SCC.205 Term Assignment

As more calls for transparency mean more potentially sensitive data is uploaded to the public sphere, people's lack of understanding about technology can lead to breaches in privacy far more dangerous than this one.

Planned obsolescence is one thing, but with Windows 10's privacy issues and generally undesirable featurelist, this is more concerning.

A lot of jobs are increasinly less required in the modern, automated world. What happens to these newly unemployed?

The interconnectness of modern systems leads to situations like this one increasingly frequently, where the solution to one (security) problem ends up blowing a hole in your defenses somewhere else. It's the same issue medicine finds itself in, whereby the interactions between drugs are too numerous to catalogue, and so it's largely a fluke when mixing two drugs doesn't kill you.

With the biggest websites in the world reciving millions of visitors per day, they increasingly act as cities did in the past - incredibly potent infection vectors for disease. This, coupled with generally poor security from the average user, is a big risk.

It's difficult to stay on top of technology, even for those of us who make that our vocation. When it comes to out-of-touch politicians writing tech-based laws, there is a whole can of worms to be opened, with unforseen loopholes and the insidious chipping away at user freedoms.

Errors have been with us since the first time someone spelt it "Hellp, world", but in the IoT era we're going to have to deal increasingly with compromised devices that simply can't be patched. This would hopefully lead to an increased focus on pre-ship testing, but will likely instead just go for shorter product lifespans and more planned obsolescence.

Another day, another story about whizz-bang IoT devices having all the security of a soggy paper bag. As we increasingly insist on computerising everything, from lights to cars, we are going to have to grapple with these vulnerabilities - before something rather bad happens.