Tech Nightmares That Keep Turing Award Winners Up At Night

itwbennett writes: At the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany this week, RSA encryption algorithm co-inventor Leonard Adelman, "Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf, and cryptography innovator Manuel Blum were asked "What about the tech world today keeps you up at night?" And apparently they're not getting a whole lot of sleep these days. Cerf is predicting a digital dark age arising from our dependence on software and our lack of "a regime that will allow us to preserve both the content and the software needed to render it over a very long time." Adelman worries about the evolution of computers into "their own species" — and our relation to them. Blum's worries, by contrast, lean more towards the slow pace at which computers are taking over: "'The fact that we have brains hasn't made the world any safer,' he said. 'Will it be safer with computers? I don't know, but I tend to see it as hopeful.'"

Comments

Of course the world is safer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Previously, you wandered around foraging for food, and were under the constant threat (while awake or asleep) of being eaten by a predator, a competitor, or falling prey to some disease.

Today, for the civilized world, food is relatively abundant, advanced medical care is available, people can walk down the street without maintaining perpetual vigilance for predators, and can sleep soundly at night in their houses.

These protections don't apply as well to the poor class, but even most of them are better off than we were before our brains evolved to their current state.

Safer

[doconnor]

Not only has our brains made the world safer, but it has enabled communication technology that allows to be informed about dangers from around the world that we have virtually no chance of being victims of so we can be afraid of them anyway.