Monday, March 7, 2011
Computers: No respecter of persons
I recently started working with the engineer formerly responsible for architecting the LDS Church's new FamilySearch.org site, a free service helping millions connect with their ancestors. And just a year ago, I worked with an engineer from a company that performed so many fraudulent credit card transactions that they opened a new merchant account nearly every week--that is, until they were entirely shut down by federal investigators. I'm fascinated that the rise of high technology so efficiently allows the benevolent to rise, while simultaneously allowing the leeches to burrow deeper. I suppose the Internet causes bits to flow to the evil and to the good, and lets users fall on the righteous and the unrighteous.
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It is true that new technology often finds itself used for both the good and the bad. The internet isn't the only case of this happening: nuclear bombs, automatic guns, cellular phones, airplanes, even automobiles have all been guilty of falling into this conundrum. The real trick lies in regulating the evil once the technology has been released.
ReplyDeleteYeah, umm.... I'm pretty sure atomic bombs fall strictly into the evil category. The total destruction of two entire large civilian populations by vaporization (for the lucky) followed by protracted radiation poisoning symptoms like your skin and eyes falling off (for the unlucky)--this is evil, even if the United States was the one that did it.
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