joshua Wise.

Arthur

-- 
Cell: 647.710.1314

Thirty spokes converge on a hub
but it's the emptiness
that makes a wheel work
   -- from the Daodejing


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